Njoki Muhoho's journey elevating East African TV
The former director of Multichoice Talent Factory East Africa on her journey from consultancy to filmmaking.
“I am as old as Kenyan independence. Most women like to hide their age. Not me. I brag about mine, because I’m more energetic than a 20-year-old.”
This is one of the first things Njoki Muhoho tells me as we settle into our seats to have a conversation on the sidelines of Creation Africa, a conference celebrating Africa’s creative economy. We’re sitting just outside one of the conference halls, close enough to feel the energy of the event, but far enough to speak without raising our voices.
Muhoho is in Lagos for the multi-day creative economy event, and her presence here already proves her point about energy. For the past three days, she had moved across the conference grounds like someone half her age; greeting people warmly, attending panels, asking questions, exchanging contacts, and taking part in conversations long after most attendees have slipped away to rest.
She participates fully and intentionally. She joins conversations; she laughs easily with strangers. Everywhere she goes, people recognize her, greet her with warmth, or stop to say thank you. Yet, her presence here is not about being seen. It is about remaining connected to the ecosystem she helped grow.
Muhoho is one of East Africa’s most respected film and television figures. She has written award-winning TV dramas, trained hundreds of African filmmakers, and served on prestigious juries including the International Emmys and the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards. Her influence is woven into scripts, actors, producers, and entire production systems across the region.
But her path into storytelling wasn’t direct. It has been meandering, shaped by her upbringing, her caution, and eventually, her courage.
Muhoho’s life began in Kenya’s highlands, a place layered with colonial history, and the tea plantations where her family worked. She calls herself “a child of two worlds.” Her home was deeply rooted in traditional Kikuyu culture, but it was also full of books and education.
Her father, one of the first Kenyans formally educated through Catholic missions, raised his children to respect books. “There was never an idle moment. If you were sitting down and doing nothing, my father would ask, ‘Have you read every book in this house?’ And it was a cardinal sin to tear a book.”
Muhoho’s love for storytelling revealed itself early. At fourteen, she wrote a school play exploring political power and independence. It won at her local district level and kept progressing until it got to the national level, where it was supposed to be performed before President Daniel Arap Moi. Instead, the girls were told their work was “too political.” The play was banned, and she and her classmates were questioned by the state security service. Kenya was experiencing a period of intense political repression, and leading writers like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o had gone into exile. For Njoki, the lesson was that: stories could threaten power.
That moment shaped her understanding of the power of storytelling to influence people and the inherent risks. So when it came time to choose a course at Kenyatta University, she resisted the obvious choice: literature, and chose business instead. “I told my father, ‘I don’t want to study literature, because I don’t want to get into trouble with the government like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.’” She also wanted to be rich, and for her, studying business was the quickest way to get there.
After graduating from Kenyatta University with a degree in Business Education, she started her first role as a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Although consulting in Kenya at the time was dominated by older, foreign male consultants, Muhoho rose through the ranks quickly. By her late twenties, she was already a director at the firm, travelling across Africa, training leaders, and advising institutions. But the creative instinct never left. In her spare time, she wrote poems, essays, and short stories. Then in 1994, she saw a call from M-Net for a short film script competition.
Muhoho had never seen a film script before. But she treated the competition guide as a brief, the same way she treated her consulting briefs. She completed the script and submitted it a few hours before the deadline. Six months later, the winners of the competition were announced. Muhoho had won.
One of the benefits of winning was that she got to travel for a filmmaking workshop in Senegal. At the workshop, she was the most unqualified. “I was the only person in that group who was not a filmmaker. I was the one asking all the stupid questions. But that’s okay. I tell people the most important question is the stupid question.”
Muhoho left the workshop with more questions than answers, and the most pressing question was: What if she took storytelling seriously, not as a hobby, but as a career? The question stayed with her. She continued consulting, travelling, and teaching leadership and management, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was meant to be a storyteller. Winning the competition didn’t convince her she had “made it.” Instead, it pushed her to ask whether her success came from talent or luck. She had to know if she was going to start a career around storytelling, and the only way to know was to learn the craft properly. So in 2004, she paused her consulting work and headed to the New York Film Academy.
When Muhoho returned to Kenya after the New York Film Academy, she went back to consulting. But a call from Multichoice changed everything. “I got a phone call from Multichoice. They were starting their first East African high-end drama series, and they needed someone on the ground.”
That project became the pioneering Kenyan drama Changes. It set the tone for a new generation of high-quality East African drama. It also marked Njoki’s transition from writer to producer.
In 2008, Njoki founded Zebra Productions, her own compa. At Zebra productions she favoured short-form, episodic storytelling; 12 to 15-minute dramas designed for mobile viewing. “People asked why I didn’t stick to traditional formats. I said, ‘No, this is for the mobile. It’s for the people who live their lives on the phone,’” she explains. Her first series captured everyday life in Kenyan communities, giving audiences stories they recognized, in English and Kiswahili.
Njoki’s work soon extended beyond production. MultiChoice invited her to help establish the MultiChoice Talent Factory in Kenya, a program designed to train young African filmmakers. “They wanted someone with a reputation. I had to show that I could mentor, guide, and build a system for storytelling,” she says. Under her guidance, dozens of emerging talents learned everything from scriptwriting to production management, creating content that now circulates across the continent.
Her influence didn’t stop there. Njoki has served on prestigious juries including the International Emmys and Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards, sharing her insight and elevating African storytelling on the global stage.
As we round up our conversation, one of her students recognizes her and comes up to say hello, greeting her with a mix of reverence and excitement. This moment, simple yet profound, captures the essence of her impact. Njoki Muhoho has not only shaped the stories that East Africans see on screen; she has nurtured the people who create them. Through mentorship, training programs, and her own productions, she has elevated the standards of storytelling in the region, making it richer and more authentic. And this more than anything will be her legacy, the confidence, skills, and ambitions of an entire generation of East African filmmakers whom she has helped train.