Rwandans will feature in this year’s Big Brother Africa, a reality television show, for the first time since its inception 11 years ago. 

Rwanda replaced Angola among the participating countries, joining seasonal participants Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

 Each country provides a contestant to live in an isolated House while trying to avoid being evicted by viewers and ultimately winning a cash prize. This will be the nineth edition of the show. 

The basis of the show is a group of people, termed as ‘housemates,’ living together in a specially constructed large house. 

During their time in the House, they are completely isolated from the outside world, meaning they have no access to phones, computers and other such gadgets; the only electronic appliances are for games or for occasional television whose channels are set on default. 

The contestants are continuously monitored by in-house television cameras as well as personal audio microphones during their stay. Each series lasts 96 days. 

At regular intervals, the housemates privately nominate a number of fellow housemates whom they wish evicted from the House. 

The housemates with the most nominations are then announced, and the public votes online or via SMS for whom they would like to save. 

Last year’s winner, Dillish Pearl Mathews from Namibia took home $300,000 (about Rwf207 million) as prize money. Other than the cash prize, winners and contestants get a chance of joining the entertainment industry in various capacities such as TV presenters, radio hosts among others. 

National carrier RwandAir was among the sponsors of the last edition. 

Entries are only open to persons over the age of 21, who are citizens of one of the participating countries; must have a valid passport and they have to be fluent in English. 

Application can be made through bigbrotherafrica.dstv.com.