Nigerian Sesame Street to feature Muppet with HIV

An HIV-positive Muppet will be a co-host of the new Nigerian Sesame Street, reports the international entertainment news site C21Media.com. The show is a coproduction of Sesame Workshop and Nigeria's Ileke Media. It'll be a three-year run funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development. A portion of the money also will go to outreach for the nation's 25 million preschool children. One host of the 30-minute show will be an HIV-positive girl named Kami. The other is a boy Muppet whose name will be chosen through a national text-message vote. "It is our hope that the series will make a strong impact among Nigerian children and their families, addressing relevant social issues, as well as providing them with a strong foundation of basic literacy and numeracy that will instill an interest in and lifelong love of learning," said Sesame Street Nigeria exec producer and director of business development Yemisi Ilo.