Batman Samini, one of Ghana’s celebrated hiplife artistes and the Hall Stopper, is in line for yet another international award, after picking up the MOBO award last year.

Samini has been nominated together with 45 other African artistes from 12 different countries for continental music TV giant CHANNEL O’s 2007 Spirit of Africa Music Video Awards. He is also the MTN Ambassador for Ghana.

Samini has been nominated in three categories for this year’s awards with his song Africa Lady. The categories are, best male video, best ragga dancehall video and best African West video

Receiving four nominations each are: Nigeria’s D’Banj for his track, ‘why me’, Mozambique’s Dama Do Bling for ‘Danca Do Remexe’ and Uganda’s EABC for ‘Kube’. They are just one nomination behind South Africa’s HHP, who leads the pack with five nominations under his belt.

Now in their fourth year, the Channel O Spirit of Africa Music Video Awards are unique. Videos are voted for by viewers, giving fans complete control over who receives an award.

Criteria used for short-listing were technical quality, frequency of requests for a video on the different Channel O shows and overall creativity. The videos must have been released between June 2006 and June 2007 and should have received airplay on Channel O.

Channel O General Manager, Yolisa Phahle is sure that the nominations reflect the diverse and growing music industry in the continent. “We are seeing videos of increasingly high quality and this is a direct reflection of the industry’s growth”, she says.

“At Channel O we look to strike a balance between promoting the up and coming big names of tomorrow alongside established artistes. This year, some of the newer names are also producing outstanding music and high quality videos”.

DStv viewers and fans will be able to vote for their favourite artistes by SMS or voting online. Voting starts on Monday August 20 till Thursday October 4.

Viewers can vote in each category by logging on to www.channelo.co.za to vote, or by SMS to 15622. SMS’s are charged at international call rates.

The Awards ceremony will be held at the Johannesburg City Hall on Thursday October 11, 2007.

The event will be recorded live and will be broadcast on Saturday October 27 at 8:00 pm on Channel O, channel 87, on DStv. The awards is courtesy of Amarula Cream.