Bella Adama, a young, western-educated Kenyan lawyer joins a multinational African counter-terrorism organization called OASIS, secretly supported by American, Canadian and British intelligence agencies, and finds herself in the middle of the underground battle for a continent.

SYNOPSIS:

In the wake of terrorist attacks following the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi, Kenya, the Peace and Security task force of the African Union meets in secret to

fashion a response. That attack by the militant Al-Shabaab shakes the continent. China sees it as an opening to further its influence with generous spending and investment. The western powers fear Africa may slip into the Middle Eastern style hotbed of insurrection which they have been doing their utmost to prevent. The African Union’s response is to set up OASIS, with its headquarters in Cape Town.

Kenyan Bella Adama, an outstanding graduate in law from Stanford University, is one of its earliest recruits. Bella interned at the United Nations, was a surprise addition to the Kenyan National Intelligence Service, was trained by the US army elite forces at Fort Benning, then joined one of the most prestigious Nairobi law firms to practice human rights law before accepting the offer to put her beliefs on the front line with OASIS. She also has a secret agenda. On completing high school, she watched her father, a government minister, die as his plane crashed on take-off. Bella is both angry and conflicted over her father’s death. She wants to understand what happened and why it was never properly investigated.

The fledgling African task force needs outside expertise, but it is all too aware that the CIA, which has offered such help, would be seen as running the show, an image that would only echo the colonial past that African nations are trying to shed. They reason that the CIA influence could be ameliorated if the British and Canadians were also involved.

So, an unwieldy, fractious OASIS is born with a pan-African mandate to protect the sovereignty of the continent and counter terrorism before it happens, supported by three Western allies with their own agendas and their own people on the ground. Jefferson Maxwell, an African American, is the CIA operative seconded to OASIS andBella’s partner.

Bella has a brilliant mind and is an excellent clandestine operative. In the pilot, her belief that a baby-smuggling ring is the clue to uncovering a highly dangerous terrorist threat is ridiculed at first by Jefferson but offers the first leads in the case. Her obsession with her father and the internal corruption that he may represent leads her to the dangerous edges of the newly-formed OASIS. She has a tendency to think she is invulnerable, goes off book and risks her own and others’ lives in doing so.

Despite Bella’s charm and her upper class multi-national upbringing, her impatience and habit of dismissing anyone she thinks is not as smart as she is, creates antagonisms within the group. She is a Kenyan operating out of OASIS HQ in South Africa where the attitude is that anyone not a South African

male is not quite up to the job. While the American, Canadian and British operatives do their best to ease the tensions between the African nations spearheading the force, there are resentments and tension everywhere, not least between the Afrikaans-speaking recruits and East African Asians, all of whom are questioning why the westerners are even there.

Even through its growing pains, OASIS is effective. South African veteran operative Joseph Ndala leads his team through treacherous new territory where the enemy is often not obvious. Bella and Jefferson learn to grudgingly respect each other’s abilities and work as a team to unearth and sometimes stop threats ranging from terrorism to espionage and internal corruption.

With their colleagues in the first season, Bella and Jefferson begin to unravel the workings of an increasingly coordinated group of terrorist cells created by American-turned-terrorist Abubakar Ubaidah, which threaten the stability of the continent. Ubaidah is a main character in the series, following his own path to what he sees as Africa’s destiny.

As the season progresses, Bella’s freelance investigations into her father’s mysterious career and suspicious death make it appear not just that she has gone rogue but may have compromised herself with the other side.

OASIS, the series, sees an international struggle for the economic power and hearts and minds of Africa, carried on through its principal characters, a struggle increasingly questioned within an isolationist America. Each in their own way, Bella and Jefferson have bought into the American vision for a democratic world, one that was founded on a highly flawed view of equality and human rights, a flawed view which, in the early American constitution, saw both of them as two-fifths of a person.

OASIS puts the excitement and fears of Africa today on the international television map. It is a world of flawed individuals fighting for a continent that is up for grabs. Within its stories, OASIS examines what it means to be an African, an American, an African-American, in a time when the ideals of democracy are under attack in all parts of the world.

OASIS is presented by Neil Schell, a Canadian working in television in Nairobi, Kenyan writer and television entrepreneur, Loyce Kareri, Emmy-award winning producer Kim Todd (Fargo, Impulse, TheHandmaid’s Tale) and Nicholas Hirst, both of Canada’s Original Picture. South African Greg Latter (Night Train to Lisbon, The Colour of Freedom) is consulting on the project which is planned as an international co-production with Blue Ice Africa.