[3][4] On 4 March 1999, BBC Prime launched in sub-Saharan Africa, on the DStv platform.

[6] The channel broadcast drama, comedy and lifestyle programmes which it repeated on a monthly basis.

Every day since the channel's 2000 rebrand, it allocated six hours per day to educational programmes from BBC Learning (shown in the European small hours, between 01:00 and 07:00 CET); this practice was abandoned on 23 July 2006 "with the intention of improving the relevance and appeal of the channel to the widest audience".

When it first launched, BBC Prime also carried programming from the former ITV company Thames Television, since BBC Worldwide had a joint venture with Thames's parent company, Pearson and Cox Communications, known as European Channel Management.

Pearson and Cox, on their behalf, were heavily dissatisfied with the BBC's management ethos.

The idents were designed by Martin Lambie-Nairn (along with the whole 1997 BBC branding) and start with epileptic water scenes with full of colours, before settling on the main part of the ident, which features the water in a blue to orange gradient with ripples and two marbles, reflected and inverted by each other.

The idents were known as "Festival" and featured cartoon draws of famous UK sights, like the Big Ben, the Tower Bridge or the Stonehenge, shooting fireworks, followed by the looped, 15-second long sequence with exploding firework animations.

The channel was available in many areas through satellite and cable television In order to cater to a wider audience, who do not have English as their first language, BBC Prime carried subtitles in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, Hebrew and Serbian.