[6] It was part of a "makeover" of Disney Channel premium service original programming designed to "provide families with more shared-viewing opportunities and to give them 'creative properties that are meaningful and relevant to their lives'".

[3] Disney Channel executive Rich Ross commented on the Swahili title that "If we can have 'Hakuna Matata', we can have 'Omba Mokomba'", referencing the popularity of the song from The Lion King, which had been released three years earlier.

[1][8] The show-within-a-show motif depicted Mokomba as broadcasting from a hut in Africa, answering viewer questions about a wide variety of animal life, while navigating occasional subplots such as being forced to share the space with another show (a fictional Hut Improvement), or playing pranks on his co-worker.

[2] In 1999, the Annenberg Public Policy Center deemed Omba Mokomba "high quality" children's programming, and expressed disappointment that it was one of only a handful of shows of this kind shown during prime time television hours.

[9] A 2001 scholarly piece found it to be one of several examples of "prosocial" programming "designed to foster intellectual activity, tolerance, friendliness, and so on".