It is an industrial excellence of Nigeria, right after oil; it has a significant impact on the national GDP equal to about one billion dollars according to current estimates. All this is today the Nigerian film industry, better known by the nickname Nollywood, which will now also benefit from the program promoted, among others, by the African Development Bank through the 618 million dollar project “Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises” (iDICE).
Few would have thought that from the box office success of the first production in 1992 – Living in Bondage – a colossus of proportions now similar to American Hollywood and Indian Bollywood would be born. Indeed, in terms of productions, Nollywood is now the second largest film industry in the world and the third in terms of remittances generated. First there are only Americans and Indians.
This success has triggered a series of interests and appetites that have gone beyond the borders of Nigeria, in conjunction with the improvement of the quality standards of productions which can now count on a loyal market, better trained technicians, more modern tools and on a very rich, well-prepared and motivated pool of actresses, actors and directors.
Basically, there is the new element that Nollywood has brought with it from the very beginning: Africa’s desire to tell about itself and the possibility of doing so because there is a market that in the meantime supports this drive and will continue to do so. because it has the strength of numbers, i.e. a progressively increasing middle class. “And Nigeria is an example of this,” Akim Mogaji, partner of New Media Networks and connoisseur of the Nollywood phenomenon, told Africa e Affari some time ago. “The Nigerian film industry, with its desire to experiment and its growing quality – added Mogaji – has a value in terms of quality and messages transmitted, very far from the reductive labels within which it is generally made to fall. African cinema and television are growing, they are in turn beginning to influence the outside world, Black Panther is an example, and they require a very simple approach: ‘Get involved with Africa, not for Africa’”. [Da Redazione InfoAfrica]
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