While most African countries are lagging behind in terms of the development of their movie industries, Nigeria is leading not only the continent but also most of the rest of the world in terms of annual movie production, income from the industry and the impacts it is having beyond the borders of Africa. In the matter of five or six decades, after independence, Nigerian cinema has grown into a giant industry that has changed film history in Africa as well as around the world and presently ranks second or third after America’s Hollywood and India’s Bollywood.
Nigeria is big in many ways. It is a big country with the biggest population size and the biggest economy according to its GDP ranking in Africa. Nigeria has also produced some of the biggest artists and writers in the continent. It is also the first country in Africa to win the Nobel Prize in Literature through poet and playwright Wole Soyinka. And now it has one of the biggest film industries in Africa if not in the whole world as it is ranking third after the American Hollywood and the Indian Bollywood. It has deservedly named its film industry Nollywood.
From my readings about Nigerian cinema, I may outline the following reasons for showing what has made Nigerian industry such a powerful engine of cultural and economic growth in a relatively short time. The first reason is its long history. According to Wikipedia, “Its history dates back as early as the late 19th century and into the colonial era in the early 20th century. The history and development of the Nigerian motion picture industry is something generally classified in four main eras: the colonial era, Golden Age era, video film era and the emerging new Nigerian film era.”
The second reason may be the size of the Nigeria film industry. It is a huge industry by any account. According to one information, “With over 6.4 billion USD in annual revenue and with more than 2,500 movies per year, the Nigeria’s film industry is taking the world by storm. It is currently one of the world’s top film industries, producing more movies in each year than even Hollywood.”
To give you an idea of the size of the revenue generated by the Nigerian film industry, it is equal Ethiopia’s revenue from foreign trade in two years, with a little more than 3 billion USD registered every year. Even in Nigeria itself, 6 billion USD represents quite a large contribution to the annual GDP.
The third reason for the impressive growth of Nigerian cinema might be strong government intervention to support the industry which is now in its latest era of development. Since the turn of the century, Nollywood as an industry was launched by the joint efforts and policy coordination of the government of Nigeria and the financial sector. “In 2006, “project Nollywood” was launched by the Nigerian government in conjunction with Ecobank. The project provided $781 million to Nigerian filmmakers to produce high quality films.
The Nigerian film industry is divided into four major eras. “The history and development of the Nigerian motion picture industry is sometimes generally classified into four main eras. These are the colonial era, Golden Age era, video film era and the emerging New Nigerian cinema era.” To make another comparison, Ethiopian cinema is still largely in its video film era because most producers use the video format camera to make their films. Ethiopia had produced its first feature-length movie a 30 mm black and white camera back in 1964 called Hirut Abatwa manew (Who Is Hirut’s Father?) Now after more than seven decades it has restarted from the video format which is an easier way of making movies with reduced quality.
The Nigerian film industry however did not follow a linear progression without ups and downs. There were challenging moments along the way until it reached its presently lucrative phase. According to available information, “After the decline of the Golden era, Nigerian film industry witnessed a second major boom in the 1990s, supposedly marked by the release of the direct-to-video film entitled “Living in Bondage (1992)”; the industry peaked in the mid-2000s to become the second largest film industry in the world in terms of the number of annual film productions…Since the mid-2000s, during the decline of the video-film era, the Nigerian cinema has undergone some restructuring to promote quality in output and professionalism in the industry…”
Almost all film industries around the world have seen moments of decline to be followed by moments of glory resulting from factors inside as well as outside the industry. As we said above, the Nigerian film industry was fortunate enough to benefit both from government and financial sector largess because these two actors have shown early interest in the industry or foresaw its future potentials. In most African countries, the cinema is largely regarded as a marginal entertainment business and its significance is often downplayed.
In Africa, many countries do not even have a cinema policy let alone the guts to support it with government or bank money. This perception is however bound to change with time when the main drivers of African film industries will see how lucrative the sector is although it may not be a priority development era at present.
What is known as the Home video Boom era in Nigerian cinema started in the late 1980s and lasted until the mid-2010s following the thriving of television production during that particular era. New Nigerian Cinema started in the mid-2000s and has continued until the present time. “This is an emerging phase in Nigerian cinema in which there became a major shift in the method of film production, from the video format back to the cinema method, which constituted the films produced in the Golden era.”
By comparison, Ethiopian cinema saw a brief period consisting of its birth in the 1960s, then sunk in total oblivion for the following many decades only to reemerge in the 1990s following the country’s economic growth period when individual producers put in their money in the business which proved lucrative although short-lived. Nowadays, the Ethiopian film industry is languishing in a period of stagnation following the COVID-19 crisis that has undermined the hope for strongly in the revival of the cinema culture mainly in the capital Addis Ababa. Judging the challenges of the Ethiopian film business is facing, we can conclude that the emergence of what we may call “Ethiopia’s New Cinema” is bound to be delayed by many years if not decades.
With the exception of Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, and to some extent Kenya and Uganda, the film industry in Africa is still in the doldrums and there is no early exit from the unenviable situation. There is however, an opportunity for many African film industries to learn from the Nigerian experience. First, African film industries need money to finance their production. This money can come from internal sources such as government support or bank loans or from external sources such as joint-productions with European or American film establishments.
Every African country might need a national fund for the development of the film industry with financial resources allocated by government and the business community in a kind of joint ventures. Before that happens however, African governments should recognize the film industry as a vital cultural machine that shapes new perceptions while generating huge incomes if it is properly managed and funded. From this understanding should be born actions that practically promote the industry such as the establishment of film schools and other educational and training institutions.
Almost all African countries have strong storytelling, oral or folk traditions from which they can draw ideas that would fuel the industry. There are also strong script writing traditions in many African countries where the theater is pretty well developed, although undermined by the development of electronic media in recent years. There are as many scriptwriters in Africa as there are novelists, poets and dramatists, some of whom have even attained international standards and recognition.
These creative workers could be used to develop the film industry because the distance between the silver screen and the imaginative writer is short. In Egypt, for instance, there were many fiction writers who worked for the film industry and contributed to shaping it and giving it importance. One such personality was Naguib Mahfouz, whose film scripts served as engines in the development of the country’s film industry. In the past, African filmmakers were influenced by European or American film culture. It is now time for them to develop their own African brand of cinema based on their history, traditions and resources. There is indeed a lot to learn from Nigeria’s pioneering achievements to consolidate Africa’s standing in the global film industry.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 3 SEPTEMBER 2023
