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| Kanayo O. Kanayo |
I recently obtained the beautifully written and
well-argued paper presented by Kanayo O. Kanoyo at a Roundable on Culture and
Diplomacy this past January in Washington, D.C. It argues for Nollywood's increasing importance in Nigeria's public diplomacy efforts and I thought it’s worth sharing.
For
Nigeria’s Cultural Diplomacy
The choice of the topic is
itself germane. In today’s turbulent world, diplomacy means that a country must
take steps to achieve political goals and to promote its image in the
international arena. It is becoming old fashioned for any country to rely
solely on military and economic means in its relationship with other countries
of the world. Countries interact with each other through diplomatic channels.
Thus, countries have even moved beyond interacting with themselves alone – that
is between governments, to interactions that are targeted at the people; that
is, government and people; as well as people and people.
This form of diplomacy,
called, public diplomacy, that manifests itself through the use of traditional
and non-traditional media of communication including film and video, aims
primarily at influencing global audiences. This is, as Cull (2007) says, “an attempt
to manage the international environment through engagement with a foreign
public.”
As it were, the explosion in
information and communication technology has occasioned the globalization of
print and electronic communication and this has impacted significantly on the
number of media users worldwide. It follows then that a country’s status
internationally will be determined by how well it controls information flow in
the media and how well it manages the cultural component of its diplomacy.
