Nollywood: Still An Untapped Gold Mine?

As an entrepreneur, 32-year-old chemistry graduate Jason Njoku achieved success in a most unlikely way: he is Africa’s largest distributor of Nigerian movies, and has raked in over $8 million since 2010, when he founded the company Iroko Partners. In December 2012 he captivated an audience at a conference in Texas, United States, as he narrated the story of his success after failures in some other business ventures. Mr. Njoku currently has 71 employees in Lagos, London and New York, and often boasts that “these people are working for us in a country with 50% unemployment.” He was recently listed by Forbes, an American business magazine, as one of the top 10 young African millionaires to watch.

The Nigerian film industry is undoubtedly helping create jobs in a country with an economy that relies mainly on oil and agriculture. Over a million people are currently employed in the industry, making it the country’s largest employer after agriculture. Although Nigeria’s economy will grow by 7% this year, according to the African Development Bank, insufficient jobs for a growing youth population continue to be a huge concern.

Feature Film Languages and Cultural Diversity

Language of production in feature films, 2011

What do the offerings of the local cinema hall or multiplex tell us about cultural diversity in the 21^st century? According to new data from the UIS, the choices movie-goers make at the box office, as well as the language of film production, can provide a glimpse of the diversity of one of the most vibrant cultural industries.

At one end of the spectrum lies India, home of the world’s most prolific film industry, but no single language dominates it. In 2011, 16% of films were produced in Hindi. Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Bengali held the remaining shares, making India the most diverse country for language of production.

In South Africa, English was the dominant language (59%), followed by Afrikaner (32%), while African languages such as Zulu represented only 5% of production.

The Arab States and sub-Saharan African regions showed the least language diversity in film production. However, this is partly due to the lack of data about movies released on DVD. In Nigeria 75% of films are produced in local languages, such as Yoruba, Hausa and Bini.

Nollywood Comes to Town

Nollywood once again recently took center stage on an international platform to further the socio-cultural discourse it frames and represents within the African and African Diaspora discursive arena.

Holding at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, the event, hosted by the USC Center for Public Diplomacy (CPD) at the Annenberg School, was the February 28 CPD 2014 Annual Conference titled "A New Era in Cultural Diplomacy: Rising Soft Power in Emerging Markets."

Panelists at the Conference

The conference, according to the organizers, aimed to explore the cultural diplomacy efforts pursued by a number of countries with emerging economies. Its idea was to enrich a global understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing institutions of cultural diplomacy in contemporary times.

During its early afternoon "Dialogue Through Films" session,  the President of Eko International Film Festival, Hope Obinna Opara, joined representatives of the Mexican, Turkish, and Polish film festivals in Los Angeles, to discuss the place of film festivals in global cultural diplomacy.