“Come and do business”, Nigeria’s creative industry courts diaspora investors

Leaders in Nigeria’s film and music industry are calling for mutual partnerships and investment with the international creative community and the United States to further propel the country’s creative industries globally.

Nollywood producers, performers and Afrobeats artists made these intentions known at a convening with the US Consul General and members of US President Biden’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement in Lagos on Monday.

According to them, the diaspora community has been pivotal to the promotion of Nigerian arts overseas but could be more financially involved through diaspora funds.

“Without the diaspora, we will probably not be as well known as we are,” said Idris Olorunnimbe, founder and GCE of Temple Company and Ogidi studios, an audiovisual recording company that worked with Marvel Entertainment on the soundtrack production for Black Panther, Wakanda Forever.

“Maybe we can float a diaspora fund as an intervention into the creative industry. We are not asking you to come and dash us money. Come and do business…There’s credibility now, on the business side and on the talent side,” he said.

“Instead of building that house in Ikorodu that you will not find a tenant, bring the money home. Invest it in this fund, let us develop the infrastructure that will build the industry.”

A level playing field

The Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, has experienced tremendous growth in the last decade. The Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NEC) projected the Nigerian entertainment industry to reach approximately $15 billion in revenue by 2025, up from $4 billion revenue recorded in 2013 based on the Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook by PwC.

BusinessDay has reported that rising consumption of entertainment content by Nigerians has led to the sector’s third straight quarter growth, with contribution to the economy reaching N728.80 billion in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024, a 26 percent growth from N576.67 billion recorded in Q1 of 2023.

Nollywood industry leaders say there are more mutual pathways to explore.

“I think we need more collaboration, we need a level playing field. We need joint productions, and co-productions between the US and Nigeria because we will love to see the same way American actors now will like to be in our films,” said Dakore Egbuson-Akande, a Nigerian actress and entrepreneur.

“We also need investments. The diaspora has been very critical in helping Nollywood get to where it’s gotten to…So we just need more collaboration in terms of the production themselves. We could also have talent exchange programs to work and learn in each other’s industries, and we’re transferring skills as well, film and music festivals, educational partnerships between film and music schools in both countries,” she said.

Issues in distribution

As more films are produced, Nollywood faces fewer options to distribute content and recoup invested cash.

Last year, BusinessDay reported that Nollywood investors are losing money. With over 2,000 Nollywood movies produced annually, making it the largest in Africa and the second-highest producer in the world after Bollywood, only a handful get released theatrically or make international festival recognition and ultimately attract international distribution, indicating that the industry lacks sufficient digital streaming or cinema screening to support production rate.

“Distribution agreements as well because sometimes we make movies and we will like our movies to be seen in theatres in America but there are barriers there. So we also need to be pro-active about how do we create films and have an avenue for African films to be seen more widely outside of Netflix and Amazon and all those platforms,” Egbuson-Akande said.

“It’s not a handout that we are looking for, we are looking for collaboration, we are looking for skills transfer…So why not have African films showing in the theatre in the US? We have so many US films showing here and we run to the cinema and we run up the numbers. So let’s have that happen as well. We just need to open up a little bit more,” she added.

Projecting Afrobeats

In the last decade, the music genre of Afrobeats has also risen to global prominence and acceptance. In 2022, Spotify reported generating over N11 billion in revenue from Nigeria. The company reported that the overall Nigerian music revenue grew 63 percent from 2021 to 2022 while revenues generated by Nigerian artists from Spotify alone grew 74 percent over the same period.

Nigeria’s foremost Afrobeats artistes believe a functional avenue to foreign collaboration is representing and projecting Nigerian music in international settings where it is not widely popular.

“I used to play African music in my dorm and my friends will also come like what are you playing, what’s that? And I’m like it’s African music. And it’s just amazing how I was there, schooling there and I just always loved my African side of whatever I was doing,” said David Adeleke, Davido, one of Nigeria’s global music artists who has collaborated with several US musicians and also starred in the movie Coming To America.

“Now we’re selling the same tickets as Drake and Chris Brown. Every time they see me, all I keep hearing is David want to come to Lagos, I want to experience it. Every time they come, they never go back the same. So there’s something special here that we have, and the collaboration,” he added.

Patrick Njoroge, former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay during the company’s CEO Forum had expressed his pleasure for Nigerian music and Afrobeats citing P-Square, Ayra Starr, and Davido as favourite artistes.

“America has traded in the power of our culture. For over 70 years we’ve benefited from that…Today, right now, we are experiencing Nigeria’s moment in the cultural scene and it becomes Africa’s moment. When people watch your films, they listen to your music. When they hear your music, they want to know where it is coming from. And they see your art, they see your fashion and they want to learn more about it,” said Will Stevens, the US Consul-General.