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that all movies and music products meet the same rigorous quality standards. Eventually
they would also like to be able to market and sell African movies to mainstream cable
channels (e.g. Black Entertainment Television BET in the US) and other buyers
internationally. However burgeoning overseas markets in pirated copies have also
developed as the pirates have proved energetic in getting illegal copies to market in many
different countries. It is estimated that the lost industry revenue in North America alone
could be as high as US$200 million.
Lack of technical skills, branding and access to financing
Nollywood industry has almost no access to formal financing mechanisms.
The
independent self-employed producers generally re-invest the revenues earned from one
film for the next one. Due to the unpredictable nature of the profitability of a film, the
banks and other financial institutions do not have procedures for assessing the credit-
worthiness of film projects. This significantly hampers the growth of the industry and
discourages producers from innovating and pushing the boundary in terms of quality.
Due to the lack of formal training institutes in filmmaking, the industry severely suffers
from inadequacy in technically competent people
. While the initial technical base of the
workforce came from former employees of the Nigerian Television, there has been little
scope for training and capacity development of the personnel involved in the industry.
This is evident in the relatively deficient quality of Nollywood films when compared to
Bollywood or Hollywood films. Improvement in quality is essential if Nollywood has to
make a mark in the global film industry and reach a global audience.
Nollywood lacks of a branding strategy
to compete with other well-established industries
at a global scale
. The inadequacy in global marketing of the industry and therefore the
need for a branding strategy is evident from the fact that relatively few people outside
Africa know about the Nollywood industry. Currently, international marketing is more
focused on individual films rather than the industry as a whole, without which a national-
level industry branding will not get established.
Looking at the industry today, it is hard to imagine that it started almost by accident only
20 year ago
. Indeed, the industry emerged spontaneously by the unexpected release of
the box-office movie “Living in Bondage
”
in 1992 by NEK Video Links owned by
Kenneth Nnebue in the eastern city of Onitsha which set the stage for Nollywood as it is
known today. Indeed the story goes that Kenneth Nnebue had an excess number of
imported video cassettes and came up with the ingenious idea of recording something on
them to make them more marketable. The unexpected huge success of this film set then
the pace for others to produce other films or home videos
The demand for Nigerian movies has never been so strong and therefore a coherent and
comprehensive strategy is needed to develop the industry.
The African market seems to
be insatiable of Nigeria drama and the African Diaspora can assure the further
development of the industry. As discussed in next section, Nollywood might feature all
the characteristics required to end with what characterized a traditional Hollywood
blockbuster: a happy ending.