By Dapo Oshiyemi
9th April, 2014
Nigerian’s movie industry, Nollywood, is a certified $5.1 billion (£3bn) industry and along with other star performing sectors like music, telecommunications and Information technology, combined to muscle Nigeria’s economy into a $509.9bn (£307.6bn) powerhouse thereby over taking South Africa has Africa’s largest basin of economic activity.
The figures validated by the IMF and World Bank captured Nollywood under “Motion pictures, sound recording and music production valuing the County’s vast new entertainment sector at $55bn (£33bn). This sector is one of thirteen new activities that have just been included in Nigeria’s new GDP figures.
What is surprising, especially for financial observers and analysis is most thought Nollywood was a $600m industry growing at 14% a year, some even thought it was still a $250m industry, the value given to it by UNESCO in 2009 but being validated as a $5.1bn industry has taken even the most optimistic observer by surprise. For Nollywood and the Entertainment sector to reach a value of $55b in just over twenty years is nothing short of a miracle, especially if you consider that the sector has been mainly driven by very small private organisations and received little to no support from Government.
All stakeholders now hope that the Nigerian Government will stop paying lip service to this very important industry that employs over a million Nigerian’s and is a major foreign exchange earner for the Country and formulate and implement an effective strategy using the enormous talent the Country has at home and abroad to drive this valuable industry forward to even greater heights.
The other thing of note is Nollywood is a global film industry with very strong historic, cultural, economic and political roots in the
USA and UK and for a Company like Talking Drum Entertainment and others based in the UK who earn substantial income from doing
business with Nigeria’s film sector its time the UK Government along with its lead agency the British Film Institute took a very careful
look at the opportunities this fast growing industry affords the UK with the aim of exploiting them effectively.
The new figures for Nollywood along with the overall GDP figures for Nigeria will be announced shortly by the Co-coordinating Minister for Nigeria’s Economy, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
