Nollywood Will Overtake Bollywood In Earnings By 2030 – UN Exec Sec

The Nigerian film industry called Nollywood will grow in leaps and bounds in the coming years, overtaking even other big creative industries in gross earnings. This was the submission of a United Nation official recently.

Carlos Lopez, the executive secretary of the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, when asked where Nollywood is heading by 2030, said that he was of the opinion that it will overtake Bollywood in earnings.

Lopez, in an interview with Mail & Guardian Africa’s editor, Charles Onyango-Obbo, spoke on several interesting topics including Nollywood. Speaking on how big the industry will be in 2030, he said, “Creative industries are already huge in Africa and I bet, it could match agriculture in value. However this is due to low agricultural productivity, the lowest in the world and the fact that creative industries are being propelled by new communication technologies. Africans and their diaspora demonstrate daily the richness and universal appeal of their forms of artistic and cultural expression. If we update national accounts through re basing, like Nigeria and many others did, we will continue to be surprised about the exponential value growth. Nollywood will expand to become more African and less Nigerian, overtaking India’s Bollywood in earnings, when demand for entertainment content will explode thanks to Internet and television universal coverage in less than a decade”. Carlos Lopez is a development economist, author and educator.

Meanwhile, stakeholders in the industry have resolved that the Nigerian film industry will find its feet in due course and build on its mistakes on the past. Popular film maker and critic, Charles Novia responding to an article ‘Death of an industry’ by Jason Njoku of Iroko Tv, said it sounded like self-gloating tripe-someone who exploited the industry as deemed fit, milked it and perhaps re-invested in it by creating content and jobs. “There is a film industry growing here despite its challenges. It will find its feet in due course”, says Mr Novia.