In Their Words: The Year in Creative Industry

For many stakeholders in the creative industry, 2021 was the comeback year. The year they turn the uncertainties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to opportunities. As the year wraps up, a select group of stakeholders reflect on the changes and trends in the industry and share their expectations of the coming year. Vanessa Obioha reports

Mo Abudu: Founder EbonyLife TV and Films

2021 has been a tough year for most, including the film industry. COVID-19 has created many disruptions for productions, not to mention the loss of work and income for many filmmakers. Even the recent travel bans on certain African states, due to the Omicron variant, has resulted in a loss of work as international companies have had to cancel their productions in Africa.

COVID-19 and the many lockdown restrictions have forced EbonyLife to rethink how we do things and trigger a relentless pursuit of exploring alternate avenues on getting the job done. Fortunately for us, we continued filming Netflix’s ‘Chief Daddy 2’, ‘Blood Sisters’ and the film adaptation of ‘Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and the King’s Horseman.’ We also released ‘Castle & Castle’ season 2 on Netflix.

Many production companies will have focused on development this year, and it’s been a good period for EbonyLife Media in this regard, seeing us signing international production deals with the BBC, Lionsgate TV and Starz, Will and Jada Smith’s Will Packer Productions and a first-look deal with Sony Pictures.

Being able to give Nigerian and African filmmakers opportunities on the global stage is a cause that is core to our being at EbonyLife. This year we launched the Sony Alo Writer’s Initiative, giving African writers an opportunity to realise their stories, as well as the EbonyLife Creative Academy (ELCA), a film school for Lagos residents, supported by Lagos State Government and Lagos State Creative Industry Initiative (LACI). We also engaged in a series of panels at the American Film Market (AFM) to discuss how Black and other diverse stories can reach the global mainstream.

I am personally very proud to have been listed in this year’s Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women 202, for my work in the media sphere. I’m equally so excited to be counted amongst the Variety500 2021, the benchmark of influencers shaping the global entertainment industry.

We are also deeply honoured that EbonyLife TV, a Pan-African entertainment channel we launched in July 2013, was selected as a case study for Harvard Business School, this year. Anything that enables getting African filmmakers on a global stage, is a move in a positive direction for the African film industry.

COVID-19 has also made many businesses pivot in the last two years, seeing a rise of new opportunities. In our instance, EbonyLife Place, a luxury resort in Lagos, reopened its doors in December 2020 tailoring our spaces for a niche of smaller and more intimate events. We have hosted some of the biggest industry and corporate events and our restaurants and hotel continue to attract patronage from both Nigerian and international guests.

Also, EbonyLife Cinemas has seen the re-emergence of a cinema-going culture with the release of both Nollywood and Hollywood films.

Lastly, I would sincerely like to say that my heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones or have been affected by COVID-19 this year in one way or another. I wish you strength and comfort, and please know that nothing ever lasts forever. Soon, we will get past this and we will once again be able to connect with one another and live normal lives.

Femi Odugbemi: Filmmaker

2021 was a year of recovery for the industry given how devastating the COVID-19 pandemic was to the entertainment sector. At the height of the containment protocols of lockdown, distancing etc, the industry was really badly hit as many shows and productions were either cancelled or suspended. Ironically, it was also a time when our population needed the entertainment industry the most to lift the atmosphere of depression and despair that the pandemic created. So 2021 was the gradual return to work and to storytellers braving the odds to produce films and produce shows to bring new entertainment content to audiences.

We also came to terms with a new normal. Producing content in the time of a pandemic has meant higher costs and longer production hours as we have to observe public health safety guidelines. So it is kudos to all our entertainers, producers, content creators, actors and distributors for all the work done this year. It definitely was a year of difficult processes to get a film or a TV series done.

This year I was able to create and produce a very topical drama series ‘Movement-Japa’ that airs every Monday on Africa Magic Showcase. I also co-produced a feature documentary ‘Unmasked’ which explored Nigeria’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Both projects were produced under the unusual challenges of these times and I am so proud of our cast and crew who showed extraordinary commitment to create these projects. It is really a showcase of the passion and commitment that drives the creative industries in Nigeria.

2021 will also be remembered for the emergence of many international online streaming distribution opportunities for Nigerian content. The lockdown of the year before really heightened the engagement of Nigerian viewers with online content. And going forward it is clear that engagement will sustain and in fact grow, which really makes the future interesting in terms of the variety of platforms online streaming Nigerian content and also the internet penetration that tail-gates our growing access to smartphones and data.

The year also saw quite a few critical industry activities like film festivals, award ceremonies etc re-emerge either as virtual events or as hybrids of partly virtual and partly physical. This is interesting as we found a way to use the Zoom app and other virtual meeting platforms to create a different content experience that will certainly sustain in some form going forward.

So in reflection, the year 2021 was full of challenges and opportunities for the entertainment industry in a unique way that has encouraged us to embrace a new normal and to find new ways of telling our stories and connecting to our audiences. More than ever before, the entertainment and creative industry is a priority sector to keep our population happy and hopeful in these uncertain times and I hope the new year ushers in a more safe and stable public health environment for us to keep thriving.

Obi Asika: Creative Industry Entrepreneur

The sounds of Nigeria continue to globalize with bigger tours and bigger records, new artists continually pushing the envelope and established leaders raising the bar. We are seeing momentous moments in the globalization of Afrobeats as it enters mainstream pop culture and brings along with it the dances, the fashion, attitude and energy that is connecting our music to the entire world.

What we are witnessing is the deepening of Nigerian soft power led by the music industry which is providing the soundtrack that is powering the attitude and intentions of the new techpreneurs across fintech, education, payments and more. In 2022, we look to see more collaborations and a deepening of the touring market in Nigeria; a connection of local markets to provide the hard power, product and merchandise that our soft power needs to create monetisation.

The largest opportunity remains our domestic market and our global footprint will continue to grow but we must focus on our domestic and regional opportunities through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the laid out policies in the national development plan.

Chioma Onyenwe: Filmmaker and Co-Founder Artdey Africa

This year, the film industry news was dominated by the streamers Netflix and Amazon; there was concern if cinemas would survive, and it paid to already have a slate of films as that determined if you were more. And the world opened up beyond that; many other filmmakers are charting different paths, from festivals to web series to equally rewarding documentaries.

I’m curious to know if the Return on Investment (ROI) for Netflix is as the subscriber growth might make them reevaluate their plans, hoping that we get more originals that chart globally. With the success of ‘Juju Stories’, more minor information asymmetry and more direct access to international producers, a lot more independent filmmakers will shoot for the stars in fiction and documentaries. It’s opened the door to other players, though, so it will still be a hectic year for film production. We need to continue to grow skills across the board to compete.

There was also a global expansion in the arts, with Rele Gallery opening in LA and Art X Lagos recording its highest sales online and in person.

Artdey Africa is a Universal Studios vendor, and we provide original art for their shows. Online galleries got a considerable boost overall.

2022 NFTs will dominate the conversation with the metaverse, and there will be a ton of cross over for film, art, music as Nigerian excellence finds its way to the top.

Pretty Okafor: PMAN President

The Nigerian music industry has grown in a geometrical process this year. It has been confirmed that the industry is the third-largest in the world. The collective management organisation has been able to adopt the technology of GoCreate Africa on monitoring the usages of musicians work, so as to close all the loopholes.

A couple of Nigerian musicians are doing very well without government support, even better than government workers. So you cannot compare talents to politics. This shows how far we have come to monetize our content and distribution.

This same music industry can sustain the digital economy and generate revenue for our countries GDP to reflate our economy. I predicted this over six years ago and now it’s happening. We can match any music industry in the world, in concerts and record sales. We are very hopeful that the best is yet to come in the Nigerian music industry, so we are gearing for an out of box breakthrough in 2022.

Idris Olorunnimbe: Group Chief Executive, The Temple Company

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown little signs of abating. However, it has created some new opportunities in entertainment and a chance to converge and repurpose old strategies.

At Temple, we have had to renew our focus on the end-users, taking a more nuanced and experiential approach to customer engagement.

We expect this trend to be accelerated in 2022 and resultantly will be placing a strong emphasis on content creation and development. We are also proud, alongside Balmoral Group, to launch LIFE (Lagos Independence Festival of Excellence) which is a user-driven festival of heritage, culture, diversity and entertainment debuting on October 1, 2022.

Across the board, I expect the entertainment industry to adopt new strategies that can enable their business agility and continue to cement our global relevance. The only way to do this is from within; to create content and experiences for ourselves that the world can emulate and not the other way around.

Bimbo Daramola: Convener Nigeria Skits Industry Festival and Awards

Many things happened in the creative sector. From Nollywood to music to the skit Industry. But this year has been particularly unique, arising from the lockdown year of 2020. A lot of transformations have gone into the skits industry to show that there is consistent growth which is one of the factors that typifies an emerging industry. You see a lot of people going into it.

And the growth is not just horizontal and vertical, it is lateral to the extent that people are beginning to widen the scope of collaboration. People are leveraging strategic advantages. Recently Remote had something with Ayefele which is a good example of lateral growth because it transcends the skits sector, bringing other creatives into the field. There is also the horizontal growth where a lot of young people are beginning to look at the possibilities of exploring their skills and they are doing that so well.

The vertical growth is seeing how these young people are producing skits in their own languages. Apart from that, you see that a lot of them are adding professionals to their talents. They acquire professional cameras, going beyond their mobile devices so production is intense. From what the African Polling Institute said, about N200 million comes from the skits industry.

Looking back in the past when they used to look for validation, nowadays, there is a structural approach to getting recognition which is where the Nigeria Skits Industry Festival and Awards comes into play. We have taken it to a level where people see skit making as a profession and bringing them the deserved recognition. We believe that going into 2022, we believe there will be a dramatic turnaround on perceptions about them. We hope more corporations will use them beyond promoting products and services on social media. 2022 will see more meaningful messages and productions from the skits makers.