Amazon Prime’s Exit Leaves Gaping Investment Hole in Nollywood

Obi Emelonye

In a sharp turn of events recently, Amazon Prime Video announced downsizing its Africa and Middle East operations in a move that affects both Nigeria and South Africa. Following the move, Prime Video will stop contracting originals in Africa and Middle East markets.

However, shows already given go-ahead will continue as planned. The shakeup comes months after Prime Video signed multi-year licensing agreements with production companies to bolster their investment in Africa and Middle East and set up teams in Nigeria and South Africa.

The ‘Prime-xit’ saga just reminds everyone, if they needed reminding, how vulnerable our industry is. Firstly, we have to understand that the American streaming platform is a global business that owes no allegiance to any country but simply acts based on the best interest of its bottom line.

So, they have not really broken any laws by changing business strategy even though their action might be tantamount to turning off the light for the entire continent of Africa.

They are within their rights to close any departments, so long as the employees affected by such closure are treated fairly within the provisions of employment law. I think what ‘prime-xit’ raises a more systemic issue with our cultural economy in Nigeria.

Nigerians have toiled for over 30 years now to build Nollywood, a fiercely independent film industry in which we have controlled the factors of production, distribution and monetisation.

However, as soon as we have forged the industry to number 2 in the world in terms of production and started taking black audiences away from Hollywood, global players from the Hollywood cosmos became interested in the same industry that was previously dismissed as ‘artisanal filmmaking practice that is beneath cinema run by a bunch of untrained creative hustlers and built on informality and illegality’.

They are drawn towards Nollywood by huge improvements in our films, the exciting potential of Nigeria’s 200+ million people and the growing economic power of its local and diaspora populations. The Igbos say that a man that’s attracted to your home by the smell of your cooking will not stay when the food finishes. 

So, about 3 years ago, I started a doctoral research at Goldsmith University of London to explore the correlation between Nollywood and the African American film movements of the last century. For context, these included the race films of the 1920s and the blaxploitation films of the 1970s; both of which were black independent film practice that were infiltrated by Hollywood, undermined from the inside, destroyed and jettisoned.

My research was trying to use the experience of the African American film movements with Hollywood studios to forecast what the future holds for Nollywood when, and not if, the Hollywood studios that are now throwing their dollar around leave our creative economy.

Would Nollywood go the way of blaxploitation films that simply disappeared from the face of history, or is there enough in Nollywood’s informality, audience support and legendary intrepidity to make it survive? 

Incidentally, only a few weeks from completing my research that projects into a faraway time in the future, ‘prime-xit’ brought the matter into a rude contemporary focus. 

You can call it prophesy or a knack for artistically visualising things before they happen – think Last Flight to Abuja and the 2012 air crash in Nigeria – but the Nollywood industry is scrambling to find answers for the gaping investment hole left by Amazon Prime’s exit, while bracing itself for the Hollywood players still left in the system to also react to the situation with business calls that may not be illegal but which may be inimical to the health of our industry. 

We were not alone in this abandonment as South Africa was also hit. But South Africa has got ShowMax. What does Nigeria have? NTA? This must be a wakeup call for our country to think ‘strategically national’ about our creative and cultural economy.

How do we open up our industry to the world and still retain authenticity and our unique identity? The answer is in ownership of the infrastructure of our cultural economy- cinemas, production houses, streaming sites (shame about the demise of iroko tv). For unless we build our own instead of allowing strangers to take from us without even respecting Nigeria with a postal address in the country, we may wake up one morning with our industry used and jettisoned like the exploitation films of the 1970s. Unless we wake up, strangers will continue be attracted to our home by the smell of good food and leave without even washing the plates or saying thank you when the food runs out.

•Emelonye, a filmmaker, writes from the UK.