Believe it or not Nollywood was suffering but now there has been a revival for Nigeria’s second largest employer after agriculture. It now employs more than one million people.
“Last year, Nollywood the second largest film industry in the world celebrated its 20th year and after a decline in cinema attendance in the country, people are rapidly returning to the pictures,” reports CNBC Africa. The industry produces a whopping 50 movies weekly which generate revenue of about $590 million annually.
“Up until the early ’80s, Nigeria had close to about 5,000 cinemas. The olden days cinemas, one screen, some of them open roof but then it died away,” Kene Mkparu, CEO, Filmhouse Cinema and FilmOne Distribution told CNBC Africa.
“In the western world, video helped the showbiz industry, so the cinema’s grew bigger but in Nigeria coupled with some of the security issues in the country, people would have much rather stayed at home,” he said. “In 2004, modern cinema came back to Nigeria and then people got a taste of it, especially people that didn’t grow up with this cinema culture and they liked it. In Nigeria, it’s the safest family entertainment. Now, you find that a lot of cinemas are creeping up all around Nigeria, it started first in the big cities, clearly in Lagos and Abuja but it has spread now to other cities and the demand there is so huge.”
