The Nollywood Narrative: Africa’s Golden Goose on a Global Spotlight?

Abstract

Nollywood has come to stay. The industry keeps graduating from an emerging Nigerian toddler, to a robust global adult around the African continent – thus, flaunting its tentacles across other continents of the world. Some critics claim it emerged as a response of early film makers to the misrepresentation of African systems by colonial imperialists to which the latter produced films from an African perspective to correct the anomaly. Whether the ‘‘cinematic corrigendum’’ or silver screen decolonizing factors are anything to go by, the fact is, Nigerian home movies have made their way across the globe. Occupying third place after America’s Hollywood and India’s Bollywood, Nollywood has hit the global spotlight. Using the conceptual method, this essay went memory lane to view the initial stimulus, currents and cross-currents of the Nigerian motion-picture industry. It equally probed the factors that enhance as well as mar the growth of African cinema, the Nigerian version. It anticipated the scholarly strides of a ‘‘local’’ story turn global.