By Alex C
Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry has been identified as being among industries which boosted the West African country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to $510 billion, accounting for about 1.3 percent of the new calculated GDP figures for Nigeria.
While the rebased GDP has made Nigeria Africa’s largest economy, the film industry has contined to witness immense growth in the past two decades.
Jason Njoku, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of iROKOtv, the VC-backed Video-On-Demand (VOD) platform for Nollywood movies, said that Nollywood can now be mentioned in the same breath as Hollywood and Bollywood, producing about 1,500 and 2000 films annually.
“Nollywood is the most hard-working, brutal and dynamic of industries that Nigeria has spawned. It is an economic miracle that the industry has not only flourished, but grown exponentially, considering the conservative budgets movie producers have to work with, as well as the antiquated methods of distribution that held the industry back for so many years,” Njoku disclosed. Njoku, the London-born Manchester University graduate, began iROKOtv after he identified an opening in the market for Nollywood distribution in 2009.
Recently, Nigeria rebased its GDP, making it 32.8 percent larger than South Africa’s GDP of $384 billion.
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