Creative industries and informal economies: Lessons from Nollywood

Since the emergence of its video industry in the 1990s, Nigeria has pioneered an innovative and highly successful model of film production and distribution. Lagos is now home to the fastest-growing film industry in the world, which releases well over 1000 titles a year without assistance from the government, NGOs or international film festivals. This article analyses the rise of ‘Nollywood’ through the lens of current debates in creative industries research. The Nigerian video economy offers compelling evidence of the role of informal markets in creating efficient and economically sustainable media industries. Its success also has implications for debates around copyright and media piracy. I conclude that reading Nigerian video as an informal creative industry can be a useful way to rematerialize media studies in the overdeveloped world.