Nollywood phenomenon: “The Nollywood phenomenon: Innovation, openness, and technological opportunism in the modeling of successful African entrepreneurship”

• Author: Chidi Oguamanam
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jwip.12162

J World Intellect Prop. 2020;23:518–545.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jwip518

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© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

DOI: 10.1111/jwip.12162

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Nollywood phenomenon: “The Nollywood

phenomenon: Innovation, openness, and

technological opportunism in the modeling of

successful African entrepreneurship”

Chidi Oguamanam

Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Ottawa,

Ontario, Canada

Correspondence

Chidi Oguamanam, Faculty of Law, University of

Ottawa, 57 Louis Pasteur Street, Ottawa, ON

K1N 6N5, Canada.

Email: coguaman@uottawa.ca

Funding information

Social Sciences and Humanities Research

Council of Canada; International Development

Research Centre, Grant/Award Number: Open

African Innovation Research (OPEN AIR)

Abstract

The Nigerian movie industry, known as Nollywood, has at-

tracted an impressive degree of research interest since its

debut in the 1990s, resulting in a dedicated transdisciplinary

research niche called Nollywood studies. Nollywood is si-

tuated as disruptive of historic and contemporary African

movie culture, underscoring Nollywood's significance as a

phenomenon “fundamental to Africa's self‐representation.”

In this study, we examine Nollywood in relation to its col-

laborative model of innovation, its unique form of openness

and other factors implicated in its creative diffusion as a

phenomenon across Africa and its diaspora. We also explore

Nollywood's emergence as an unexpected creative force in

the world of entertainment. The study evaluates the evolu-

tionary interface between technology and entrepreneurship

as a dynamic process in the progress and transformation of

Nollywood. Complementing the issue of technology, as a

factor in Nollywood's evolution, the study identifies a com-

plex aggregation of other factors, including culture, ethnicity,

marketing and entrepreneurial ingenuity, liberal art infra-

structure and Nigeria's abundant social capital and how they

have coalesced to put entertainment alongside oil and agri-

culture as one of the highest employers of labour and as a

surprising dispenser of economic oxygen in Africa's most

populous country and its largest economy. Our starting

premise is that Nollywood owes its evolution to technolo-

gical innovation and many unexplored contextual con-

tingencies. The study also identifies and examines forms of

openness in Nollywood, within and outside of existing

paradigms, and how they factor into the industry's success.

Nollywood operates in a fluid borderline between formal and

informal frameworks. In Nollywood, a pragmatic and evol-

ving approach to intellectual property systems and openness

reflects aspects of its unique business model with contextual

sensitivity and, in a way, advances its transnationalisation,

albeit counter intuitively. Nollywood represents a grassroots

indigenous entrepreneurial cultural initiative. Our project

provides insights into the scalability potential of the Nolly-

wood phenomenon and its cross‐sectoral ramifications for

innovation and entrepreneurship on the African continent.

The study applies a combination of methodological strategies

aimed at eliciting, reifying and drawing substantively on in-

dustry practitioners’voices and perspectives. It taps into

stakeholders’mastery, institutional history, and knowledge

of Nollywood's evolution and its modus operandi.

KEYWORDS

Africa, cinema, collaboration, creativity, culture, entertainment,

entrepreneurship, innovation, intellectual property, movie

industry, Nollywood, openness, technology

1|INTRODUCTION

How did the Nigerian movie industry, known as Nollywood, become one of the world's top three movie

industries in a period of just three decades, attracting an impressive degree of research interest since its

debut in the 1990s and resulting in a dedicated transdisciplinary research niche called “Nollywood studies”

(Krings, 2013)? What factors and dynamics have propelled the Nollywoodphenomenon as it were? And what

scalable lessons for policy can be drawn from Nollywood in the modelling of a grassroots African en-

trepreneurships? These are parts of the questions that animate the present study as a contribution to other

multidisciplinary studies that have focused on Nollywood. Meanwhile, among the disciplines engaging with

this subject, the emphasis in law has been on intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement (Arewa, 2012;

Oguamanam, 2011). The focus on anthropology relates to critical and contested cultural agency of Nolly-

wood. In cinematic critique, Nollywood is situated as disruptive in the historic and contemporary African

movie culture, underscoring its significance as a phenomenon “fundamental to Africa's self‐representation”

(Mahir & Austen, 2010). In intellectual inquiry, Nollywood is positioned at the point where discourse on

the elusive single pan‐African postcolonial movie culture, and Nollywood's symbolism and legitimacy of

space in that discourse, intersect with discourse on “Nollywood's other, the African auteur cinema”

OGUAMANAM

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