Video Boom: Nigeria and Ghana

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of the video film phenomenon in Nigeria and Ghana. When dire economic circumstances killed off celluloid film production in both countries in the 1980s, video technology allowed feature film making on video to flourish as a popular art. A leaky distribution system keeps budgets very low, but the films are churned out in prodigious numbers. Ghanaian production is centered in Accra and is mostly in English; Nigerian videos, which now overshadow the Ghanaian industry, are made in English, Yoruba, Hausa, and other languages. Various genres and sub-genres have arisen, but family melodrama predominates.