Alaba International Market, home to Africa’s biggest media market, is seen by experts in the entertainment industry to lose its relevance by 2020, as a result of the digital media shift that is changing the industry.
“With digitalisation, they will have less and less to do and they would make less and less,” says Mo Abudu, founder, EbonyLifeTV, at the 2014 Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers Annual Conference.
“A time would come when they would find that they would be eliminated naturally. It’s only a matter of time,” she adds.
Alaba’s undoing is also the key to its disreputable success. The distribution of media in Alaba thrives on the back of piracy, which makes it difficult for investors and producers to recoup their investments, discouraging investment from the capital market into the entertainment industry.
Yewande Sadiku, CEO, IBTC Capital Limited, highlights distribution as the main problem holding investors from placing funds in the industry as a result of piracy, which Alaba supports. IBTC Capital was the financier of the Nollywood movie, Half a Yellow Sun.
As technology has made the distribution of media more efficient through online channels via phones, tablets and PCs, media content is being distributed and sold increasingly through these channels, leaving less and less of the market share to the pirates at Alaba.
“Nobody is going to be rushing around to buy a DVD that is of poor quality when they can get something clearly on iROKO TV or EbonyLife, or whatever service it may be,” continues Abudu.
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“Piracy in Nigeria is just in the physical world. The moment you move to DTT, DTH, digital, they have no idea what you are going on about,” says Jason Njoku, founder, iROKO Partners Limited.
“Their world is the old world, if you will, in five years’ time it will be dead. There is a new world, it is being created,” he concludes.
Cecil Hammond, founder, Flytime Productions, buttresses this point as well. “You can just download an entire album on your phone or your ipad, so they wouldn’t be a problem very soon,” he says, giving their eradication a two to three year time frame.
Toyin Sanni, CEO, UBA Capital, says at the conference that “after agriculture, the entertainment industry is the second largest employer of labour. Apart from that, it promotes our culture, it promotes tourism.”
Yet, the gains from the industry, which is valued at about $1.3 billion, have largely fallen through the cracks, creating and enriching piracy barons in the infamous Alaba Market.
Yinka Abraham
