Features and Essays

Macondo Literary Festival
Macondo Literary Festival 2025: East Africa’s Literary Vanguard Holds Its Fifth Edition

Macondo Literary Festival is now one of Africa’s essential cultural rendezvous, a yearly promise kept…

music videos
Are Music Videos Relevant in Afro-Pop Today?

Today, music videos in Afro-Pop no longer mainly serve to reach new audiences. Instead, they…

Marketing
Noise or Attention: What Really Sells Nollywood Films?

What separates fleeting attention from lasting impact is not merely scale, spectacle, or formula, but…

Labubu dolls
How Capitalists Are Exploiting Us Through ‘Must-Haves’

What Labubu dolls, AI therapists, and Stanley Cups reveal is not just the power of…

To Kill a Monkey
To Kill a Conversation: Nollywood, Criticism, and the Culture of Silence

The danger of the constant antagonistic resistance to criticism is that it fosters a shallow…

Nigeria
Nigeria’s Class Problem and the Nepotism Debate

Nigeria has a serious class problem. As with all such societies, the controlling oligarchy is…

sexual violence
Dear Nollywood, Stop Using Sexual Violence as a Plot Device

There is a way to portray sexual violence onscreen, even in Nollywood, and that way…

African languages
Do African Languages Come From the Same Place?

Phonologically, African languages can find similarities based on a number of factors. Sound relationships are…

Geoblocking
How Geoblocking and Cinema Scheduling Bias Undermine Distribution in Nollywood

It becomes clear that while geoblocking is a significant barrier to Nollywood’s global reach, cinema…

Area Scatter
The Legend of Area Scatter: Enigmatic Musician or Misunderstood Individual?

Area Scatter’s life is proof that history has been replete with personalities operating on the…