With a youth population of over 126 Million; an approximate 70% of the population, Nigeria and indeed the rest of the world have a lot to benefit from a fully scaled creative sector.
Our sports men and women are adored globally. Across Africa and beyond, Nollywood is a powerful export and ambassador. And music? Our homegrown talents have charmed the whole wide world with a sound no one can ignore. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the creative sector contributed over N5 trillion (i.e $16.4 billion) or 5.3% to Nigeria’s GDP in 2017.
We have seen the potential; and even the impact of recent strides in distribution, cinemas, events, promotions, exhibitions, productions and festivals.
But there is still a long way to go. How do you build a future that can ensure we stand side by side with the best industries in the world? Hollywood generated $43 billion revenue for the United states in 2018 alone.
The Staples Center is 950,000 square feet and can seat up to 20,000 guests. The biggest events venues in the world include The Las Vegas Convention Centre with over 10,000,000 square feet of exhibit and meeting space and The Hannover Messe in Hanover, Germany which can host up to 5,000 exhibitors and 210,000 attendees. The biggest stadium? Right there in North Korea with a capacity of 114,000. The cinema industry in India is worth over $3.7 billion.
Yet the highest grossing movie in Nigeria last year was Living in Bondage: Breaking Free – earning N157.3 million. The entire country only has around 200 cinema screens most concentrated in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan. The United States has nearly 40,000 screens, India has more than 13,000.
Our talents and professionals are bright and determined and pulling all the stops to make sure the industry continues to grow. But the challenges are gigantic.
How do we build the future of our dreams? How do we develop honours events of Oscar and Grammy standards? How do we erect the infrastructure necessary to support what we have to do?
We imagine a day when Wizkid and Tiwa and Rema would stand on the Grammy stand and deliver thank you speeches; a time when our movies will become global blockbusters and dwarf Hollywood projects in revenue and quality. We imagine a time when our cities will boast of multiple convention centres and skyscraper cinemas. We can even picture a time when the biggest screaming and SVOD platforms will be of Nigerian origin. And funding? We can already see a time when banks home and abroad would choose to partner with creative industries here as opposed to O&G.
But it’s all still in the imagination. It’s a good thing to dream. And you are welcome to dream with us. You must also consider this as an invitation for you to join us as one of the architects of the modern Nigerian creative and entertainment industry.
And that’s why we set up Nigerian Entertainment Conference eight years ago as an intervention to rally everyone towards building the industry of our dreams. Eight events, 450 speakers and panelists, 40 exhibitions and brands, and 12,000 attendees after, we are glad to witness and facilitate the transformation of our home entertainment; or our music and media. And we are calling on the government, practitioners, fans and investors to come to the party.
ID Africa, owners of theNETng and producers of Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NECLive) have announced a new format for the 8th edition of the long running conference to be held on Wednesday, April 22, 2020. NECLive which is the premier and largest gathering of entertainment industry professionals in Nigeria will be expanding its format to accommodate new activities, events and programmes in order to deepen its impact and shore up its contributions to Nigeria’s entertainment and creative industry.
For the past seven years, NECLive has run as an intensive full day, nine-hour event featuring powerful panel sessions, insights from industry leaders and critically innovative conversations. Past editions of NECLive have seen over 12,000 attendees, reached over 60 million viewers online and via live TV, and hosted over 450 industry experts as speakers and panelists, including MI Abaga, 2Baba, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Simi, Davido, Bayo Adekanmbi, D’Banj, among others.
Come Wednesday, April 22, 2020 the NECLive8 programme will be expanded into a two-day event featuring keynote speeches, panel discussions, training workshops and masterclasses, product exhibitions, an awards show, performances and multiple satellite events holding in venues around Lagos.
The theme for the event: “Building The Future”, explores various ways of maximizing the potential and impact of recent strides in distribution, cinemas, events, promotions, exhibitions, productions and festivals, and how stakeholders can erect the infrastructure necessary to build the desired future for Nigeria’s creative and entertainment industry.
With this new approach, #NECLive8 hopes to broach tougher conversations and nudge stakeholders towards extracting more value from the ecosystem than is currently obtainable. The expansion also allows for opportunities to introduce more experiential consumer activations and activities which will offer more value to attendees, creatives and brand partners.
The two-day programme will now incorporate the standard elements of NECLive alongside new elements such as an awards dinner designed to celebrate the best of Nigerian entertainment, and a concert which will feature performances from across the spectrum of Nigeria’s entertainment industry.
“Since the 2019 edition of NECLive, we have been working hard behind the scenes to redesign the entire NECLive experience. Our goal is to offer more value to all attendees, our brand partners, entertainment industry professionals, performers and creatives in Nigeria, and we believe the 2020 edition will deliver this objective,” says Femi Falodun, ID Africa CEO.
Ayeni Adekunle, Founder and Convener of NECLive, also said, “We set up NECLive eight years ago as an intervention to rally everyone towards building the industry of our dreams. Eight years on, we are glad to witness and facilitate the transformation of our home entertainment, our music and our media. And we are calling on the government, practitioners, fans and investors to come to the party.”
NECLive will hold at the Landmark Center, Lagos on Wednesday, April 22, 2020 from 10am while the NECLive concert will take place at the same venue from 5pm the same day. Tickets will be available in three categories, offering varying levels of access to #NECLive8:
Regular: Live Conference (Keynotes & Panel discussions); Free for students with valid ID, event partners and volunteers.
Free: Live Conference. Available only to students with valid ID.
Registration opens in February 2020, while speakers, panellists and performers will be announced soon on the official website. Interested attendees and sponsors can visit nec.ng for more information.
One of Nigeria’s foremost comedians and MC, Tee A while participating in a panel discussion with Olamide Akintobi at the Nigerian Entertainment Conference, #NECLive7 said that comedy is not limited to stand-up alone.
Tee A was responding to enquiries about who qualifies as a comedian in respect to the upcoming Eko Comedy Festival which he is the convener.
He said that comedy covers a variety of genres that cut across stand-up, social media skits and movies. Making instances with the likes of Nkem Owoh (Osuofia), Victor Osuagwu and others who have made a name for themselves by being movie comedians
“There are many actors who are comedian by their own right and whether you’re an Instagram comedian, Facebook comedian, standup comedian or even a joker, all these art forms on different platforms are all part of the industry,” he reiterated.
At the Nigerian Entertainment Conference 2019, a special panel will discuss the Big Brother Naija phenomenon that has taken over Nigerian airwaves in recent years.
Often disparaged as a corrupt, indecent platform, BBNaija appears to be more than a reality show for wannabe stars. The makers of the show, the participants, researchers, and fans come together for a session that interrogates all the assumptions; with a view to providing everyone with an opportunity to see things differently.
At NEC Live 7, the CEO of Multichoice Nigeria, John Ugbe will speak on the panel “DSTV Now: What The World Must Learn From BBNaija”. He will be joined with 2017 finalist, Tobi Bakre, Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, Channel Manager, Africa Magic; Bisola Tejumola (PhD), Executive Head, Content.
NEC Live 7 holds tomorrow April 24, 2019, at Landmark Event Center, Lagos. The conference is brought to you by ID Africa, in partnership with African Creative Foundation, MultiChoice, Livespot, Huce Valeris,and BHM.
Ebuka Obi-Uchendu will participate in the 7th edition of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NECLive7) as a moderator.
The respected media personality will moderate the session: ‘DSTV NOW: What The World Must Learn From BBNaija’. Often disparaged as a corrupt; indecent platform, BBNaija appears to be more than a reality show for wannabe stars.
A panel consisting of John Ugbe, CEO MultiChoice Nigeria; Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, Channel Director, Africa Magic; Tobi Bakre, former #BBNaija housemate and Busola Tejumola (PhD), Executive Head, Content will do justice to the discussion.
The makers of the show, the participants, researchers, and fans will come together for a session that interrogates all the assumptions; with a view to providing everyone with an opportunity to see things differently.
NECLive7 is put together by ID Africa, in partnership with African Creative Foundation, MultiChoice, Livespot, Huce Valeris, and BHM.
The highly anticipated 7th edition of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NECLive7) is almost here.
All roads will lead to the Landmark Event Center, Oniru, Lagos on Wednesday, April 24 2019, as entertainment industry experts, innovators and visionaries discuss the way forward by exploring this year’s theme: ‘Mobile, Data, Consumers and the Future of Entertainment’.
Participants will have the rare opportunity of gaining insights into how data will play a significant role in what the future of the rapidly evolving industry is going to look like.
Experts such as Bayo Adekanmbi, Chief Transformation Officerof MTN Nigeria; Multichoice Nigeria CEO, John Ugbe; Piggy Vest co-founder, Odun Eweniyi; Bookings Africa founder, Fade Ogunro and many others will speak at the event, while Frank Donga, SLK, Dance Na The Main Thing (DNMT) will entertain the audience with unique performances.
NECLive is brought to you by ID Africa, in partnership with African Creative Foundation, MultiChoice, Livespot, Huce Valeris, and BHM.
In a few days, the annual Nigerian Entertainment Conference will hold in Lagos, the seventh year in succession. Compared to when it first held in 2013, the industry has seen remarkable improvement, continuous evolution and an increase in the value of entire sector- on course to top $9 billion in 2022, per this report from PWC.
As a result of the apparent recent success of the Nigerian entertainment industry, it is rather easy to forget that the current wave is less than twenty years old. When 2face Idibia, widely acknowledged as the leader of the new school- collaborated with Jamaican dancehall artiste Beenie Man in 2005, it was novel for the new generation- a generation skipped by the good fortune of having international record companies here in Nigeria. Since then, independent record labels and artistes have made hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, played at major festivals across the world and have been mobbed in countries as remote as Suriname. Why then is there a need to still convene a conference if there has been an improvement? Simply because the entertainment industry might have left biblical Egypt, but it is still wobbling around in the wilderness.
Entertainment in all of its forms- music, film, comedy, art, podcasts, games, dance etc- has been a veritable advancement medium for all concerned. At its most basic unpretentiousness, it delights and pleasures the audience. It has also been used for social causes- films have exposed certain ills in the society, musicians have rebelled through their music and comedians have pilloried politicians to no end. And through it all, the Nigerian Entertainment, at least for the past six years, has been a marketplace of ideas, a meeting place for industry insiders, practitioners, executives and members of the audience have sat together to fashion out solutions. The inaugural paper reads in part: “The theme ‘Building the industry of our dreams’ not only challenged all and sundry on the need for collective responsibilities but engaged with varying solutions to redefine the Nigerian entertainment industry. There is an imperative need to begin a process of structuring the business in entertainment, setting up systems that are accountable, practical and very much applicable to the Nigerian environment.”
The first edition of NEC Live identified all the issues that stood in the way of the development of the industry- inimical government policies, piracy, reluctance to embrace technology, the role of media and such like. Can we say with certainty that six years later, all of these problems have been surmounted? Not by a long shot. On the contrary, each year has presented newer problems, requiring equally newer solutions.
Amaka Igwe at #NECLive 2013
For example, the late filmmaker Amaka Igwe in her speech at the maiden edition of NEC Live spoke of the need for practitioners to adopt emerging “technologies for the good of the industry… Growth of the Nollywood industry should be driven by infrastructure that is required to service existing and new markets as they develop. The industry should use the power and skills inherent to promote and project modern and historical documentation, education and preservation of cultures in Nigeria. The industry has the potential of shaping a positive image for Nigeria. ‘What we are putting out is what the world thinks about Nigeria’.” Have filmmakers and movie producers adhered to this creed? Only quite slowly.
In that same hall, music executive Kenny Ogunbe and Chief Tony Okoroji disagreed heatedly over the issue of collection of royalties on behalf of COSON. Today, COSON and Okoroji are entangled in a three year battle with its members over its leadership and accusations of financial impropriety. (In March, a Lagos court ordered the reopening of its bank accounts hitherto frozen by an interim order.
Needless to add, these infrastructural challenges still remain. Interestingly, the solutions are inherent in the opportunities available in the innovations of the digital age. The technological revolution has helped solve some of the issues which have plagued our industry ab initio: streaming has allowed a great number of entertainers to bypass the Big Broses of Alaba who controlled before now solely controlled the distribution of music. The proliferation of internet-enabled devices has broken down the barriers of entry: thumb your noses at “Instagram comedians” all you want but they’ve proven that all you need is sixty seconds and a mobile phone. Comics like Frank Donga and Maraji rose to the upper echelon while others like Woli Agba charge in excess of seventy thousand naira to give “birthday shoutouts.”
This in itself has created a new set of problems, or to be less gloomy, challenges. Ayeni Adekunle, Chairman and Convener of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference, explains in part here: “But this is 2019. And we’re witnessing another boom. This time, the barriers have been pulled down. You can be in Lokoja and become a national hit by way of Instagram. You can become a leading actor by selling yourself on Youtube or Facebook. Radio or TV no longer break the big stars; social media does. The fans now hold the power, and everyone is noticing. How about monetisation? The streams are now so multiple that it is difficult for any one label or company to dictate the tunes. With the internet, telecommunications, app stores, streaming services, and VoD platforms, came an opportunity for creators to take control in ways hitherto impossible. But, what does this mean for consumers? As we chase contents we love on platforms where they’re domiciled, what’s happening to all the data being collected? And what does it mean for the creators and performers? Are they now getting paid in full?… Who in fact, gets paid? Who should? Will today’s entertainers end up becoming super rich and comfortable or will they end up like many of those before them? What do they need to know, to avoid obvious pitfalls?”
We now live in an era of constant creation of content and mediums that distribute them. As a matter of fact, the line between content creators and the platforms which distribute them has blurred. Disney and Apple are set to begin their respective streaming service that plans to play in the Netflix space.
It follows then, the problem and solutions are one and the same. What NEC Live offers is an avenue to confer among one another and design ways to ensure that the Nigerian entertainment ecosystem does not miss out on the boom that today’s technology and resources offer. Or worse still, have our stories told by those who didn’t live it.
NECLive is brought to you by ID Africa, in partnership with African Creative Foundation, MultiChoice, Livespot, Huce Valeris, and BHM.
The organisers of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference, are thrilled to announce that prominent Nigerian creative events and production agency, Livespot 360 is one of its major partners for the forthcoming seventh edition which comes up on the 24th of April, in Lagos.
Livespot led by the renowned maverick, Deola Art Alade is reputable for executing industry redefining projects and out of the world concepts. They will be responsible for managing the production execution of NECLive 7, Africa’s largest creative and entertainment industry conference.
The company’s expertise is notable in organising some of the biggest events in Africa. Applying empathetic storytelling, futuristic strategies, and unique execution, Livespot is widely regarded as a market leader in the events production sphere. The firm’s past works range from large scale conferences to immersive brand activations, live concerts, press days and more.
Since its founding in 2013, Livespot has produced some of the most remarkable events in the Nigerian entertainment industry. Notable among their past projects include Darey Art Alade’s ‘Love Like a Movie’ concert series which had some of the world’s top celebrities – Kim Kardashian, Kelly Rowland, and Ciara attending successive editions. Others are The Falz Experience’ concert produced for the Nigerian hip hop star, Falz The Bahd Guy in 2017, the 2018 HEADIES Award and the inaugural edition of Born In Africa Festival (BAFEST) which held in December 2018.
ID Africa who are organisers of #NECLIVE 7, have said that this year’s edition themed ‘Mobile, Data, Consumers and The Future Of Entertainment’, will be a memorable experience with the line up of world class partners involved.
Registration for the conference is free and currently ongoing. Intending participants wishing to attend can register to attend on www.nec-staging.ieikife7-liquidwebsites.com.
NECLive is brought to you by ID Africa, in partnership with African Creative Foundation, MultiChoice, Livespot, Huce Valeris, and BHM.
The countdown has begun for the 7th Edition of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference which will take place on April 24 at the Landmark Event Centre in Oniru, Lagos State. #NECLIVE is Africa’s largest creative and entertainment industry gathering where major stakeholders in the sector come to rub minds and have conversations that shape the industry.
For the past six years, Musicians, Actors, Comedians, Producers, Fashion gurus and stakeholders in the creative industry ecosystem have used NECLive as a viable channel to express their thoughts and share views on how to make the industry more conducive for economic growth. At #NECLive 7, many of Nigeria’s biggest entertainers and celebrities will be making a return while some more will be making their debut appearance at the conference.
This year, the theme of the conference is Mobile, Data, Consumers and The Future Of Entertainment. Nigerian singer and songwriter Adekunle Gold will feature as a guest speaker while DJ Cuppy will be a panelist. Legendary Nigerian comedian, Alibaba who has previously featured as a speaker in past editions returns to #NECLIVE 7 to showcase the Spontaneity show live on stage. Other entertainers who have also confirmed their attendance include Aramide, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, Frank Donga, and Sage Hassan the Poet. Many more stars are expected to confirm their attendance at the conference in the coming days.
NECLive has hosted over 100 celebrity guest stars and speakers, and has attracted over 20,000 live participants since its inception. Over 5000 participants are expected to attend the conference this year with millions expected to join the conversations online from different parts of the world.
The organisers, ID Africa have assured that this edition will be the best yet with insightful conversations meant to elevate the interaction of participants with the entertainment industry. CEO of IDA, Mr Femi Falodun is confident that those who attend the conference will be enlightened with the right information from the line up of industry professionals scheduled to speak. He says; “All NECLive attendees will get valuable insights into how data will play a key role in the future of entertainment in Nigeria and how content creators, brands and consumers can use the knowledge acquired at the conference to their advantage.”
