Africa is Ready for Business

Africa is no longer waiting for help from any body, but reaching out aggressively to market what potentials it has to offer the world.

 This was the position of Nigeria expressed by Mr. Emeka Mba, director general, National Broadcasting Commission, at a special session exploring production opportunities around the world, with the theme: It is time for Africa, at this year’s edition of the MIPCOM, the global content market at Cannes, France.

Mr. Mba pointed out that Africa was not one country, but a number of countries with varying characteristics and peculiarities.

He told the packed hall that while Africa had its challenges, those wishing to come should see them as opportunities for mutual benefit, like some American companies recently took advantage of the power challenges to enter a partnership to privatise the power sector in Nigeria.

Mr. Mba stressed that the new attitude of government to business growth was that if it could not help business to grow, then it wouldn’t stand in the way of business.  He concluded by extending a warm welcome to Africa.

Other speakers included Bernard Arzia a content entrepreneur from Ivory Coast, a Producer, Pascal Schmidtz from South Africa, and a consulting guru on African content Mr. Russell Southwood from the United Kingdom, with Bridget Scarr of Hummingbird International moderating.

Mr. Southwood noted that the fragmentation currently going on in the sector, bringing about more media, use of vernacular, use of mobile media, and so on, presented more opportunities for any serious entrepreneur. 

Mr. Arzia stressed that Africa was a story-telling company, and would never run out of stories, and with the apparent scarcity of ideas now pervading Hollywood, Africa was the new content frontier.

The discussion concluded that with such key trends as the rise of digital and social media, convergence, afro-centricity and vibrant youth population, Africa was surely the next investor’s Mecca, but that it was important to be there from the beginning, rather than just wait for the pickings.

The National Broadcasting Commission is hosting the Nigerian Pavilion, which has more than 15 Nigerian content related companies doing brisk business in Cannes.