Nigeria's booming film industry has tackled war, injustice, and pandemics. Now, it faces a new frontier: climate change, pollution, and environmental justice.
Camera as Witness
Nigeria faced a deadly Ebola outbreak in 2014, but beyond health officials and awareness campaigns, it was a Nollywood film titled 93 Days that became an unexpected archive of the crisis, documenting both government response and public fear.
Nollywood is Africa's second-largest film industry, renowned for telling vivid local stories. In 2024 alone, the industry generated around US$ 7 million (NGN 11.5 billion) from ticket sales, a whopping 60 percent increase from the US$ 4.4 million (NGN 7.2 billion) recorded in 2023, according to the Cinema Exhibitors Association of Nigeria. This highlights Nollywood's ever-growing success.
More than just its commercial and entertainment value, Nollywood serves as an important archive of Nigeria’s social movements, preserving key historical struggles related to politics, public health, gender, and the environment. The more pressing question should therefore be: how does Nollywood shape collective memory and inspire activism? Putting profitability, global recognition, and flashy production aside, can film truly serve as an archive for sustainability efforts in Africa?
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