Nigeria’s film industry faces a defining cycle. With annual revenue reaching $6.4 billion and producing 2,500 films yearly, according to the Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NECLive), Nollywood has built remarkable scale. Yet our industry faces a pivotal financing challenge as global streaming platforms like Netflix and Prime Video pull back from greenlighting Nigerian content.
This withdrawal makes innovative funding not just essential but existential for our future.
As a finance executive and filmmaker, I recognise this moment demands financial structures that match our creative ambition.
The traditional funding approach for Nigerian productions, relying on personal savings, family contributions, and informal investor pools, functioned when average budgets hovered between $15,000 and $40,000. Today, globally competitive Nigerian films require $250,000-$1.5 million, revealing a structural funding gap threatening our continued growth.
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For OSAMEDE, our historical fantasy premiering at the Cannes Film Market this week, we implemented a sophisticated capital structure combining equity investment, debt financing, and mezzanine capital. This balanced approach attracted traditional financiers and strategic partners by appropriately distributing risk across the capital stack.
Our model draws inspiration from South Korea’s remarkable transformation. The country’s film industry grew from generating $203 million in 2004 to $823 million by 2019, capturing over half its domestic box office. This growth stemmed from deliberate government initiatives and structured film financing vehicles that positioned Korean cinema among the world’s five largest film industries alongside the U.S., China, Japan, and the U.K.
Recent developments offer hope. Afrexim Bank’s announcement of a $1 billion fund to revolutionise Global Africa’s film and creative industries represents the required scale of thinking. This initiative recognises UBA Chairman Tony Elumelu’s statement: “By empowering young African creative entrepreneurs and the creative industry, we provide a channel to project our continent’s positives globally. We need to tell our less-told stories of triumph, resilience, hard work, innovation, and creativity.”
To capitalise on these opportunities, Nollywood needs a comprehensive approach on multiple fronts. First, we must develop specialised film financing vehicles with tiered risk profiles that accommodate different investor appetites and standardise investment documentation with transparent recoupment structures.
These financial mechanisms will create clarity and confidence for investors entering the sector. Second, we require government support through targeted tax incentives specifically for content production and investments in distribution infrastructure to maximise revenue potential. Combining private financing innovation and public policy support would create the ecosystem necessary for sustainable growth.
The Bank of Industry’s NollyFund demonstrated institutional capital can work in our sector, but we need multiple specialised vehicles targeting different market segments with appropriate risk-adjusted returns.
The success of OSAMEDE, our epic about the 1897 British invasion of the Benin Empire, offers a blueprint. Beyond telling a compelling story, it demonstrates how sophisticated financial engineering makes ambitious Nigerian content possible even as some traditional funding sources retreat.
What is urgently needed is a coordinated approach between government policy, financial institutions, and industry stakeholders to develop a sustainable ecosystem that treats our creative output as valuable intellectual property worthy of serious investment.
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The pullback from global streamers presents an opportunity to build homegrown financing structures, alongside other key structures on the storytelling and distribution levers that retain more value within our creative economy while still reaching international audiences.
By bringing capital market rigour to creative industry structure and financing, we can transform what appears to be a crisis into the foundation for Nollywood’s next growth phase, one built on stronger, more resilient financial architecture that matches the extraordinary potential of our stories.
Lilian Olubi is the Executive Producer of OSAMEDE, a Nigerian historical fantasy film. She serves on the board of the Nigerian Stock Exchange and is the founder of Gold Lilies Productions. With over 25 years in investment banking and capital markets, Lilian bridges the worlds of finance and creative production, championing innovative funding models for African cinema.
