Federal Government supports Nollywood with N420m additional grant

The announcement was made last Friday by the Deputy Director of Information, Federal Ministry of Finance, Mrs Patricia Deworitshe. The money is the second tranche of the pledged by the present administration to support the growing movie industry in Nigeria under the “Project Act Nollywood”.

According to News Agency of Nigeria, theProject Act Nollywood has the goal to develop the movie making value chain. It is broken three manageable components including Film Production Fund (FPF), Capacity Building Fund (CBF) and Innovative Distribution Fund (IDF). The FPF and CBF have now been implemented, while the IDF, which is the third component of the project, is on-going.

The IDF covers online, National, Regional and community categories of Nollywood Film distribution and exhibition. It has as objective the improvement of the distribution network of Nigerian Audio-Visual contents, cutting down on piracy, job creation jobs, and protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) within the Nigerian Entertainment Industry.

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The government earmarked N1.8 billion for disbursement to 106 beneficiaries under IPR component. Previously N1.335 billion was disbursed earlier in the year as the first tranche under CBF component of the Project to 105 beneficiaries.

Deworitshe said that before the release of the second tranche, that the Finance Ministry had earlier carried out a successful monitoring and evaluation of the first tranche disbursement. It found that the programme had aided the extension of the Nollywood Industry to sub-Sahara Africa through the funding of National distributors to expand their distribution capacity and network. It has also aided the capacity of the industry to lip-sync contents in French for onward distribution to Francophones countries in ECOWAS. Speaking further of the achievements so far, the Deputy Director said,

“Fifteen community cinemas and viewing centres have been established through the grant and this has improved the distribution network of movies in Nigeria. The programme has supported 18 firms in strengthening online distribution platforms, this has helped curb illegal downloads and piracy.” “Two hundred and fifty-six permanent jobs and 544 temporary jobs have been created through the financial support provided to 105 beneficiaries by the programme.’