Mark Zuckerberg visits a Nollywood studio, meets some of Nigeria's

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited Afrinolly, a studio which is using
cutting edge technology to help make Nollywood films.

Whilst there he met some of Nigeria’s top stars including comedian
Basket Mouth, Kunle Afolayan, Rita Dominic and Yemi Alade.
Zuckerberg founded facebook in 2004. it mission is to give people the power to share
and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay
connected with friends and family, to discover what is going on in the
world, and to share and express what matters to them. Facebook has 1.04
billion daily active users on average worldwide and 7.2 million daily
visitors from Nigeria.
Nigeria is home to the second largest film industry in the world, known
as Nollywood, which produces more than 100 movies a month.

Zuckerberg is in Nigeria this week to see first-hand how entrepreneurs
in the country are creating the next wave of mobile innovation and to
learn how Facebook can better support tech development and
entrepreneurship in emerging markets.

Mark was given a tour of Afrinolly by Chike Maduegbuna, who runs the
production studio.

Maduegbunaa gave Zuckerberg an overview of how films are made and
distributed in Nigeria, with Afrinolly’s mobile app being one of the
most popular ways that Nigerians watch African music videos, films,
comedy and trailers.

Maduegbunaa demonstrated how Nollywood film studios are already using
cutting-edge 360-degree cameras and virtual reality to create new
experiences. He also gave the Facebook CEO a guided tour of the studios
where the films are made and introduced him to some of the talent in
front and behind the camera.

Chike Maduegbuna, owner of Afrinolly said:

“Nollywood is struggling to grapple with the level of organization and
resources required to provide Studio-based Production
Infrastructures/Services. Similarly, Piracy and inadequate Cinemas have
limited the Movie Distribution channels available to Nollywood.

We see two opportunities for Nollywood: first, is to embrace technology
and establish viable Mobile-phone Distribution of Movies to complement
the expanding Cinema chains. Second is to reconcile content production
and its business model to accommodate technological changes in available
audience-screens. It used to be Cinema, TV and DVDs but we now have a
huge Digital audience that use Mobile phones and Portable Devices to
watch movies. Nollywood must adjust to the new audience by redefining
content production to include Shortfilms, Comedy Skits and Music Videos.
These are areas that Afrinolly is currently focusing on.”

At the end of the tour Mark dropped in on a special content creators
workshop which was being held with some of Nigeria’s biggest stars,
designed to help them master Facebook Live and Instagram Stories.

Stars in attendance included Basket Mouth, Kunle Afolayan, Rita Dominic,
Richard Mofe-Damijo, DJCuppy, Chidinma Ekile, Yemi Alade, Stephanie
Linus, Adebola Williams and more.