Naija Independence
Nigeria, country located on the western coast of Africa. Nigeria has a diverse geography, with climates ranging from arid to humid equatorial. However, Nigeria’s most diverse feature is its people. Hundreds of languages are spoken in the country, including Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Hausa, Edo, Ibibio, Tiv, and English. The country has abundant natural resources, notably large deposits of petroleum and natural gas.
Nigeria
The national capital is Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory, which was created by decree in 1976. Lagos, the former capital, retains its standing as the country’s leading commercial and industrial city.
Modern Nigeria dates from 1914, when the British Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were joined. The country became independent on October 1, 1960, and in 1963 adopted a republican constitution but elected to stay a member of the Commonwealth.
Can You Feel The Beat?
IN 2006, A crew of young musicians from Nigeria set up the Hottest Coalition of Nigerian DJs. The group comprised artists living in the country as well as in the growing diaspora around the world. Their mission was to promote the kind of music that was popular in West Africa at the time, by acts like P-Square, 2Baba, and D’banj. These were tunes with elements of electronic and dance music set to African percussion, as well as including hints of highlife, dancehall, hip-hop, and R&B — origins traceable across the spectrum of Black expression. “It was obvious that [Africans living abroad] were craving their own [music], because that’s one of the ways they could connect back home,” says DJ Neptune, one of the earliest members of the coalition. “This was before we started having blogs coming into the game,” he says.
Over the years, the kind of music they were promoting has become known as Afrobeats, a term that describes the most popular music coming out of West Africa. Coined in the aughts, Afrobeats (with an “S”) is similar in name to the Afrobeat music popularized by Fela Kuti in the 1970s, but is distinct in its more modern origin and flavor. While Kuti’s music was characteristically political and orchestral, Afrobeats is often jovial, digitally produced, and sung in English, West African, and pidgin languages.
Now, artists from Africa are rapidly reshaping the sound and texture of pop music — and Afrobeats just had its biggest year ever. Burna Boy and Wizkid, two of Nigeria’s biggest stars, both took home Grammys in the past year, and American pop stars have eagerly tapped into the scene. After a dazzling appearance on Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, fellow Nigerian Tems delivered one of the year’s best records with her EP, If Orange Was a Place. There was also the viral rise of Ghanaian American Afro-fusionist Amaarae, whose Kali Uchis-assisted remix of her 2020 single “Sad Girlz Luv Money” became an anthem for independent women across the internet.
On The Big Screen
The Nigerian Film Industry (Nollywood) is globally recognised as the second largest film producer in the world. The Industry is a significant part of the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation Sector which contributed 2.3% (NGN239biliion) to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016. It is one of the priority sectors identified in the Economic Recovery and Growth plan of the Federal Government of Nigeria with a planned $1billion in export revenue by 2020. Nonetheless, existing challenges will have to be addressed to take Nollywood to the next phase. PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2017 – 2021 provides deep knowledge and actionable insights on the trends that are shaping the entertainment and media industry.
Movies and television are often an escape from and a reflection of life unfolding. They also can play an outsize role in shaping and reinforcing cultural beliefs and attitudes about race, both in the United States and internationally. Yet for the thousands of people who toil in a range of on- and off-screen positions in the sprawling film and TV industry, movies and television are something much more grounded—they are a job. And for Black professionals trying to build and sustain a career in film and TV, the industry has been, by many of their accounts, a relatively unwelcoming workplace.
I wanted to understand the lived experience of Black professionals along the end-to-end journey
of content production and distribution, from applying for an entry-level position or pitching new ideas to shooting on location and distributing a finished product. To shed light on the scale of the racial disparities and the potential economic opportunity in addressing them, we analyzed data and reviewed multiple research reports on thousands of films and TV shows.
Face Your Books
Education helps people work better and can create opportunities for sustainable and viable economic growth for the future. Education has also been seen to give people critical skills and tools to help them provide for themselves and their children.
Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a space scientist, science communicator and presenter of the BBC's The Sky at Night. She completed a PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1994, after an undergraduate degree in Physics also at Imperial.
Maggie's first role was with the Ministry of Defence, combining knowledge from her first degree in physics with her doctorate in mechanical engineering. She returned to academia to work on building an instrument to bolt on to the Gemini telescope.
In 2009 Maggie Aderin-Pocock was honored as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her work as a science communicator, breaking down complex scientific issues into simple information that everyone can understand, and for her outreach to young people.
David Adetayo Olusoga OBE is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He has presented historical documentaries on the BBC and contributed to The One Show and The Guardian.David Olusoga was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a Nigerian father and British mother. At five years old, Olusoga migrated to the UK with his mother and grew up in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. He was one of a very few non-white people living on that council estate. By the time he was 14, the National Front had attacked his house on more than one occasion, requiring police protection for him and his family. They were eventually forced to leave as a result of the racism. He later attended the University of Liverpool to study the history of slavery, and in 1994, graduated with a BA (Hons) History degree, followed by a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism at Leeds Trinity University.
Tomi Adeyemi (born August 1, 1993) is a Nigerian-American novelist and creative writing coach. She is known for her novel Children of Blood and Bone, the first in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, which won the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, the 2019 Waterstones Book Prize, and the 2019 Hugo Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. In 2019, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. In 2020, she was named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People of 2020 in the "Pioneers" category.Adeyemi's debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone, was released in March 2018, and debuted at number 1 on The New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Bestseller List. It is a young-adult (YA) fantasy novel, featuring protagonist Zélie Adebola, who fights a monarchy to return magic to her people. Adeyemi has said she wanted to write a fantasy novel set in West Africa so that "a little Black girl [could] pick up my book one day and see herself as the star...I want her to know that she’s beautiful and she matters and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger." Children of Blood and Bone was awarded the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and is a finalist for the 2019 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.