Screen Media, Technological Innovation and the State in Nigeria

ABSTRACT:In this essay, I revisit the history of the emergence and evolution of the Nigerian screen media industry (Nollywood) through the prism of the concept of “infopolitics” to develop an analysis of the interaction between media technology innovation and state control in Africa. After being a key preoccupation during Cold War, the issue of the state’s capacity to control the production and flow of media content and data within its borders has become again the object of controversial debates in recent years, as shown by the multiplication of research on the issue of “digital sovereignty” and “platform capitalism.” By focusing on an African case study to reflect on issues of global relevance, this essay shows how the analysis of African realities can help us in interrogating and complementing theories formulated in relation to western case studies (and generally uncritically applied to other contexts). Combining first-hand ethnographic data to the analysis of the research results of other scholars who have investigated the emergence and growth of Nollywood over the past decades, this essay follows media producers and their relationship to technologies and the state, over a period of forty years, from the introduction of the videotape to the arrival of streaming platforms. In so doing, this research puts into perspective the “presentism” of many recent works, which tend to see the introduction of new digital technologies as the bearer of an unprecedented historical break, and makes an attempt at highlighting the links of continuity and discontinuity between recent transformations and the technological innovations which preceded them.