Nollywood and Cancer: A Workable Partnership

Abstract

Background and context: The Nigerian film industry also known as Nollywood is the biggest in Africa and the second largest in the world in terms of annual production. Nollywood produces hundreds of films every year, most of them low budget straight to DVD tapes. As at 2014 Nollywood had an estimated gross worth of about 5 billion U.S. dollars. It also employs about a million people in the country. Nollywood has since inception been able to blend historical facts with good imagination to create and sustain our society. It has done this across most genres, but a few. Health issues such as cancer is not well represented in Nollywood and about 80,000 Nigerians die of cancer annually. Aim: To encourage cancer themes in Nollywood movies. To help form an alliance between health professionals and Nollywood. Strategy/Tactics: Forming a platform where health professionals and Nollywood practitioners can converge to seek out cancer information for budding stories and get authentic, scientific information concerning cancer and help dispel some local myth on cancer especially in rural Africa. Program/Policy process: A working opportunity whereby more cancer themes can be introduced into Nollywood movies either as a main story, or a secondary one. Outcomes: A work in progress. What was learned: Though Nollywood lags behind in putting health themes in her movies, it is not too late to start off. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. Changing people´s perspective can be daunting, but impossible is nothing. Nollywood has to its advantage millions of followers and an established industry. What it requires is a collaboration with health professionals to make movies with cancer themes and highly factual in the science.