Rise and evolution in film making – the Nollywood story

Rise and evolution in film making – the Nollywood story

by Péter Pölöskei

Film production has peculiarities in every continent – most readers would be familiar with the globally renowned Hollywood and Bollywood industries, and of course with the state-subsidized European ones. But you might be surprised that in the last ten years, the top 3 in number of movies produced in a country always included a contestant not mentioned in the first sentence – and this is Nigeria, the home of Nollywood, producing more than 1000 movies per year, thus only rivaled by India.

Of course you should not be shamed if you have not seen the latest Nigerian hit or artsy feature in your local multiplex – because these movies have to do with the technology that they actually have at their disposal, which means that distribution is done directly on CDs, DVDs (and yes, occasionally still on VHS!). But why is this important to us now? Because it is a great example of how a historical accident and agglomeration effects can define a continent-wide industry.

In the 1990’s technology was ready for a democratizing shift in film making in Africa, as video devices, cheap but reliable cameras - and people with a taste for cheap entertainment - was already available. While before mostly francophone countries – encouraged by France – were forerunners (more like slumping at the time) in making African films, a hit came from Nigeria titled Living in Bondage. Unlike the francophones, the movie was shot straight-to-video, and became a real blockbuster, that showed that there could be profit to made for Africans in this industry.

This was a start signal, and the few filmmakers already living in Lagos sensed the opportunity. The most populous city in the country was not only providing a readily available market, but other features as well. In a place with some experience available in filmmaking, with people ready to take a shot at African superstardom, selection of talented film crews could go easily. Since Lagos was a destination for migrants from different regions, the use of English was necessary, so most applicants had some of the necessary skills as well. The city also offered distribution connections to the new industry, as a significant share of the igbo tribe lived in Lagos – who were influential in trading activities all over the country. This only just increased the size of market available on top of the local demand. So all in all, after the initial opportunity came, the city provided the unique connections of the igbo, a significant amount of talented and skilled enough people willing to be either filmmakers or part of film crews, plus the scene soon created competition between the emerging little studies.

In a matter of years the features that started making Nollywood successful also made it capable of leaving the country. Since distribution channels are constrained by state borders, but are helped by border-crossing older trade patterns and modern technology, soon the industry was capable of supplying the many English speaking countries of the continent.

But the story of Nollywood is not simply a rise of a monocentric movie empire – just as Hollywood also helped creating Hollywood North (Vancouver), or re-shaping New York to add cinema to theatre. While Lagos is the centre of production, where all big Nigerian producers have their offices, after a while, there were other factors to consider. Lagos location-wise was not perfect, as it turned out after the first decade, that some parts of the production process – like many parts of shooting – are not ideal to take place there. To put it simply, it just became too crowded, as companies were vying for resources, like locations for shooting, which were hampering production, thus driving up prices. So came the rise of Enugu, a city that already had some shootings going on, offering vast areas for production processes. Thus in the latest years, producers moved a significant share of shooting activity to this more eastern Nigerian city, to control rising costs.

Justus Esiri, the posthumous winner of the 2013 African Movie Academy Award for Best Actor

 The case of Nollywood is a great story about how a shift in technological opportunities was seized after a historic accident, creating a new agglomeration of filmmakers in Lagos. The positive effects of agglomeration caused the industry to grow in unusually high proportions, giving Nollywood global recognition and eager consumers all over Africa. Then as the costs started shooting up, spreading to Enugu became a rational option that created a division of labour between the two.

Some further readings about Nollywood:

McCall, John C. (2004) ‘Nollywood Confidental – The Unlikely rise of Nigerian Video Film’; African American and African Diaspora Studies, Issue 95 (Vol. 13, No. 1), 2004

Saul, Mahir – Austen, Ralph A. (eds.) (2010) ‘Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century’; Ohio University Press, Athens (OH), 2010

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Budapest overwhelming sized city

Urban primacy: the case of Hungary in the twentieth century

by Robert Venyige 

One of the most important observations on the urban system of a country is that in lot of cases the size of a city is proportionate to its rank in the urban hierarchy. For example the second largest city has a population that is half of the largest city’s population, the third one has a population that is third of that of the largest one, and so on. This is called the rank size rule or Zipf’s law of city size distribution. However, in some cases the urban system does not follow this pattern, for instance the size of largest city is too small or too big. The second case is called urban primacy, when the largest city of a country represents disproportionately high share of the population and it has an extremely high economic importance.

One measure of the superiority of the largest city in a country is the so called primacy ratio. It is the ratio of the population of the largest city to the sum of the population of a bigger set of cities, like the five largest cities. (It is also possible to compare the size of the largest city to the total urban population.) One of the well-known example of urban primacy is the case of the United Kingdom, where London amounts to 70% of the population of the five largest cities. However it appears in countries with very different characteristics, for example France, Peru, Romania; but among the European countries, Hungary has one of the highest primacy ratio; 0.71 in. The capital of Hungary, Budapest indeed has a disproportionate size, its population (1.7 million in 2001) is approximately nine times larger than that of the second largest city, Debrecen.

What are the possible explanations for this unequal urban system?

There are different theories that may help us to understand the existence of this pattern in the case of Hungary. One of the possible explanation is historical; the change in the size of country after the World War I definitely affected its urban structure. The population of the country – that was the part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at that time – was around 18 million, while after 1920 less than 8 million people lived inside the new borders. If we look at the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, then Budapest was only the second largest city after Vienna in an Empire with more than 52 million citizens. While the urban system of the Monarchy was balanced (without primate city), if we consider only Hungary the urbanization was so concentrated that we can find the same primacy ratio as later on.

Furthermore political processes can also affect the urban system of a country. Autocratic countries tend to have larger primate cities due to the advantages their citizens can enjoy close to the center of the regime. Hungary, during most of its history in the twentieth century did not have democratic political system. The political regimes of the Interwar period and Communist system of 1949-1989 are considered autocracy or limited democracy and non-democratic, respectively. If we look at the primacy ratio of Budapest through the twentieth century we see that it remained fairly stable during this period, reaching its highest value around 1940 and the lowest in 2001. During the interval period the concentration increased, while after 1949 it started to decrease, but it is still high by international comparison. During the Communist regime one cannot attribute the changes in the urban systems to market forces. The state intensely got involved in the formation of the urban system, for instance by forced industrialization, establishing new cities or its partial restriction on labor mobility.

An economic explanation suggests that open countries (in terms of international trade) tend to have smaller primate cities.  While Hungary considered open in terms of its exports to GDP ratio, it does not necessary mean that it should have a more even urban population distribution. First, there is a high persistence in the urban structure of a country and it can change only gradually. In historical term, the economy of Hungary was closed under the 40 years of the Communist regime, even if in the last 20 years it has become an open economy. Second, if the primate city has a disproportionately better access to the export market (through for example higher accessibility, airport or highways) then an increase of the importance of trade can even aggravate the uneven structure. Still, as an effect of international trade, one can expect that the cities in the Western part of Hungary, which are closer to its main export partners may grow faster in the future compared to other cities in the country.

However one have to take into account that the definition of city is not straightforward and administrative borders can change, cities can merge or split. It is also misleading if we consider only the administrative boundaries of the city. As suburbanizatio has become more pronounced one should take into account its effect as well. While the population of Budapest itself is around 1.7 million, the size of its agglomeration is 2.4 million. The status of the capital as the primate city in this case is even more obvious (the primacy ratio is around 0.74), because suburbanization and the agglomeration processes are more advanced around the capital.

Source: Hungarian Statistical Office, KSH

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Slavutych: the Future of the Chernobyl Survivors’ Shelter

Slavutych: the Future of the Chernobyl Survivors’ Shelter

by Anastasiia Polner

What associations do you have when you hear the name – Slavutych? Slavutych is a city in Kyiv oblast, Ukraine, the population of which is 24 500 people – this information pops up in the first lines of the Wikipedia article. Nevertheless, the important facts are different. Slavutych is situated only 50 kilometers away from the ill-fated Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (CNPS), where the disastrous catastrophe happened in 1986 due to the nuclear fallout. It is the youngest city in Ukraine and was constructed to host the survivors of the accident who were evacuated from Prypiat. 26 years ago Pripiat used to be home for thousands of Chernobyl personnel and their families; nowadays it is a ghost city, totally abandoned.

Chernobyl nuclear disaster is considered to be the most horrible in the history of Nuclear Power. Before the accident Chernobyl was producing 10% of Ukraine’s electricity. Today Prypiat and Chernobyl factory are surrounded by 30 kilometers of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Even now there are some places on that territory that are dangerous for live beings due to high level of radiation.

Yet, some people still work on the factory to maintain, monitor it for safety reasons and work upon scientific researches. More than half of Chernobyl employees are actually construction workers, building the Shelter, known as ‘Sarcophagus’ that covers the 4^th reactor, where the explosion happened. All those people live in Slavutych. Today, out of its 24 500 citizens around 3 800 work in Chernobyl, even after the remaining processes in the nuclear units were finally stopped and the whole factory was officially shut down in 2000. Before the final shutdown half of the grown up population of Slavutych, or around 9 000 people, worked on the plant. Since the shutdown the city started to find itself in crisis; around 1 500 people already left it looking for better life in other regions of Ukraine.

Let’s look at the situation from the perspective of Spacial Equilibrium model. It analyzes the migration of working force by looking at the dependence between salaries, cost of living, comfort of living (so-called “amenities”) and personal preferences. For example, the model claims that shocks in demand or supply of the labour force and the corresponding changes in wages will be partially absorbed by changing housing prices. Accordingly, local demand for housing can be derived from other factors of the model.

As the counterparts of Slavutych we take two neighbouring regions – Kyiv and Chernihiv oblasts (without the capital city itself), because they are the main areas for people’s migration from Slavutych.

The numbers tell us an interesting story. The average salary in Slavutych is 475 Euro (and almost 700 Euro for those who work at Chernobyl Station) – much higher than the country average value of 300 Euro. The region average salary is also lower at 280 Euro. With such difference in levels of income we might expect higher housing prices in Slavutych compared to neighbouring regions. However this is not the case. With a price of some 500 Euro per square meter Slavutych lags behind its neighbours by some 200-300 Euro.

One reason for that is historical: Slavutych was built in emergency and all people who moved to it, naturally got their apartments for free.

Another explanation comes directly from the Spatial Equilibrium model. On the one hand, according to different researches, Slavutych has some good-quality amenities. For example, the city consistently holds its place among the top-20 wealthiest Ukrainian cities and the top-20 most comfortable Ukrainian cities according to Focus magazine. It scores high in terms of budget spending per capita, number of supermarkets, green areas and sport venues. On the other hand, however, the preferences for living in Slavutych are really weak - virtually non-existent. That is because of poor ecological situation and the constant health risk that the workers are exposed to. As a result and not contradicting the model, average salary in Slavutych is high, whereas housing prices are low relative to average wage and housing prices in the neighbouring regions. Stated differently, it means that workers are willing to move to Slavutych if, and only if, the salaries rise without the corresponding growth in the cost of living.

We can confirm our conclusions by looking at the situation in dynamics. After the shutdown of the plant in 2000 people started to flee from Slavutych, lowering demand for accommodation, putting additional downward pressure on housing prices and confirming our proposition about very weak location preferences.

The future of Slavutych looks obscure. The city has a weak level of business activity, it creates not enough of new jobs annually, and has a deteriorating infrastructure. Finally, the Chernobyl station inevitably will be closed, sooner or later. So, if the city survives in such circumstances, it will happen because of long-term forward-looking policy of reforms and diversification. Slavutych will cease to be a unique place on the region’s map; on the contrary, it should integrate into local business chains and processes. To conclude with, the factor of utmost importance that should be taken into account is the weak preference of people to live near the radiation zone.

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