Victor Aghahowa, Head of Production, (West Africa) Multichoice, has identified misplaced industry priorities as the primary obstacle preventing Nollywood from achieving music industry-level international success, arguing that obsession with raising capital overshadows critical focus on audience experience and revenue extraction.
Speaking at NECLive 2025, Victor Aghahowa delivered candid assessment when asked why Nigerian cinema hasn’t matched Afrobeats’ global ascent despite comparable investment. “It’s because film is one of the few places where the final effect of the work is not public,” he stated, contrasting immediate club validation for hit records versus delayed, often opaque reception for films.
Aghahowa challenged what he characterised as misguided industry focus. “There’s a lot of talk about government interventions, funding, people going into private sector and finding funding. There’s worry about how to get money into the business. But how the business grows is proof that money comes out of the business,” he declared.
His prescription: radical reorientation toward audience satisfaction. “If we focused as intensely on the end-user experience as we do on raising money to make the product, the industry will move forward a lot more,” he argued, positioning revenue unlocking as the mechanism that attracts subsequent investment rather than assuming funding availability alone drives industry advancement.
Addressing structural differences between cinema and music, Aghahowa acknowledged film’s capital-intensive complexity. “I can record an album on my laptop in my house—I’ve kind of done that before. Film, you need a village and then you need a platform to distribute. It requires so many moving parts,” he explained, noting higher cost requirements create natural momentum barriers.
However, his most striking claim concerned Showmax’s content volume. “What other services put out a year in terms of African content, we put out every week for 52 weeks,” he stated, inviting independent verification. “There is no streaming service that has the depth of African programming that Showmax has.”
Aghahowa attributed market perception problems to collective tendency toward self-deprecation. “All of us, myself included, are guilty of downplaying whatever is our local version of a thing. We never look at something created here as its own thing. It’s always ‘our take on Netflix,'” he observed.
On competitive strategy, he clarified Showmax’s mission as presentation rather than transformation. “It’s not shaping. It’s meant to present,” he stated, identifying current priorities as perception management and establishing mental prominence before pipeline optimisation.
Regarding Hollywood comparisons, Aghahowa urged realistic expectations while maintaining optimism. “It’s not fair to compare Nollywood to an almost 200-year-old industry. But we need benchmarks somewhere. We will get there—as long as we focus on end-user experience and extracting revenue that proves to investors there is revenue to come out.”
The post Nollywood’s global breakthrough is hindered by a lack of focus on end-user experience – Victor Sanchez Aghahowa appeared first on Nigerian Entertainment Today.
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