A delicate balancing actFor the past decade, international interest in African culture, including film, art, music and fashion, has steadily increased. Today it is regarded as an exportable asset, presenting significant revenue opportunities for the continent’s creatives. But could the monetisation of African culture open it up to exploitation, resulting in its ultimate demise as opposed to its preservation?
To answer this, it is useful to understand the idea of monetising culture. Physical products that you buy in a store or online have a value. That is, the cost of the materials to make the product, the distribution cost and the sales cost. These are all quantifiable amounts.
The value of African cultureThe idea of putting a price tag on a culture is less easy to understand. In effect, the ‘price’ of a culture is the value assigned to its expression, whether that be through film, art, music or fashion. That value is determined by how much the viewer, listener or wearer is prepared to pay to ‘own’ that piece of culture. This amount is largely driven by perceived value than actual monetary value.
In recent years, Africa’s entertainment industry has grown phenomenally, acquiring an impressive value. According to PwC, the African entertainment market is set to grow by 15% annually from 2020 to 2025, reaching $4.6 billion by the end of this year.
While that should equate to an increase in opportunities for African creatives, this projected growth is a double-edged sword. With more eyes on African culture comes greater demand for creatives’ works – even if that means acquiring it illegally.
Monetisation a gateway for piracy
Africa’s rich storyteller tradition has made its fertile ground for feature films and TV shows. However, the rise in content piracy in recent years has hit this industry hard, with the unlawful copying and distribution of video content threatening to wipe it out. Zimbabwean filmmaker and actor, Ben Mahaka, knows this all too well. Back in 2013 he and a group of friends made Gringo Troublemaker, a self-funded comedy feature film. A week after its release, Mahaka found pirated copies of the film being sold at a bus terminus for $1 per DVD.
“The authorities were not interested in investigating the case. We pressured them and eventually they raided the market where the discs were being sold. They discovered 10, 000 pirated DVDs! That’s $10, 000 for one film. Afterwards a police officer asked if the seller could get his stuff back after paying a fine. He didn’t understand those discs didn’t belong to the seller, they belonged to us as the filmmakers. That was our intellectual property,” Mahaka explains.
A bootleg copy of the same film was uploaded to YouTube. It hit 1.2 million views before Mahaka reported it and had it taken down.
“There are people who grow up knowing they can make a decent living from things they have not put one cent into. They don’t have to be creative or hardworking. They just have to be ruthless. These ruthless thieves are the ones who show up in the neighbourhoods driving the nice cars and the local kids then think, ‘oh this is how money is made’. Why try something else when there is such an easy way?” he says.
Creatives’ livelihoods cut short
Malawian producer and director, Shemu Joyah, says piracy is killing African storytellers. Filmmaking is expensive, especially in Africa where limited funding is available. Not only is piracy undermining the ability of filmmakers to earn an income from their existing films, but the potential for them to make more films in the future.
“You break even on a film only to find that someone has pirated it and everyone is watching it on their phones or computers, and you’re getting nothing out of it. That’s devastating. It’s totally devastating, and it kills your ability to make another film. This has affected me a lot. I have five or six scripts ready to go, I can start shooting them tomorrow. But due to a lack of funding, I cannot. If every person who has watched one of my films had paid just one dollar for doing so, I would have been able to make all these other films,” Joyah says.
“I would have thought that my three films would have generated enough income for me to not have to go and ask for funding. But because of piracy, and my films being pirated, people watched them elsewhere. That’s a loss to me, and there’s not a lot I can do about it,” he adds.
Favourite shows hang in the balanceIt is not only feature films where this is happening. Shows currently being screened on DStv’s Zambezi Magic are also targeted.
The Zambian drama series Mpali has aired for a number of years and has a robust public following. After extreme loadshedding last year, which affected viewers’ ability to watch the show at the right time, fans of the show created Facebook and WhatsApp groups selling pirated recordings of episodes.
“These people record their screens and make people pay to join the group and watch the episodes. They’re publicly advertising this, and viewers are paying and supporting them. People are happy to pay pirates to watch our content, but not happy to pay us as the producers who make that content for them,” says Mpali scriptwriter, Tisa Phiri.
Fans of the show want future seasons, yet buying illegal episodes of the show minimises the chances of that happening.
“People don’t have any idea how much time and money it takes to create the shows they love so much. But they’ll pay 20 kwacha to watch the show for the whole week. This really affects us. If people watch the show illegally and stop paying their MultiChoice subscription, MultiChoice will stop investing in our local content, and we will be forced to stop creating it,” she notes.
Silencing Africa’s authentic voiceContent piracy is connected to a wider criminal system that in some cases also includes drug and arms running, and child trafficking. Members of the public who support pirated content are effectively part of these syndicates.
“When people bootleg international films, they really don’t understand that they’re helping pirates to build up their systems. Locals are now victims of this piracy. The income streams from one movie should sustain you while you are preparing to make your next one. But those income streams are shrinking. In the CBD of Harare, movie houses are closing down, because down the road there is a guy selling pirated copies of the latest films for $1.00,” says Mahaka.
All the filmmakers are aware of the ultimate outcome of content piracy if left unchecked: Africa loses her voice.
These creatives use film to keep African stories alive. When their content is hijacked, so are their stories, so is a large part of Africa’s culture and what makes the continent unique.
“African storytelling teaches people from young how to behave correctly. This rise in piracy is another symptom of the effect of moving away from our cultural roots and the expectations on people of what is right and moral. People should want to protect our stories, not sell them for 20 kwacha a month. They should want to keep our heritage safe.
“As African filmmakers we can’t survive like this. Piracy detracts from the creative industry’s creativity and innovation. It silences us and our whole generation – and those coming up behind us. That’s how culture gets lost through time, and we are ultimately left with foreign B-grade movies and no original, authentic African content,” says Phiri.
When done correctly, monetising African storytelling can be immensely positive for Africa’s creative sectors. By local filmmakers being the source of African films and TV shows, we prevent cultural appropriation and Africa being exclusively seen through the eyes of Hollywood.
By taking ownership of our own culture, we preserve it. But we need the support of all citizens of this continent to increase the value of our culture and keep it from being sold for a dollar on every street corner. (Multichoice Botswana)
