David South Consulting

Tag: creative economy

  • Reality Television Teaches Business Skills in Sudan

    Reality Television Teaches Business Skills in Sudan

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Learning how to thrive in a market economy does not necessarily come naturally. But for young people who have grown up under a different economic system or known nothing but economic chaos, learning business skills can give them the tools to get on in life.

    With youth unemployment rates high around the world, it is clear many young people may never get the jobs they expect unless they start businesses themselves.

    In 2013, 73.4 million young people were out of work, an increase of 3.5 million from 2007. A report by the International Labour Organization (ilo.org) found persistent unemployment around the world in the wake of the global economic crisis, a proliferation of temporary jobs and growing youth discouragement in advanced economies; and poor quality, informal, subsistence jobs in developing countries. School-to-work transition surveys of developing countries showed that youth are far more likely to land low-quality jobs in the informal economy than jobs paying decent wages and offering benefits.

    High youth unemployment often has nothing to do with poor educational achievement (many unemployed youth have high school educations or university degrees), but is often caused by other factors, including lack of access to capital, rigid labour markets, skills mismatched to demand in the economy (for example construction and building trades), or a gap between personal aspirations and the true state of the country’s economic development.

    But rather than despair, it is possible to show youth how to turn things around and use business skills to re-shape economies in their favor. Youth tend to bring to the economy energy and drive combined with new ideas and experiences calibrated to the demands of the 21st century. By harnessing this, youth can find a unique space in the marketplace. In turn, young people can lead in reviving damaged economies and making their countries wealthier and healthier. Many youth have grown up around the emerging digital economy and the use of mobile phones. Being comfortable with the 21st century digital economy will unleash many economic opportunities that favor youth.

    The British Council says that “creative entrepreneurship is considered the most efficient model for youth in the developing world who are facing huge difficulties in finding employment”. The entrepreneurship or creative investment industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world.

    Understanding what works for youth business entrepreneurship has become a specialty in its own right. Using the media to teach skills and inspire youth to action is one proven approach.

    One recent example is a successful television programme from the Republic of the Sudan. Called Mashrouy (mashrouy.com), it is modeled on reality TV programmes such as The Apprentice, which features serial U.S. entrepreneur Donald Trump (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q3fkq) and the BBC’s Dragon’s Den (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006vq92), where contestants pitch their ideas to a panel of judges to see if they can get funding for their business idea.

    In Mashrouy, 12 contestants battled it out to see who had the best business idea. They undertook various challenges and the original 12 were whittled down to three contestants. Live on air in December 2013, viewers voted for their favorite contestant and the winner (https://www.facebook.com/Mashrouy) received a prize of 200,000 SDG (US $35,211), while the second prize winner received 150,000 SDG (US $26,408) and the third prize winner received 100,000 SDG (US $17,605). All three were then taken to London in the United Kingdom to meet other creative entrepreneurs and receive valuable business advice.

    The Sudanese show (http://sudan.britishcouncil.org/our-work/mashrouy) is supported by the British Embassy and the British Council, and is working with the Sudanese Young Businessmen Association and major Sudanese companies to spread the idea of entrepreneurship among the youth of Sudan.

    Sudan suffered a brutal civil war on and off throughout the 2000s, leading to the partition of the original country into the Republic of the Sudan and the new nation of South Sudan in 2011.

    Faced with Sudan’s serious youth unemployment – as high as 34 per cent – and a fragile economy, the TV show’s producers wanted to encourage youth to start businesses.

    The contest was aimed at youth between 18 and 40 and appeared on the Blue Nile (http://bnile.tv/blue.html) channel.

    “At a time of national economic hardship, it has kindled the imagination of Sudanese youth,” wrote journalist Isma’il Kushkush (https://twitter.com/ikushkush) in The New York Times.

    For the show, a panel of experts picked 12 projects out of 2,500 applications. Each of the 12 finalists was given a chance to do a “pitch,” giving a quick summary of their business idea and trying to get the panel excited about the idea and its potential. The idea that generated the most excitement won.
    The 12 pitches included an idea for an ostrich farm and a plan to export spicy peanut butter. The winner, 32-year-old Samah al-Gadi, wants to use a locally available weed-like river plant to make bags and furniture. She said she got up the courage to be on the show from a supportive mother.

    “Amid ululations, screams and clapping, a jubilant Ms. Gadi raised both hands above her scarf-covered head, flashing victory signs,” The New York Times said. “Her mother, sitting at a dinner table, was brought to tears.”

    The women-owned social enterprise Making Cents International (makingcents.com), based in Washington, D.C., USA, has been gathering resources on youth entrepreneurship since 1999. It has put together a custom “curricula to develop the mindset, skillset, and toolset that enable entrepreneurs and enterprises to participate in profitable markets; financial institutions to serve new populations; and individuals to obtain meaningful work”.  This is available in 25 languages. It also hosts the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference in Washington, DC, held this year from 6 to 8 October 2014 (http://youtheconomicopportunities.org/conference).

    Published: April 2014

    Resources

    1) Khartoum Teaching Centre: The British Council is a world leader in English language training and teaching. It offers general English courses for adult learners of all levels, totaling 60 hours of tuition over 10 weeks. Website: http://sudan.britishcouncil.org/learn-english/courses

    2) Start-up Chile innovation fund: Start-Up Chile is a program created by the Chilean Government, executed by Corfo via InnovaChile, that seeks to attract early stage, high-potential entrepreneurs to bootstrap their startups in Chile, using it as a platform to go global. Website: startupchile.org

    3) Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference 2014: From 6 to 8 October Youth entrepreneurship conference in Washington, D.C., USA. Website: youtheconomicopportunities.org/conference

    4) Making Cents International: The Youth Economic Opportunities learning platform is the first community of practice and knowledge exchange portal developed by and for the youth economic opportunities sector. Website: youtheconomicopportunities.org

    5) Mongolian Rock Pop book: A book published by UNDP in the Mongolian language on how the country’s rock and pop musicians led on business innovation using creative marketing and publicity during the country’s turbulent transition during the 1990s. Website: http://tinyurl.com/p25scqq

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-2/

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • South Gets Reading Bug with more Festivals

    South Gets Reading Bug with more Festivals

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    There is no better indicator of significant economic progress than the rise and rise of book festivals across the South. These symbols of intellectually curious and globally aware middle classes are also boosting economies and contributing to a bigger, more sophisticated creative economy – something that will drive future growth across many sectors.

    The trend is most advanced in Asia, where according to the OECD, “large numbers of Asians are expected to become middle class in the next 10 years” (OECD Working Paper No. 285). But the rising middle class can also be found across the South – and so can the new book festivals.

    According to Sanjoy Roy, managing director of New Delhi-based festival producer Teamwork Productions (www.teamworkfilms.com) ,” India’s rising economic growth has ensured that the great middle class is happy to travel and to spend.”

    “More and more Indians are taking to tourism both local and international. India’s large middle-aged upper middle class and wealthy sector feeds occasions like the literature festival, ensuring attendance, making it a word of mouth must-be-seen, must-attend occasion on the social season calendar.”

    Recognition of the importance of this trend can be seen in the recent growth in book festivals associated with the Hay Festival (www.hayfestival.com) based in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. There are now Hay festivals in Beirut, Lebanon; Bogota and Cartagena, Colombia; Zacatecas, Mexico; Nairobi, Kenya; the Maldives; and the Indian state of Kerala.

    The festivals are part of the powerful global creative economy, which is seen as the “interface between creativity, culture, economics and technology in a contemporary world dominated by images, sounds, texts and symbols” (UNCTAD). The cultural sector has been shown to be an effective way for emerging economies to leapfrog into high-growth areas in the 21st century world economy.

    Roy also confirms the economic impact of book festivals. He produces India’s Jaipur Literature Festival (www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org) , which attracted over 32,000 visitors this year. The hard numbers show the economic impact of the event: “Approximately 3,000 room nights were booked by visitors during this period at an average of US $100 per night,” Roy said. “Our own spend in Jaipur during this period was approximately US $500,000. Shopping, meals and transport spend I would peg at between US $200,000 and US $300,000.”

    The OECD defines the global middle class as those living in households with daily per capita incomes of between US$10 and US$100. It calculates that Asia accounts for less than one-quarter of today’s middle class, but says that share could double by 2020. Within a decade, “more than half of the world’s middle class could be in Asia and Asian consumers could account for over 40 per cent of global middle class consumption.”

    The World Bank takes an even more optimistic view, seeing this burgeoning middle class’ spending power as being triggered once people get out of the desperation of a subsistence existence. This means the “developing world’s middle class is defined as those who are not poor when judged by the median poverty line of developing countries, but are still poor by US standards. The “Western middle class” is defined as those who are not poor by US standards.” Although barely 80 million people in the developing world entered the Western middle class over 1990-2002, it found an extra 1.2 billion people joined the developing world’s middle class. Four-fifths came from Asia, and half from China (World Bank).

    With the rise of the creative sector, significant innovation will come from the global South, according to the director of the Hay Festival, Peter Florence.

    “The digital revolution will be absolutely essential to developing countries,” he told the Associated Press. “They are going to skip two levels of publishing industry tradition. The mobile phone is more important for writers in those societies than pen and paper is. That is a very interesting continuation of oral culture. At the same time the West has decided to start moving from audio editions to digital downloads, oral culture is just moving straight into digital culture in many places around the world.”

    The impact of a growing middle class can be seen in fast-growing India, which is forecast to become the largest market for English language books within a decade.

    A survey by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) found Indians favour stories about local conditions and set in the places where they live.

    India’s most popular current writer is Chetan Bhagat, a former investment banker. He has sold more than 3 million books in the last five years. His latest, Two States, sold a million copies in four months.

    Bhagat writes about the country’s aspiring middle class. His publisher, Rupa (www.rupapublications.com/Client/home.aspx) , believes he appeals to a “pan-Indian, pan-age group.”

    For Roy, it is still too early to tell how the new Hay Kerala festival in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, will affect the economy of the area (the first one is from November 12 to 14, 2010).

    “In the long term we hope this too becomes like Jaipur, attracting an international and national audience from outside the state,” he said. “Kerala has a robust economy. What it may do is increase the total tourist influx into the city and divert some of the annual Goa traffic to its own benefit.”

    Roy says the Hay Festival Kerala will follow the programming pattern of other Hay festivals, combining international authors with a strong local flavour.

    “India is celebrating its golden age in the creative arts and literature not just in English but across all official and subsidiary Indian languages,” he said. “The depth, scope, extent and range of writing in both fiction and non-fiction is incredible.”

    Drawing on his success with the festival in Jaipur, Roy has advice for others in the South looking for creative economy success.

    “It’s all about location, location, location,” he said. “A festival city like that of Cannes, Venice, Edinburgh, Avignon, Hay are special. Choose the right location, be inclusive and bring the local community on board and have the power to sustain – and in due course with a strong programming base, the festival will grow.

    “Every festival will have its own learning (curve) and those who take these on board will find it easier to be successful.”

    Published: June 2010

    Resources

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Vietnam Launches Low-cost, High-Quality Video Game

    Vietnam Launches Low-cost, High-Quality Video Game

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The creative economy offers huge opportunities to the countries of the global South. With the proliferation of new technologies – mobile phones, digital devices, personal computers with cheap or free software, the Internet – the tools to hand for creative people are immense. This begins to level the playing field and allows hardworking and talented people in poor countries to start to compete directly with those in wealthy countries.

    One case of this dynamic at work is the computer and video games industry. Once, they were only created by ‘first world’ nations like Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom. And then came South Korea, as its prosperity increased through the 1980s and 1990s. And then China got in on the game. And India.

    And now innovators in Vietnam are using the medium to make money, and tell a story from a distinctly Vietnamese perspective. And that story is the long-running Vietnam wars that engulfed the country, from the 1950s through the 1960s until 1975 when the last of the United States’ helicopters left Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam.

    Emobi Games (http://emobigames.vn) from Hanoi, unified Vietnam’s current capital, uses the motto “Enjoy challenges.” Launched in 2011 by founder and director Nguyen Tuan Huy, it has created 7554, a game that places players in the shoes of a Vietnamese soldier during the independence war against the French. Cleverly, it also comes at a competitive price: US $12.

    The game’s name refers to May 7, 1954, the day the French army in Dien Bien Phu surrendered to the Vietnamese People’s Army. This led to the end of the European colonial power’s occupation of its Indochinese colonies. The high death toll and sacrifice from the wars with France and the United States still resonate in the country, and the game reflects this.

    A young team of 20 developers worked on the project for three years. It cost the company an estimated US $802,748 to complete. It was extensively researched to ensure historical accuracy.

    “Dien Bien Phu is a great victory that we are proud of. That day, 7th of May 1954, is a symbol of our strength,” Huy told Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com).

    “I think it is similar to what Americans feel when they celebrate July 4th. Independence is very important and something worth fighting for. It is also something worth honouring.”

    The game is the end product of an intense struggle to prove critics and sceptics wrong. Many doubted the company could deliver a product that could compete with the more established players. The video game market for firstperson shooters – where the player uses a weapon to engage in first-person combat – has been transformed in the last decade. Many games are highly sophisticated products akin to major films. The Call of Duty (callofduty.com) franchise is a good example. These games have elaborate graphics and story concepts, often use professional actors and come with high-cost, high-publicity marketing campaigns to back up game launches.

    The money at stake is significant: the global video games market is estimated to be worth US $65 billion in 2011 (Reuters). Game makers Activision Blizzard, makers of Call of Duty, had an annual revenue of US $4.8 billion.

    On its website, Emobi proudly takes on the doubters: “We are a very young company in Vietnam, currently we focus on one task: Building a successful PC Video Game for the Vietnamese. Most Vietnamese don’t believe that Vietnam can produce (a) PC Video Game.

    “We, the young people, think about this as a challenge, and want to overcome that. Maybe we will fail, maybe we will succeed. But that’s not important. (It is) Important that it must be time for the Vietnamese Game.”

    Huy admits it was a struggle to make the game.

    “Video games, films or any kind of entertainment in our country must adhere to certain standards,” explains Huy. “Entertainment must not be too violent or too sexy. Our government policy is stricter than other countries, especially when compared to Western countries.”

    Vietnam regulates gaming in various ways including limiting how long people can play online and the opening hours for Internet cafes.

    Out of a population of over 86 million people (World Bank) it is believed Vietnam has 12 million video gamers: a substantial market in the country alone. They play games from around the world and increasingly are willing to pay for legal licenses. This is a key development, since getting gamers to pay represents a revenue stream. With revenue, players in the global South can contribute to the building of their home-grown businesses to become big players.

    “The video game industry is just in its infancy,” said Huy. “We only have four studios that develop major games. Most work on online games. There are not many people who work in game development. Those that do are self-taught. There are no universities that provide education in games development. We learn by doing, failing and doing it again until we get it right.”

    Viewing warfare through non-Western eyes is part of the game’s unique selling point, Huy says.

    “American gamers have not been exposed to many war games where they play as a soldier who is not of American or British background. I think some may find this perspective refreshing.”

    Huy said that “7554 may give some gamers a new perspective. But what is most important is that we create a game that is fun to play.

    “We think we have created a game that FPS (first person shooter) shooter fans will enjoy. The price point is low so that will hopefully allow more people to play the game. I think gamers understand that a good game can come from anywhere in the world. I think gamers are willing to experience different cultures through games, so long as the experience is enjoyable.”

    The 7554 game is scheduled to be launched in the United States and France in February 2012 for personal computers.

    In the future, the company hopes to raid history for more battle scenarios to create new games.

    “Unfortunately there have been many battles fought, so we have a full history to pull from in order to create games,” Huy said.

    Published: January 2012

    Resources

    1) Animation Xpress Asia Pacific: A website packed with interviews and resources for the animation community.Website: http://www.axapac.com

    2) How to make video games: An online website with step-by-step resources to get started. Website:http://www.make-video-games.com

    3) Changing Dynamics of Global Computer Software and Services Industry: Implications for Developing Countries:A report from UNCTAD on how computer software can become the most internationally dispersed high-tech industry. Website:http://www.unctad.org/templates/webflyer.asp?docid=1913&intitemid=2529&lang=1

    4) Southern Innovator: A new magazine launched by UNDP’s Special Unit for South-South Cooperation. The first issue’s theme is mobile phones and information technology. Website: http://www.southerninnovator.org

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • New African Film Proving Power of Creative Economy

    New African Film Proving Power of Creative Economy

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    A new movie is generating excitement around life in the war-torn, chaotic and impoverished Democratic Republic of the Congo(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo – the central African nation – and proving how versatile and resilient a creative economy can be in a crisis.

    Viva Riva! (http://www.vivarivamovie.com) is set in the capital, Kinshasa, and gives a raw portrayal of sex, violence and gangsters in the city. The film has already won a fistful of awards, and will now be released in 18 African countries.

    Written and directed by Djo Tunda Wa Munga, it is being hailed as the first feature-length film to be made in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 25 years. The industry was shut down by long-serving dictator and President Mobutu Sese Seko, who was overthrown in 1997 in the First Congo War by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who was supported by the governments of Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.

    Africa has a rich film history but its movies have struggled to reach commercial audiences – both on the continent and around the world – outside of showcases at film festivals. Without access to a wide audience, filmmakers are not able to make the sort of profits possible for films with a wide commercial distribution. It has also been hard to compete with the big budgets and the big publicity machines of traditional film centres like Hollywood or Europe. But it looks like Viva Riva! could change that situation.

    Indigenous African filmmaking took off as countries became independent of their colonial European rulers in the 1960s and 1970s. One example is the Senegalese film comedy Xala (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073915/), directed by Ousmane Sembéne, and considered a classic. Previous portrayals of Africa have mostly been viewed through the cinematic lens of Europeans.

    As the second largest country in Africa, the Congo has an estimated population of over 71 million (2011 estimate), with Kinshasa home to more than 8 million people (CIA – The World Factbook). It has suffered badly from war and chaos and has some of the world’s worst statistics for rape and sexual violence brought about by these conditions. The so-called Second Congo War began in 1998 and is considered the world’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

    As a result, the world’s biggest United Nations peacekeeping mission is in the country in an attempt to stabilise the situation. (http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/monuc/).

    Filmmaking forms part of the creative economy, a vital and growing sector in many countries. As the Creative Economy Report 2010 states: “A new development paradigm is emerging that links the economy and culture, embracing economic, cultural, technological and social aspects of development at both the macro and micro levels. Central to the new paradigm is the fact that creativity, knowledge and access to information are increasingly recognized as powerful engines driving economic growth and promoting development in a globalizing world.”

    For example,Nigeria’s US $2.75 billion annual film industry is the third largest in the world, following the U.S. and India. Nigeria’s ‘Nollywood’ produces more than 1,000 films a year, creating thousands of jobs, and is the country’s second most important industry after oil. In recognition of its importance, the country’s government has invested in the industry, reforming policies and providing training to promote film production and distribution.

    The Creative Economy Report 2010 has highlighted a few key trends for the global South. It found that creative industry products, especially domestically consumed ones like videos, music, video games and TV programmes, are weathering the global economic crisis well. It also found the creative economy can help boost economies and bring countries out of recession if the right government policies are in place.

    The exporting of creative goods and services continues to grow, doubling from 2002 to 2008. This represented a 14 percent per year growth rate. The global South’s exporting of creative goods reached a high of US $176 billion by 2008 and represented 43 percent of the world’s total creative industries trade.

    The majority of the world’s mobile phones are now in developing countries, representing a vast, new platform for distributing, sharing and selling cultural products and services. Broadband Internet is also being rolled out to more countries and represents an enormous emerging opportunity waiting for enterprising people to seize.

    The report also found more and more cities across the global South are placing creative economies at the centre of their urban development, emphasising culture and creative activities.

    For Viva Riva!, the next stop is Africa-wide release in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland and Uganda. The film’s producers have their sights set on even more countries in central and West Africa.

    “We want to show that you can release African films acrossAfrica,” co-producer Steven Markovitz told The Guardian. “As far as we can tell, it’s unprecedented. No one has tried to do an Africa-wide release in so many countries.”

    There is more at stake with the film than just Congolese pride: it is about proving an African film can successfully take on the slick and well-funded film distribution machines deployed byAmerica’s Hollywood and European film distributers.

    With the African middle class growing and a burgeoning African consumer class now clearly identified, many see this as the right time to make African film pay.

    “African cinemas have been dominated by Hollywood and European cultural programmes catering to the intellectual elite, not tapping into a growing middle class who are interested in seeing films about themselves and their neighbours,” Markovitz told The Guardian.

    “There is an audience, a real market for African films. They have disposable income and they want to be entertained. We hope that this will create a pipeline for further African titles on the continent.”

    Viva Riva! is in French and Lingala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingala_language). The story revolves around a hustler who makes quick cash stealing oil and celebrates by going on a hedonistic romp through Kinshasa’s night clubs.

    The film had its international debut at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and won the 2011 MTV Movie award for best African film.

    Markovitz is from South African film production company Big World Cinema (http://www.bigworld.co.za). The producers hope the film will appeal to both French speakers and English speakers.

    “There are distribution challenges in Africa but we thought this one presents an opportunity to make it happen,” he said. “Some African films have felt like homework but this is an entertaining action film and we think it can cross language barriers. We have to try things out.”

    Critics have said good things about the film. The Nigerian actor and director Akin Omotoso told The Guardian: “I loved Viva Riva! Absolute breath of fresh air, an adrenalin rush from top to bottom, a great gangster flick.”

    The film is unique as an African production that has “captured not just international attention but the continent’s attention”, he added.

    “I think it stands a good chance; as we know, it’s up to the audience but either way it has made history.”

    Published: November 2011

    Resources

    1) UNCTAD Global Database on the Creative Economy. Website:http://unctadstat.unctad.org/ReportFolders/reportFolders.aspx?sCS_referer=&sCS_ChosenLang=en

    2) Creative Economy Report 2010: Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option. Website:http://www.unctad.org/Templates/WebFlyer.asp?intItemID=5763&lang=1

    4) Dictionary of African Filmmakers from Indiana University Press. Website:http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=76770

    6) The Filmmakers Guide to South Africa is the most recognised, established and representative brand marketing the South African film industry locally and internationally. Website: http://www.filmmakersguide.co.za

    7) Youth Filmmakers Africa: An initiative in Kenya to inspire the next generation of filmmakers. Website:http://www.indiegogo.com/Youth-Filmmakers-Africa

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    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/11/30/nollywood-booming-nigerian-film-industry/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/03/30/riverwood-kenyan-super-fast-super-cheap-filmmaking/

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023