AFRIMA jury members unveiled

The All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) is gathering momentum. Last week, the international committee of the awards unveiled its jury members at an event held at Ibis Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.

Despite the heavy downpour, media personalities and major stake holders in the entertainment industry thronged the venue to be part of the continental movement.

The 13-man jury who are part of the AFRIMA Academy comprising of 527 members grouped into two layers of adjudicators and spread across the five regions of Africa and the Diaspora arrived in Lagos on Thursday, July 31 for a week-long adjudication process.

The highly experienced and professional personalities including Tabu Osusa, Oscar Kidjo, Richard Kawesa, Christian Syren, Delani Makhalima, Laolu ‘Akins’ Akintobi, Robert Ekukole, Kiki Toure, Rab Bakari, Rita Ray, and Angela Martins were drawn from Kenya, Benin Republic, Uganda, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Cameroon, UK and USA.

Speaking at the event, AFRIMA’s executive producer, Mike Dada reiterated the core values of the awards, which are fairness, authenticity, creativity, excellence, integrity and transparency. “In line with our integrity and transparency values, we are trying to ensure that the adjudication process, pre-selection process, auditing phase, nomination process and the eventual voting process are all transparent.

“We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past. We’ve seen many awards where the people and followers of music in Africa have questioned the integrity and transparency of these awards. As such, we deliberated and did a lot of research and finally had a model which is the 13-man jury panel and 527 members of the Academy,” he said.

In partnership with the African Union, AFRIMA is a combined effort of music professionals across the continent aimed at celebrating the rich musical heritage of the African continent and encouraging the growth of talented artistes in the Diaspora.

The award ceremony, which promises to be a premium and star-studded event, will take place on November 9. It will be broadcast to 84 countries on 109 television stations. This show would be preceded by the AFRIMA Village, a four-day event of music festival featuring art exhibitions and music concerts between November 4 and 7. There will also be an Africa music summit on November 6 and 7 with the theme ‘Reviving the Business of Music in Africa’. The two-day conference will be a platform for the music industry stake holders to engage and deliberate on how the industry can be nurtured and be a major contributor to national and continental economies.