Experts predict the fall of Africa's biggest media selling place by 2020

Experts have projected that Africa’s biggest media market, Alaba International Market, will lose its relevance by 2020 as a result of the digital media shift that is changing the industry.

Speaking at the 2014 Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers Annual Conference, founder of EbonylifeTV, Mo Abudu revealed.

“With digitalisation, they will have less and less to do and they would make less and less. A time would come when they would find that they would be eliminated naturally. It’s only a matter of time.”

According to a report by BusinessDay, Alaba’s undoing is also the key to its disreputable success. The distribution of media thrives on the back of piracy, which makes it difficult or investors and producers to recoup their investments, discouraging investment from the capital market into the entertainment industry.

Yewande Sadiku, CEO, IBTC Capital Limited, highlights distribution as the main problem holding investors from placing funds in the industry as a result of piracy, which Alaba supports. IBTC Capital was the financier of the Nollywood movie, Half of A Yellow Sun.

As technology has made the distribution of media more efficient through online channels via phones, tablets and PCs, media content is being distributed and sold increasingly through these channels, leaving less and less of the market share to the pirates at Alaba.

“Nobody is going to rushing around to buy a DVD that is of poor quality when they can get something clearly on iROKOTV or Ebonylife, or whatever service it may be”.

Jason Njoku, founder, iROKO Partners limited concurs. He says, “Piracy in Nigeria is just in the physical world. The moment you move to DTT, DTH, digital, they have no idea what you are going on about.

“Their world is the old world, if you will, in five year’s time it will be dead. There is a new world, it is being created”

Cecil Hammond, founder, Flytime Productions, buttresses this point as well.

“You can just download an entire album on your phone or ipad, so they wouldn’t be a problem very soon,” he says.

After Agriculture, the entertainment industry is the second largest employer of labour. Yet the gains from the industry, which is valued at about $1.3 billion, have largely fallen through the cracks, creating and enriching piracy barons in the infamous Alaba Market.