AFRIMA 2016 showed growth, but there's more work to be done [Award Review]

Here’s the best thing about the All Africa Music Awards: it’s a core African show that seeks to bring out the diversity of African music, harness it, and celebrate the stars. There’s a huge push from the organizers to unite African music via business, celebration and the government.

The All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA), in conjunction with the African Union Commission (AUC), is designed to promote the distinct rich African music worldwide, engaging millions of fans by propelling African music to glorious pinnacles beyond the borders of Africa. AFRIMA, the Pan Africa music awards is produced by PRM AFRICA located in Lagos, Nigeria to celebrate the most popular contemporary and traditional music in Africa.

After two years of pushing through the glass ceiling and trying to imprint a new organization on the minds and hearts of the continent, 2016 was meant to be the year where they take over as the biggest award on the continent. Lagos, Nigeria has hosted all three, and with each came fanfare, and plenty of media and celebrities to back it up.

They did takeover literally. The inclusion of the African Union, guarantees the organizers an unrestrained access to Government funding, connections and smoothens the logistics process. Government backing in Africa is key in many great inventions and achievements on the continent, and truly, they have had access to it all. From the AU, the power trickles down to lower national and state governments. This year, the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, was heavily involved, with meetings, State-hosted cocktails, co-signs and photo-ops. He was present also for the award ceremony, sitting resplendent in his full regalia and detail. It doesn’t get bigger than that.

Media for AFRIMA 2016 was worthy of emulation. Every cough done by anyone involved in the process was documented and a release was sent. There were press releases for meetings, roundtables, projections, conferences and everything else, had a press release dedicated to it. These releases were filtered to the media, via cogent partnerships and carried everyone along. There were also partnerships with numerous events and concerts, with a clear example being the location of an AFRIMA stand at the 2016 Felabration (the annual music festival in honor of Fela Kuti).

Third year running, the production of the event gave off the air of huge investments, but needed more in terms of structuring. You could feel the huge investment thrown in by the organizers, but attention to detail was lacking. The red carpet needed more structuring, with media crews failing to adhere to a definite system of efficient content gathering. The deficient system needed to be fixed by the organisers.

And then there was the definition of sound. There were many sound components, with sonic calibration being the main issue. Performances can be graded from best to worst, with several artistes putting in the work befitting of such a stage, while a few took time out to not deliver on their best work. Seyi Shay, Darey Art Alade (backed by the Soweto Gospel Choir), and Phyno were profound in quality. Joe El scraped the bottom of his performance routine, and provided very little as entertainment.

The decision to honour the late Rumba icon, Papa Wemba, and King Sunny Ade was a masterstroke which yielded not just the entertainment, but an extra touch of class to the night. It was emotional watching Diamond Platnumz, Brymo and Aramide deliver performances in celebration of these maestros.

But in terms of diversity, they brought it on in style. There was a huge effort to bring the continent together, with North, South, East and West Africa represented in numbers. They failed to bring in the required level of A-List stars to grace the event, but jump down a level, and you find the house populated to its capacity with the rest. And perhaps it is this shortage of A-list talents that inspired the destination of the awards.

Some of the best and deserving artistes lost to less influential and technical candidates. Best Hip-Hop went to Stanley Enow for the second year in a row, Aramide beat Yemi Alade and Tiwa Savage to the trophy for the Best Female Act in Africa. VVIP were awarded the best video on the continent with ‘Dogo Yaro’, Young John was credited as the producer of Wizkid’s ‘Baba Nla’, a hit which was supervised by Legendury Beatz.

All of these call the credibility of the award system into question. For an award to have the best ratings and regards, it has to be the standard for rewarding the best works. AFRIMA lacked in that regard as the best platform to objectively rate the best works of music produced by the continent. They need to revamp their system.

Also, there are too many categories. AFRIMA has a total of 32 categories, including 10 regional categories. This does not include the special recognition awards doled out to icons of the game. What these awards do is to complicate the event, and drag it on for long. If the organizers are to produce a great show in terms of brevity, they will need to streamline some categories either by merging them, or cutting them out.

If they can’t afford to take these out for marketing and conceptual purposes, a good option is to select the biggest awards of the night and hand them out during the official ceremony. The rest can be given backstage, on the red carpet or mailed to the winners with an announcement called out. AFRIMA 2016 stretched itself for what seemed like forever to the attendees. A show which started past 9pm, stretched into past 2am in the morning. That’s over 5 hours of a ceremony. It’s definitely too long.

AFRIMA scored a big one this year, in terms of reputation and marketing as the biggest all-inclusive African music award ceremony on the continent. They have successfully implanted their name in the music space, and generated enough conversations to be taken seriously by both the fans and the industry. But they are coming up against the formidable award royalty of the MTV Africa Music Awards. To beat the group at Viacom, they have to be the best at business, and they aren’t quite there yet.

But they are close, and they have shown consistent growth. AFRIMA 2017 will be an interesting one to watch.