Nollywood to Naija-comedy: Comedy, Skits and Creative Digital Jurisprudence

In a short talk to a group of IP mentees I explored how the Classic Nollywood industry birthed the current Nigerian indigenous Comedy industry-Naija comedy. I also examined the AI creative jurisprudence and the need for IP lawyers to gear up towards uncharted legal territories in rights protection and downstream economic advisory roles.

Nollywood, the Nigerian audiovisual industry is among the world’s biggest film industries currently. Globally, Hollywood of the United States and Bollywood of India occupy the first and second position hierarchically in terms of cinematic impact. One of the derivatives creations of the classical Nollywood is the birth of a subset industry, which this paper refers to as Naija- comedy. This short paper seeks to analyze the intersection of a strong copyright regime and indigenous creativity using traditional and ingenious Nigerian comedy, that began initially from a place of sheer recreation and entertainment but has become a niche entrepreneurial brand as a focal take of point in the discussion on the African creative industries.