Lagos To Host 2016 African Movie Academy Awards in April

West African business hub Lagos, Nigeria will play host for the 2016 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) slated for 30th of April, organizers of the event announced on Tuesday.

One of the major reasons to stage the awards in Lagos, according to the founder of AMAA, Ms Peace Anyiam-Osigwe was due to undesirable visa issuance delay by the 2015 AMAA host country, South Africa which affected the attendance of some countries.

“One of our greatest disappointments last year in AMAA was the fact that countries like Cameroun, Cape-Verde, Mauritian, Ethiopian struggled to get their visa to come into South Africa. Ghana got their visa on the day of AMAA by 6pm”, Anyiam-Osigwe said. "We don't want a situation where our nominees from across Africa and beyond wouldn't be able to attend AMAA".

Commenting on the choice of Lagos for this year event, she explained that “We don’t want to face that problem of having an AMAA event and our nominees are not there. We are very friendly and accommodating in Nigeria. For us to get visa, we had to go through the South African president. We lost a lot of money to airlines because we always fly all our nominees.

Ms. Peace Anyiam-Osigwe

"On AMAA’s achievement over the years, she said it had sponsored over 15,000 flights for Nigerians to expose them to the film circles around the world, “because we believe the more they go out, the more they learn, network and more wealth comes to our African cinemas.”



She revealed the nominations of the 2016 AMAA will hold in Dubai from 17th to 20th March, 2016 in conjunction with African Cinema Business Roundtable (ABR) were discussions will focus on Africa as the new frontier for creative investment. We are going to Dubai to show investors that Africa is the new frontier for investment.

2nd L-R: Akinfolarin Oluwaseun, New Project Lead, AMAA; Ms Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, founder AMAA and Kabiru Ailakhu, Head Logistics, AMAA, at a media interaction in Lagos on Tuesday, January 26, 2016.

The AMA awards are aimed at honouring and promoting excellence in the African movie industry as well as uniting the African continent through arts and culture. The award presentation is attended by numerous media representatives, celebrities, politicians, journalists, actresses and actors from all across the world. The AMA awards are widely considered to be Africa's most important film event and the most prestigious film award in Africa.