We are drawing closer to the end of what has been an amazing year, that time of the year when award shows will be celebrating the input of stakeholders, artists, media personalities et al! It is worth mentioning that every single year, a new award show comes up to impact in their way either as a sign of contributing to the better entertainment industry, rewarding excellence or striking the balance. With an influx of many participants in the entertainment space, there is a need for new awards, to enable others who can’t win some to stand a chance of winning others.
Over the years, it’s undoubtedly evident that most African awards don’t get the attention from Africans that Africans give to foreign awards. In as much as many of these awards are clout chasing ones and money laundering schemes and always below par, always disappearing after some time, some prestigious awards have lasted decades too, but why is that Africans in general still give more attention to foreign awards than they do to African awards?
We know the Grammy Awards (Grammys), Oscar Awards (Oscars), and many other foreign awards have stood their ground and are everyone’s dream, but can we start seeing African entertainers also boasting about their home awards? Yes, there is no doubt that award, organizers have to step up their game and reduce some of their “mafia” and obvious agendas, giving more credibility and branding touches to their awards to make them more relevant. We know most deserving entertainers sometimes get fade up and blast the awards when they don’t win, but what if the winners were proud of the awards they win?
For example, imagine blogs or media outlets profiling Mic Monsta and tagging him “The Muma Award winning rapper” or maybe profiling Daphne Njie as the Canal D’or winner, calling Fally Ipupa an AFRIMMA Award winning artist, Stanley Enow an MTV Africa Music Award winner and the list goes on and on. The current generation has got to give relevance to African awards to stir hunger in the generation to come.
We are not saying they should not aim for the Grammys or others. What we’re saying is that we in general, should also mention African Awards that have put in time, money and effort to award African artists, entertainers blogs/bloggers ans media outlets for their work to give the award more credibility.
It’s obvious that an entertainer’s dream to us to also one day win big and grab the mighty prizes and awards to spice up their careers, and to have their names in history books. A question we should ask ourselves is how did American awards become so relevant (but not African awards)? Well the answer is simple… their people gave it relevance and we (Africans) give it even more relevance.
In 2020, we saw Richard Bona destroying and throwing away the Canal D’or Awards that he had won in Cameroon, however, he would not have done that to the Grammy Awards.
Why? The answer is simple, the awards despite having a big name could be properly branded in his opinion. This is to say that African awards have the responsibility to stir some hunger via its branding and prizes that follow. The structures need to be up to the task. Can we also have a foreign entertainer, (not an African) being anxious to win an African award in the years ahead?
There is a responsibility to make Africa great and these schemes are not small to give the continent some relevance. Africans need to understand that foreign awards also face criticism and some political agendas are also the order of the day, but they are still a dream to many Africans. Why? That’s for you to answer.
