It’s no secret that Nigerian artistes and entertainers are on a roll globally. Let’s look at the artistes. Burna boy was on Barack Obama’s official annual music playlist multiple times between 2019 and 2023. Wizkid was featured on the soundtrack of Hollywood blockbusters like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and the live action remake of the Disney classic, Lion-King. He has also had collabos with global stars like Drake and Chris Brown. Davido, who also has had a collabo with Chris Brown, performed at the Qatar World Cup closing ceremony. Bill Gates, founder of tech-titan Microsoft and a former richest man in the world (at one time he held this position for 13 years straight), revealed that his younger daughter had recommended that he listen to Burna boy and Rema back in 2023, shortly before a planned trip to Nigeria.
It isn’t just Nigerian music having a field day. Nollywood, Nigeria’s film capital, is the world’s second‑largest film industry by volume, producing thousands of films annually. A number of its most popular titles get streamed on major streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The present developments in Nigerian music and film are a source of pride and boost to the Nigerian psyche. To further cement this feeling of pride, I think it is important to point out an underappreciated fact: Nigerian artistic creativity has long made an impact on global culture before now. To appreciate how long, one has to go as far back as 1000 BC to the Nok Civilization.
The period of the Nok Civilization (1,000 BC to 300 AD) produced some astonishing terracotta sculptures such that when they were discovered in the early 20th century, they challenged outdated colonial narratives that Africa lacked sophisticated pre‑colonial art traditions. They also partly inspired great western modernist artists like Pablo Picasso, who drew from African sculptural abstraction. Picasso would also incorporate African mask aesthetics into revolutionary styles like Cubism. Nok works are now displayed in major museums worldwide, symbolizing Africa’s deep artistic heritage.
The sculptural influence doesn’t end there. The Ife and Benin kingdoms of the 12th-15th century produced ivory and bronze works that stunned European explorers with their sophistication. Ife art demonstrated Africa’s mastery of metallurgy and aesthetics, producing astonishingly lifelike bronze and terracotta heads, rivaling classical Greek sculpture, with all influencing global appreciation of realism and humanism in art. Benin ivory and bronze works were so good that they were looted during the 1897 British expedition, with thousands of bronzes entering European and American museums as a result. They have since sparked global debates about restitution and colonial exploitation.
There are other previous instances of Nigerian artistic impact on global culture. Take theatre for instance. Nigerian theatre’s traditional roots spring from masquerade performances, oral storytelling, and ritual drama across Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa cultures. These performances combined music, dance, and narrative, influencing later stage productions.
With the onset of colonialism, missionary schools and colonial institutions introduced Western theatrical forms, but Nigerian playwrights in the colonial period and after, adapted them to local contexts, creating hybrid styles that spoke to both African and global audiences. Major examples of such playwrights include:
- Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. His plays (Death and the King’s Horseman, The Trials of Brother Jero) are staged worldwide, blending Yoruba cosmology with universal themes of power and morality.
- Hubert Ogunde, who is widely considered to be the “father of Nigerian theatre.” He pioneered modern Yoruba travelling theatre in the 1940s, combining traditional performance with contemporary social commentary.
- Femi Osofisan and Ola Rotimi, whose works explore postcolonial identity, corruption, and cultural heritage, are widely studied in universities across Africa, Europe, and North America.
Nigerian theatre introduced African aesthetics into global dramaturgy, challenging Eurocentric models and enriching world theatre with new forms of storytelling. Nigerian plays are also performed at international festivals, showcasing African narratives to global audiences. On the academic front, Nigerian theatre is a staple in comparative literature and performance studies, shaping curricula in universities worldwide. Finally, Soyinka and others used Nigerian theatre as a form of political activism, influencing global traditions of protest theatre and inspiring movements in Latin America, Asia, and beyond.
Nigeria hasn’t failed to make its mark globally when it comes to literature. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, has been translated into 50+ languages and sold over 20 million copies globally. We have already mentioned Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka in connection to theatre. His novels and poetry collections also played their part in elevating Nigerian drama and poetry to a global audience. In more recent times, books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie like Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, have played a key role in shaping the global discourse on identity and feminism.
It would probably be unfair to make look it like Nigerian music’s influence started with the likes of Burna boy, Davido and Wizkid. The Afrobeats work of these 3 can trace their ancestry to the pioneering work of the likes of Fela Kuti, who fused jazz, funk, and Yoruba rhythms to create Afrobeat in the late 1960s. In the 1970s–80s, Fela toured Europe and the U.S., introducing Afrobeat to international audiences. His politically charged performances made Afrobeat both a musical and activist movement. Later, African migrants carried Afrobeat to London, Paris, and New York, where it influenced jazz, funk, and hip‑hop scenes.
Afrobeat classics have recently been rediscovered globally on streaming platforms, while Fela, in recognition of his pioneering efforts has been inducted posthumously into the Grammy hall of fame, cementing Afrobeat’s place in global music history.
In creating Afrobeat, Fela was drawing on an even older tradition of Ghanaian and Nigerian Highlife music. Highlife originated in Ghana in the early 20th century, where ballroom orchestras fused traditional Akan rhythms with brass, guitars, and pianos left behind by colonial forces. By the 1940s–50s, Nigerian dance bands adopted and localized highlife, infusing it with Yoruba, Igbo, and Edo rhythms. Lagos became a hub for experimentation, producing distinct sub‑styles like Igbo Highlife and Edo/Bini Highlife. In time, some innovators would establish themselves as key icons of Nigerian Highlife. They include:
- Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson who produced soulful Niger Delta highlife classics like Sawale, Lawson’s music remains timeless, bridging generations.
- Victor Uwaifo. An innovator of Edo highlife with hits like Joromi, blending traditional storytelling with electric guitar riffs.
- Oliver De Coque, who popularized Igbo highlife, mixing traditional rhythms with modern instrumentation, influencing later Afrobeat and Afropop sounds.
Nigerian highlife became a soundtrack for African migrants in Europe and the Americas, offering cultural continuity abroad. Highlife’s melodic guitar lines and syncopated rhythms influenced Caribbean calypso, Congolese rumba, and even jazz fusion.
Nollywood, like Nigeria’s current Afrobeats craze wasn’t an overnight success. Nollywood can trace its beginnings to the post-independence cinema productions of the 1960s and 70s like Kongi’s Harvest (adapted from Wole Soyinka’s play). The 1980s saw the rise of TV series such as The Village Headmaster and Cockcrow at Dawn, which laid the groundwork for storytelling styles later adopted in Nollywood.
As a result of the proliferation of videocassette (VHS) technology in the 1980s and 90s, the year 1992 saw the production of what is credited as Nollywood’s first movie, Living in Bondage. By the late 1990s, Nollywood was producing thousands of films annually, typically with low budgets but high cultural resonance. Movie themes tackled urban struggles, corruption, romance, and spirituality, resonating with audiences across Africa and the diaspora.
The 2000s-2010s saw Nollywood embark on global expansion. Nollywood films became staples in African communities abroad, from London to New York, offering cultural continuity. The industry gained international recognition, as it grew into the second‑largest film industry in the world by volume, producing about 2,500 films annually. Nigerian films began appearing at international festivals, while stars like Genevieve Nnaji and Omotola Jalade‑Ekeinde gained global fame. The arrival of DVDs and later streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime) expanded Nollywood’s reach, with films like Lionheart (2018) gaining global distribution.
Nollywood’s evolution has continued into the present. An increasing number of movies are attracting higher budgets, better cinematography, and international co‑productions. All this film making activity has had a huge economic impact, contributing billions to Nigeria’s GDP and providing employment to hundreds of thousands.
As we can see, Nigeria’s artistic journey spans millennia — from Nok terracottas and Benin bronzes to Nollywood blockbusters and Afrobeats chart‑toppers. Each era has carried Nigerian creativity across borders, embedding it deeply into the global cultural landscape.
In conclusion, I will say this. If Nigeria has been making artistic contributions worthy of global admiration since 1,000 years before the time of Jesus Christ, we can be pretty confident that Nigeria will keep making notable artistic contributions for many millennia to come.
