A Nigerian filmmaker isn’t happy with what he’s seeing on Ghanaian TV, and he’s saying so directly.
Uchenna Mbunabo calls out several Ghanaian television stations for airing Nollywood films without permission, and he’s calling on Ghana’s National Film Authority (NFA) to enforce the country’s copyright laws rather than letting the practice slide. He raised the issue directly with James Gardiner, the NFA’s Deputy CEO, during their conversation.
Mbunabo didn’t hold back. He wanted to know how it could be legal for TV stations to pull Nigerian films off YouTube and broadcast them for free. “I noticed that Ghanaian TV stations, the way they are stealing our films and showing them for free with impunity,” he said. “Is it legalised in your country for TV stations to go on YouTube, download people’s sweat and show it for free?”
His claim is specific: some Ghanaian stations, he says, have been grabbing newly released Nollywood films straight off YouTube and airing them without ever contacting the producers, cutting off a revenue stream those films rely on. He also pointed out that he’d never seen Nigerian stations do the same thing to Ghanaian content, and pressed Gardiner on what Ghana was actually doing to protect filmmakers’ work.
Gardiner didn’t deny it. He admitted the problem is real and said the NFA has already started talking to other regulators, the Ministry of Communications, the National Communications Authority, and the National Media Commission, about tightening up copyright enforcement.
The trouble, he explained, is that a lot of these stations barely exist in any physical sense anymore. “There are copyright laws, but they are not effective because a lot of the TV stations don’t have offices,” Gardiner said. “Most of them are now digital, so they operate from anywhere. They can even have a Ghanaian TV station but be operating from Austria simply because it is digital.”
To get a handle on that, Gardiner said regulators are looking to roll out a new licensing framework — one that would require broadcasters to go through a fresh licensing process, making it easier to track who’s operating and hold them accountable. Stations caught airing pirated content would have to pay compensation to the affected producers, he said, and repeat offenders would risk having their licences suspended. A third strike, he added, could mean losing the licence altogether.
Gardiner stopped short of giving an exact timeline, but said the reforms are already in motion and he’s hopeful there’ll be real progress within the year.
Mbunabo welcomed the plan but pushed for it to move faster, pointing out that every day this continues is another day filmmakers lose ground on recovering their production costs through legitimate channels like YouTube. He was also quick to clarify that this wasn’t an attack on Ghana’s film industry as a whole; he’s worked with plenty of Ghanaian actors over the years. He remains firmly in favour of Nollywood and Ghallywood working together.
