The African Union and the 13-man Jury of the All
Africa Music Awards, AFRIMA, have unveiled the Nominees List for the 2016
edition of AFRIMA, the continent’s leading music awards.
The highly anticipated Nominees List for the 2016
awards tagged AFRIMA 3.0. was announced to the world media on Monday, August
22, at the Protea Hotel, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos with live online broadcast.
In attendance were officials of the African Union
Commission, members of the AFRIMA Jury, members of the International Committee
of AFRIMA, past AFRIMA winners and nominees, media executives and other
stakeholders in the creative/entertainment industries of Africa.
According to the Moderator of the adjudication
process, Mr. Mike Strano, about 2700 entries from African music professional
were received during the period of May 20, 2015 to July 30, 2016. Describing
the nominations process as careful and thorough, Mr. Strano harped on the
Jury’s resolve to be fair and transparent.
“The Jury is very careful about being
accurate right from the process of verifying eligibility of entries to the
process collating and finalising results. It is an evolving process but one we
work painstakingly at to ensure transparency and fairness”, Strano explained.
Speaking further Mike Strano who is the Regional
Director, Eastern Africa/Co-Producer, AFRIMA said, “There are 34 categories of
the award but only 10 are released today August 22, which are the Regional
Categories. A new category introduced this year is the “People’s Choice Award”
which comes out from a healthy debate by the International Committee of AFRIMA
and the Jury.”
The Best Female Artistes and Best Male Artistes of
the five regions have been released while the nominees in the continental
categories will follow suit seven days after.
Describing the jurors’ experience as rewarding, the
Head, Culture Division, African Union Commission, AUC, Mrs. Angela Martins,
reiterated the AU and AFRIMA’s objectives of unity among African artistes and
the need for continental integration while celebrating its rich music and
heritage.
She said, “The adjudication process was very
rewarding and as one privileged to be part of the Jury, I was able to discover
the widespread talents in the different regions of our beloved continent. Now,
that the AFRIMA adjudication has been finalised, we expect that in the coming
months, Africans will recognise these nominated artistes by putting in votes
for all of them.”
One of the two jury members representing Eastern
Africa, Mr. Richard Kawesa, a Ugandan, eulogised AFRIMA’s decision to
digitalise its screening process for 2016. “In the past years, we were using
paper to grade but now in 2016, AFRIMA has shown innovativeness with all of us
making use of technology, laptops, tablets and mobile devices to screen and
grade with ease.”
Public voting for the nominees in the different
categories of the awards will open on August 30. In partnership with the AUC
and the Official Host City, Lagos State, the AFRIMA 3.0. calendar of events for
November 4-6, 2016 will include the Africa Music Summit on Friday, November 4,
and the AFRIMA Music Village, an open concert-style festival featuring nominees
and other top billed music stars. The grand awards ceremony holds on Sunday,
November 6 with over 2,500 guests expected in Lagos, Nigeria for the various
events.
No comments:
Post a Comment