The All Africa Music Awards, AFRIMA and the African Union Commissionare are set to bring 2014 to a close with a show-stopping awards ceremony scheduled to hold on Saturday, December 27, at the prestigious Grand Ballroom, Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
In partnership with the African Union Commission, AUC, AFRIMA will be rewarding excellence in the continental music and media sectors at the awards ceremony. Preceding the ceremony will be the African Music Summit, themed “Reviving the Business of Music in Africa”, slated for the morning of Saturday, December 27, at the same Oriental Hotel. The summit is a platform for African and global music industry stakeholders to network and deliberate on how the music industry can be nurtured and structured to be a major contributor to national and continental economies. For the 2014 edition, the award project opened entry submission in 31 categories on May 15 and closed on July 21, in the process receiving a staggering total of 2,025 works for assessment. The AFRIMA nominees’ list unveiling took place in Lagos, Nigeria, on Tuesday, September 23, with popular African music names jostling alongside emerging music forces for space on the list. The Public and AFRIMA Academy voting began on www.afrima.org on September 30. It was expected to end on November 4. However, public voting was extended by three weeks, thus ending on Tuesday, November 25, thereby allowing African music fans and followers more time to vote for their favourite artistes. In the course of the invite-only award ceremony night, more than 30 of AFRIMA’s 23.9-carat gold-plated trophies will be received by music acts or groups in their respective categories. The trophy recipients will also include an AFRIMA Legend Awardee and the African Entertainment/Music Journalist of the Year. To spice up the proceedings will be sizzling performances from some of Africa’s top artistes and bands. “There is so much excitement in store for guests who attend both the Africa Music Summit and AFRIMA main award ceremony. The summit provides ample opportunity for robust and strategic deliberations on developing the African music industry to compete with the better developed industries around the globe”, said Delani Makhalima, AFRIMA Juror, from Zimbabwe.
Makhalima also added: “When we are done with the vital intellectual aspect of the event calendar, all attention turns to the glamourous, star-studded, cultural concept award ceremony for a fitting finale to the last weekend in 2014. AFRIMA is eager to welcome our African music stars from within and outside the continent, officials of the African Union Commission, members of the International Committee of AFRIMA and special guests”.
Committed to delivering a world-class 2014 event, the International Committee of AFRIMA revealed that part of the ceremony’s programme will pay tribute to lives affected by the scourge of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in some West African states and terrorist insurgency in Northern Nigeria, Somalia and part of Kenya; both disturbing trends had necessitated the rescheduling of the award ceremony.