270 african appropriations
gain, which constitutes a subversion of the international order of things
that privileges the West. The majority of examples I discuss in this book,
however, do not necessarily subvert the foreign cultural artifacts they
relate to in any significant way. They rather emulate them. African appro-
pr iators have t hus establ ished t hemselves a s brokers of g loba l ma ss c u lt u re
by providing local audiences with “copies with a difference,” which are
invested with both local meaning and the aura of globality. This is both a
marketing strategy and a claim to participate in global media flows.
However, participation in global media flows must not stop at purely
symbolic means. During the past ten years or so, some of the local culture
industries I have taken my examples from, such as Kany wood in northern
Nigeria and the Bongo movie industry of Tanzania, have been able to enter
into transnational circulation and to thus open up to new audiences be-
yond their immediate constituencies. W hile Hausa videos travel along the
Savannah belt of West Africa to the centers of the Hausa diaspora and all
the way to Saudi Arabia, Bongo movies are watched throughout Swahili-
speaking East Africa. Subtitled versions of films from both industries are
also broadcast continent-wide, via Africa Magic Plus, a channel dedicated
to film productions in African languages operated by the South African
satellite pay-television network dstv. The success of these industries is
still surpassed by that of Nolly wood, the video film industry of southern
Nigeria whose English language films are watched across Africa and the
African diaspora worldwide (cf. Krings and Okome 2013a). In terms of
output, Nolly wood has already been baptized the third largest film indus-
try in the world (after Bolly wood and Holly wood) by a unesco report
in 2009. Even though it is still unclear whether it will be able to leave the
continental and diasporic niche, Nolly wood has most certainly become
a player to reckon with in global media-scapes. Perhaps we will soon wit-
ness the appropriation of its aesthetics and the mimetical interpretation
of its stories by cultural producers from elsewhere. I am already wonder-
ing what a Holly wood remake of a Nolly wood classic such as Karishika
would look like.