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.
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