Nollywood has no shortage of talent. Every year, new actors, directors and filmmakers emerge with the potential to become global stars. What the industry continues to lack, however, is the professional infrastructure needed to sustain those careers. Among the most overlooked parts of that infrastructure is talent management.
As a film and creative industry, it is often easy for creatives to sign unfavourable contracts and brand deals with no proper structure in place. Many have fallen victim to such deals, while the people responsible face few consequences, because there is no defined structure to hold them to account.
The conversation around this lack of structure is not new. Producers raise it often. Creative talents lament the difficulty of breaking into international spaces. What has been missing is a workable answer to who takes this on. That is where a growing movement around professional talent management, led in part by figures like Toyosi Etim-Effiong, comes in.
A Push for Infrastructure
Nollywood has always thrived on talent, resilience and improvisation. Yet behind its global acclaim lies one of the industry’s biggest structural gaps: the absence of a strong culture of professional talent management. This has left many actors and filmmakers navigating their careers without the strategic guidance needed to build sustainable, globally competitive brands.
On July 28, 2026, Toyosi Etim-Effiong took the stage at an exclusive roundtable on “Talent Management as Critical Infrastructure for Cultural Exchange & The Creative Economy” at Eko Hotel’s Abora Suites. Her remarks captured the argument at the centre of this piece. “If Nigeria and Africa are going to be serious about becoming a global creative powerhouse, talent management can no longer be disregarded but seen as an infrastructure,” she said. Her argument reflects a growing consensus that talent management should be treated as industry infrastructure rather than an optional service.
With her proposed talent management academy, Etim-Effiong has outlined plans to train and certify at least 10,000 talent managers across Africa by 2030. She has said one moment that sharpened her focus on this gap came during the Africa Creative Market in 2022, when executives from Paramount and Canal+ described wanting co-production deals with Nigeria but having no structured way to reach talent, relying instead on word of mouth. That experience fed into her Megowa concept, an outward-facing platform positioned as an African equivalent of IMDb, meant to connect creative talents, including those in Nollywood, with international opportunities and deals.
That plan is ambitious, and it arrives with real momentum behind it, particularly for an industry where talent management has long lagged behind its equivalent in music. But the academy is one proposal among what should be a wider industry shift, not the whole of the argument for why talent management matters.
What Talent Managers Actually Do
Nollywood is a face-driven industry, and it can be overwhelming for actors and creatives to navigate on their own. At every stage of a career, there are questions about what comes next and how to present oneself on a global scale. These are the questions talent managers are built to answer.
At its core, talent management is career strategy. Managers negotiate contracts, build professional relationships, secure opportunities, shape public image, and help creatives make long-term decisions about their careers. They take on this workload so that talent can focus on their craft.
“More creative people need to realize that what they have is a business,” Harry Kasiena, Programme Lead at British Council Nigeria Arts & Culture, said at the roundtable. The comment speaks to a common assumption in Nollywood, that creative work is a passion-driven pursuit rather than something that can be structured as a business. Talent management offers one route to a more sustainable, more profitable structure for the industry.
What Currently Exists: Case Studies
Examples are not yet numerous, but a handful of Nollywood professionals have already embraced talent management for strategic positioning, and their careers offer a working model.
One of the most recent is veteran actress Uche Jombo, now managed by Guguru Talent Management. Her decision was notable given her decades-long career; if a performer with that much experience sees value in structure, why shouldn’t others? It is a reminder that talent management is not only for newcomers. It presents an opportunity for evolution and sustainability at any career stage.
Uzor Arukwe, an actor and producer managed under the same company, is another case worth noting. Since joining Guguru Talent Management, Arukwe has continued to build momentum through major film roles, brand partnerships and industry recognition, including his Best Lead Actor win at the 2026 Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards (AMVCA). His trajectory does not prove that management alone drives success, but it does illustrate the kind of structure, intentionality and strategic branding the industry is asking for.
Emeka Golden offers a similar case. The actor, managed under Sibon Talents Africa, transitioned from modelling into acting in 2012 and is known for performances in We Have Rats, My Flatmates and Road Trip. Since joining Sibon Talents, he secured his first international nomination for his performance in Son of the Soil (2025).
Other talents point to the same pattern, including Folu Storms, managed under Demi Banwo’s Working Talent, and Chuks Joseph, under Wingonia Ikpi’s Boxonia Blueprint. Taken together, their careers show what talent management can do for individual talents and, by extension, for the industry.
Catching Up With Global Standards
Across other film industries, this structure already exists and is prioritised. Hollywood, Korean cinema and Bollywood all operate on ecosystems built around dedicated agents, managers, entertainment lawyers, publicists and PR teams, each handling a distinct part of a talent’s career so that no single relationship carries the full weight of it. Agents negotiate deals. Managers shape long-term career strategy. Lawyers protect the fine print. Publicists manage image and press. That division of labour is part of what allows those industries to move talent fluidly between film, television, brand partnerships and international markets. Nollywood, by comparison, still asks individual talents to navigate most of that terrain alone, or to lean on informal, often unpaid, help from friends and family. Closing that gap is central to the industry’s global ambitions.
The Big Picture
Etim-Effiong has argued that talent management puts Africa’s creativity on the right stage, at the right moment and on the right terms. Behind most global success stories, there is a manager or team helping translate individual talent into a sustainable international career. She has also pointed out that across Nigeria and Africa, the systems needed to manage creative talent are not growing as fast as the talent itself. TGM’s academy is one attempt to close that gap, though it will need buy-in across the industry, not just adoption of a single programme, to make a lasting difference.
Whether Toyosi Etim-Effiong’s academy succeeds or not, the conversation it has sparked is one Nollywood can no longer afford to postpone. As the industry competes on a global stage, talent management should be viewed not as a luxury for a handful of stars but as an essential part of the creative ecosystem. Great films require great talent, but sustainable careers require equally strong systems to support them
