Why Do Pan-African Music Awards Struggle for Cultural Reverence?

MUSIC

Unlike the attention to the Grammys, other international awards and even national fares, music award events from across the continent receive far less respect, fanfare and cultural reverence.

For the first time in a few years, the All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) are happening. The festivities kicked off with a welcome soiree on January 7 and will continue with masterclasses, a concert featuring several artists, and will be capped by the award show on Sunday, January 11. This puts an end to AFRIMA’s hiatus since the award show last took place at the Grand Arena in Dakar, Senegal in January 2023. This ninth edition, moved forward from its initial November 2025 date, marks the seventh time the awards are taking place in Lagos, Nigeria.

Anticipation for this year’s AFRIMA depends on who you ask. Across many major routes in Lagos, there are banners lining up street poles and road dividers, announcing the awards and the festivities attached — mainly Friday night’s ‘Music Village’ concert. It’s the kind of advertising many in the city will notice, but it hasn’t led to the kind of widespread buzz that should ideally accompany a music award event catering to African music.

Online, there’s barely any of the chatter that popular award ceremonies usually create. There aren’t heated or jovial debates about artists competing, no discussions that frame the significance of AFRIMA within the broad scope of music listenership on the continent. It’s all so tepid and, if you step back a bit, you’ll realize this lack of enthusiasm towards pan-African music award events extends beyond AFRIMA.

The most engaged-with African music award event in recent memory is undeniably the MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMAs), which was held six times across an eight-year span. The MAMAs was quite the glitzy affair, carrying a distinct sparkle connected to the glamorous aesthetics of MTV award shows. Awards weren’t just presented at the MAMAs, they were platforms for several memorable moments, from the late, great South African rap artist HHP bringing the crowd in Nairobi and TV viewers under his spell with an iconic performance of “Mpitse” and American rap artist Future bringing out Nasty C, to that spicy kiss between Nigerian singer D’banj and South African media personality Bonang Matheba.

In its best moments, the MAMAs created a Utopia for pan-African music inclusivity and championed music from the continent as a growing force within broader, global music conversations. After three consecutive editions between 2008 and 2010, the event went on a hiatus till 2014, and was held for two more years after that. It has since been defunct, with a planned return in 2021 failing to materialize.

Before the MAMAs, the Kora Awards were the premiere award event in African music. Held for ten straight years between 1996 and 2005, the event highlighted the expansive breadth of music being made on the continent, with awardees ranging across dozens of countries. It returned for editions in 2010 and 2012 but hasn’t been back since, and a myriad of financial misappropriation allegations against the award’s founder, Ernest Adjovi, has muted the hope of any comeback.

Since the Kora Awards and the MAMAs, it’s arguable that no pan-African music award show has reached any significant, lasting level of cultural importance. AFRIMA, which was created with the African Union (AU), isn’t the only one of its kind in existence, but it’s the most prominent. It debuted in 2014, the same year as the African Muzik Magazine Awards (AFRIMMA), which was held in the U.S. until its most recent edition in 2023. For AFRIMA, an African-centered award show being held outside the continent was always a glaring problem, and it undermined its chances of becoming the definitive platform for the best in pan-African music to be awarded.

On a global scale, there’s a reckoning with the validity and significance of award shows. There’s constant chatter about drop in viewership, debates about voting processes, and the categorization system has faced scrutiny in an era where artists seamlessly traverse and interweave genres. Within this context, the work of an African award show gaining cultural traction across the continent (and beyond) is a daunting task that requires increased interest.

In a few weeks, the Grammys will take place and it’s guaranteed to get Africans more invested than AFRIMA will – nevermind that there’s only one dedicated (and somewhat problematic) award dedicated to African music at the Grammys. Some of it is artists and stakeholders framing a Grammy nod as the highest achievement to aspire to, inevitably minimizing the cultural impact of awards on the continent. Nigerian artists and industry insiders are more likely to be upset about a non-Nigerian winning the African category at the Grammy than bask in the favorable outcomes at AFRIMA and AFRIMMA, where they largely win the awards.

It’s even arguable that national award events like the South African Music Awards (SAMAs), Ghana Music Awards, The Headies in Nigeria, and Ethiopia’s ODA Awards receive more fanfare in their respective countries than pan-African fares. It points to the continued lack of integration among African audiences, where Africans are listening in silos and largely paying attention to local music or, in some cases, the most popular contemporary sounds that manage to cross borders, like Afrobeats and varying forms of South African house music.

Without an audience that ventures far and wide in its listening, pan-African awards won’t be able to muster the enthusiasm they need to reach cultural reverence. For example, AFRIMA opens voting to the audience, which means it’s subject to local biases. Without a listening base that has cultivated a truly wide palette, the awards will mainly be determined by subjective choices, which would make it more of a popularity contest than a true reflection of the best music/artists on the continent.

Pan-African award shows like AFRIMA are meant to be symbolic in the most tangible ways. Often, listeners and industry insiders talk about the need for African award events that neutralize the reverence many of us have laid at the feet of the Grammys, BETs, international MTV awards. Perhaps the answer already exists and we just need to figure out how to improve the cultural significance of what we have.