AMVCA 2026 : Africa’s Biggest Award is Still Burdened By its Oldest Problems

When, in 2013, MultiChoice Africa and its Africa Magic channels launched the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA), it was to celebrate and honour excellence in African film and television. Prior to this, there was no single, high-profile awards platform dedicated specifically to African screen content across the continent. From inception, the award was deliberate in framing itself as a populist award body that reflects actual audience engagement rather than purely industry consensus. The intention and credibility of the AMVCA is still being debated but there’s a consensus about its cultural relevance in the Nigerian and African creative economy. 

In 2013, South African Sara Blecher’s Otelo Burning had 14 nominations, Obi Emelonye’s The Mirror Boy with 11, and Akin Omotoso’s Man on Ground had 10. Otelo Burning won four awards, including Best Picture.  Blecher’s Otelo Burning won four award,s including Best Picture, Best Art Director, Best Make-up Artist and Best Lighting Designer. Akin Omotoso’s Man On Ground also won four awards including Best Movie Director, Best Cinematographer (for Paul Michelson), Best Picture Editor (for Aryan Kaganof) and Best Sound Editor (for Michael Botha and Joel Assaizky); Obi Emelonye’s The Mirror Boy won three awards including Best Movie Drama, Best Writer Drama and Best Costume Designer (for Ngozi Obazi); South African director Tim Greene’s Skeem won two awards: Best Movie Comedy and Best Writer Comedy.

On 9th May, 2026, the AMVCA held its twelfth edition of the award ceremony at its usual venue: the Eko Hotels and Suites. Expectedly, AMVCA-centred conversions monopolised Nigerians’ attention. However, as Jerry Chiemekie, Nigerian culture journalist and author, noted, the  public discourse focused more on “the fashion on display than the actual films and TV shows, even on the day of said event.” That the conversations fixated on the red carpet coverage, outfit critiques, and style commentary rather than substantive engagement with the nominated films and performances is a telling sign of an industry out of touch with its creative output. The AMVCA-themed conversations, which should dovetail between discussing films and fashion, get flattened into a fashion event. This tension exists at the Oscars too, where red carpet culture has historically competed with and sometimes overshadowed the films being honoured. The difference is that the Oscars exists within a film criticism ecosystem robust enough to hold both conversations simultaneously: you can have the fashion discourse on one channel while serious awards analysis runs in parallel across trade publications, podcasts, and broadsheets. In Nollywood, the Nigerian critical infrastructure is thinner, so when fashion dominates the AMVCA conversation, there’s less counterweight pulling attention back to the work. 

The conversations, however unfocused they are, reveal two truths: the AMVCA is still the most anticipated award show in Nigeria, and the public discourse, however abysmal, shows that Africans love Nollywood. That millions of Nigerians — and Africans more broadly — show up every year to argue about outfits, debate snubs, and live-tweet the ceremony speaks to how the AMVCA has achieved a cultural grip that no other African screen awards, not even AMAA, has managed to replicate. And the discourse, for all its shallowness, is a form of participation. People do not argue loudly about things they do not care about. The fashion commentary and the fan outrage over Behind the Scenes, Scarlet Gomez, and Funke Akindele that were supposedly overlooked is an expression of cultural investment in Nollywood. Thus, the AMVCA may not yet command the critical seriousness its nominated films deserve, but it commands attention. There should be a conscious attempt, however, on the part of the AMVCA, to build the critical infrastructure that can simultaneously discuss the spectacle and the substance. 

Over the years, the AMVCA has attracted deep scrutiny from Nigerian critics and enthused film watchers. These critiques are about its identity as a Nigerian or pan-African award show, selection and awarding process, lumping of categories, and other technical issues. The show has attracted a level of seriousness and credibility far removed from its intended motive. From the name, it wasn’t intended as a serious or credible award show. Nigerian filmmaker, Mildred Okwo noted, “the AMVCA is being asked to do much more than it originally intended. It was more like people’s choice awards. Along the way, the audience enjoyed the more elevated production levels of the AMVCA so much that they began to demand more from them.”

The Trailblazer Award is perhaps the AMVCA’s most contested category, with consistent criticism across multiple editions. The central complaint is around the mystery surrounding the category. The criteria for the Trailblazer Award, unlike other categories, remains  shrouded in mystery, left solely to the jury’s discretion, with no nominee announcements. The absence of a nomination process and criteria has led many to question what, exactly, is being rewarded. Critics argue that it functions as a participation trophy for those who fall short of the top acting award. This was evident when Chimezie Imo won the Trailblazer Award, which many commentators viewed as a consolation prize.

The yearly frustration is not about individual decisions but about what the category’s structure reveals about the AMVCA’s institutional habits. At the recently concluded AMVCA, the Trailblazer Award went to Uche Montana, a choice that generated its own wave of commentary. Uzoamaka Power has been rightfully suggested as deserving of the award. The broader issue, as critics frame it, is that a category with no stated criteria, no nominees, and no public accountability cannot be taken seriously as a mark of distinction no matter how deserving an individual recipient may be.