AFRIMA 2016: JURY RELEASES FULL NOMINEE LIST

The African Union Commission, AUC, and the 13-man Jury of the All Africa Music Awards, AFRIMA, have released the highly anticipated 2016 nominees list for the Continental Categories of Africa’s leading awards project. The 2016 AFRIMA continental nominees list was released to the public via the media and on the AFRIMA website during the week. It was released about  two weeks after the nominees list for the Regional Categories of the awards were unveiled on Monday, August 22, in Lagos. The 22 continental nomination categories include different music genres, as well as coveted categories of “Artiste of the Year in Africa”, “Best Video in Africa”, “Best Producer in Africa”, “Best Songwriter in Africa” and “Revelation of the Year in Africa”.
This year also saw the introduction of an innovative category by the International Jury of AFRIMA titled “African Fans Favourite”, to recognize African artistes who create chartbusting, anthemic songs that propel the artistes to great popularity within and outside their respective countries and regions. Reiterating the Jury’s position on fairness and transparency, Associate Producer, AFRIMA, Ms. Adenrele Niyi, said the gap between when the Regional and Continental Nominees List were released was necessary for the Jury to ‘painstakingly review and grade the qualified entries submitted and carefully and accurately fit them into their appropriate categories. “There is the need to be accurate right from the process of verifying eligibility of entries, to the process of collating and finalising results. Screening and selection of entries are evolving processes which we work painstakingly at to ensure transparency and fairness”, Ms. Niyi stated. The Regional Categories which featured Best Female Artistes and Best Male Artistes of the five regions, nominated 65 artistes while 184 nominees make up the newly released continental categories with online public voting expected to begin on Monday, September 12 on the AFRIMA voting platform.