MOVIES: "Nollywood Babylon: Nigeria's movie industry is winning global attention, but DVD piracy may bring it down," by Will Connors, Wall Street Journal, 22 May 2009.

Despite the warning here, Nollywood, as Nigeria's thriving movie industry is known, is doing relatively well--just not in a manner we would recognize.

Nollywood cranks 900 movies a year--all straight to video. That puts it #2 behind Bollywood (Mumbai, India) and makes it twice as prolific as Hollywood.

Nollywood films are popular throughout Africa and in African enclaves worldwide.

The hitch in this giddy-up is that Nollywood only makes $250m off this production, largely because piracy steals so much (still, in a world where films are made for $15-25k on average, the business remains hopping).

The limits here are structural: poor IP laws and a non-existent distribution system. The latter can't arise so long as the former continues in its absence--rules driving connectivity instead of the other way around (our norm).

The more immediate problem: Nigeria's government gets about 95% of its revenue from oil, so no incentive to protect the movie industry.