Yemi Alade

KORA All-Africa Music Awards is back after a long hiatus. The organisers of the African continent’s premier award ceremony in the musical arts, announced the return and list of the nominees in the 26 categories for her 2016 edition.

According to the statement, the award ceremony will take place on 20 March, 2016 at the Windhoek Country Club in Namibia. The ceremony will also form part of the host country’s annual National Day celebrations.

KORA will also partner SoundcityTV Africa as official Broadcast Media. Therefore, the award night would be televised live on SoundcityTV -Channel 327 on DSTV, GOtv Channel 75 and her digital platforms across 55 countries.

Reekado Banks

“We are excited about the partnership to take the 2016 KORA All-Africa Award to 55 countries and to our over 40 million audience via the live broadcast and digital platforms,” said Mr. Tajuddeen Adepetu, Chief Executive Officer, Consolidated Media Associates and Executive Producer at SoundcityTV Africa.

He added, “We are inspired by the incredible work of KORA team over the last 12 years and then by 2016 crop of nominees for the award. Next year’s ceremony would be nothing short of spectacular even to audience who would be tuned in from their homes via SoundcityTV.”

Also commenting on the forthcoming award ceremony, the Namibian government, in a statement recently issued via the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism in conjunction with the Ministries of Education, Arts & Culture and Information and Communication Technology, expressed its belief that the creative industries play a key role in contributing to the economy and in doing so, furthering the poverty alleviation agenda through tourism, the cultural arts and the creative industries which largely informed the partnership with the organizers of KORA.

“We are pleased to endorse the KORA AII-Africa Music Awards and anticipate the positive impact it will have on Namibia’s creative economy. It is our further belief that the Awards also represents a unique opportunity for public-private partnership to jointly collaborate in the delivery of a landmark event, and as such, encourage role-players in the private sector to explore partnership opportunities with the event,” the Namibian government noted.

The 2016 KORA All-Africa Awards’ nomination list recently released via @SoundcityTV twitter account and on the koraawards.com website saw over a 100 of the most promising and gifted artistes nominated across the four regions of the continent.

Nigerian artistes and categories they are nominated are: Reekado Banks for Most Promising Male Artist of Africa; Yemi Alade for Most Promising Female Artist of Africa; P-Square for Legendary Award; Tiwa Savage, Flavour N’abania and Korede Bello for Best Video; and Lara George for Best Female – Spiritual Music.

Also Flavour scores a second nomination for ‘Best Male – West Africa’ alongside Davido; Tiwa Savage is also nominated for ‘Best Female – West Africa’ while Bracket are up for Best Group of Africa; The trio of BNG are nominated for Best Group – Spiritual; Mavins’ ‘Adaobi’ is nominated for Best Collaboration.

It is also noteworthy that winners from every category would not only be going home with the coveted KORA plaques but cash prizes ranging from twenty thousand dollars ($20,000) to a million dollars ($1,000,000).