Organisers of All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) on Wednesday in Lagos announced a partnership with multinational professional service network, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), to authenticate vote-counting of its award process.
AFRIMA President, Mike Dada, told journalists that the partnership was neccesssary to give credibility to the vote counting and result distribution processes of the music awards coming up in Lagos from Nov. 19 to Nov. 21.
He said that the collaboration involved PwC’s assessment of AFRIMA’s voting system’s control and functionalities for vulnerabilities, accuracy and integrity.
“PWC will monitor the public and academy voting portals to collate and present the sealed results at the awards ceremony.
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“We need to identify with the global brand to guide against doubt from parties.
“Any awarding process is always controversial, we feel there is need for us to scale up, identify and associate with a global brand that everyone is comfortable with.
“That is what has led us to this and the conversation started about 4 years ago.
“The whole essence for AFRIMA is to tell our own stories as a continent,” he said.
Dada noted that the 7th edition of the music awards would be focusing on a 3-point agenda, namely; an end to COVID-19 pandemic for all; campaign for enhancing the health and education of all Africans and to address the problem of climate change.
According to him, puting an end to COVID-19 pandemic will deal with addressing the rationalisation of the COVID-19 vaccines across countries and some other issues.
He said that AFRIMA had always been collaborating with the African Union Commission and it had declared the year as the year for arts and culture.
He noted that the creative industry, which encompassed the arts and culture, was a vibrant industry for creation of jobs and improving Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He, however, called on the African leaders to pay attention to the creative industry and encourage the youths to embrace it for wealth creation.
Dada said that the first day of the event would feature the Africa music business summit with the theme “Monetising music of Africa”.
“For the 19th, we will also hold AFRIMA music fest at Eko hotel extension; for the 20th, we will have the nominees’ party and the 21st, the award ceremony will hold which will be broadcast live to over 24 countries across the globe.
Earlier, Mr Femi Osinubi, PwC Media and Technology industry leader, West Africa Telecoms, said that PwC was all about building trust globally among stakeholders to ensure AFRIMA sustainability.
Osinubi said that PwC was an organisation with sound reputation of integrity, accuracy and confidentiality.
“We are excited about this collaboration which has come about as a result of our experience and investment in the creative industry.
“Today’s audiences are far more socially connected, informed and empowered, with little bit of information, they can detect and call out fraudulent schemes in no time.
“More importantly, award ceremonies like AFRIMA must follow strict protocols handling their balloting processes and they must handle these processes with highest level of professionalism and trust.
“This is why we are collaborating with AFRIMA, we are proud to support the growth of the industry,” he said.
Rikki stein, an International Adviser for AFRIMA, expressed his love for African music and culture, describing Africa as a nation with immense talents.
“I have 50 years love for Africa music and culture, Africa is a continent with immense talents,” he said. (NAN)