Nigerian movie industry has established systems far ahead of Ghana’s — KSM

Ghanaian actor, talk show host, and author Kwaku Sintim-Misa, popularly known as KSM

Ghanaian actor, talk show host, and author Kwaku Sintim-Misa, popularly known as KSM, has highlighted the structural challenges facing the Ghanaian movie industry in comparison to Nigeria’s.

He stated that Ghanaian filmmakers operate in a system without the established structures and distribution networks that their Nigerian counterparts have developed over time.

According to him, this lack of infrastructure forces many filmmakers to hustle for funding, cover production costs themselves, and still struggle to find avenues for distribution.

“We can’t compare the film industry in Ghana to the Nigerian one because Nigerians have had a longer time of being exposed to developed systems that work for them, especially in terms of distribution and everything. We didn’t have such a system operating in Ghana for a long time,” KSM said.

“Somebody will hustle and hustle to make money, and after using that money to shoot the film—paying the actors and everyone involved—they now have to hustle again to distribute the film, because there are no distribution outlets,” he added.

KSM recalled that in the past, Ghanaian films were mostly sold on CDs by street vendors, which often required costly promotions like floats—methods he described as inefficient and unsustainable.

“It got to a point where, in Ghana, when you make a film, you have to convert it into a CD. And then to sell the film, you have to mount a float, get a track with people dancing and then selling your CDs which wasn't an efficient distribution method,” he recalled.