The interview and the claim
Ghanaian actor Majid Michel said in an interview with Y107.9 FM Accra on 28 October that comparing Ghallywood with Nollywood is unfair. He called the comparison “stupid”, Legit.ng reported on 29 October. His argument rests on scale: Ghana has fewer than 40 million people, he said, while Nigeria has more than 200 million. He said a larger country has a wider pool of potential filmmakers and professionals, and that a bigger family is more likely to produce more criminals, doctors, good children and filmmakers. The report describes a broadcast interview, not an industry study, and gives no output counts or budgets. [1]
The family analogy
Linda Ikeji's Blog reported Michel's family analogy. If one household has 50 children and another has five, he said, the larger one is more likely to produce more criminals, doctors, good children and filmmakers. He applied the same logic to doctors, asking why Nigeria has more of them, and said the maths also covers filmmakers. This is a claim about absolute numbers. It does not compare skill, craft or per-person achievement. A bigger population gives Nigeria a wider pool of potential actors, crew and directors, so raw totals of filmmakers or other professionals will tend to favour it. The analogy does not show that Ghana's film workers are less capable, or that Nigeria's larger film workforce is better funded or better distributed. It explains why a simple headcount comparison can mislead. [2]
Leadership and institutions
Michel also moved beyond film. He said comparing Ghana with established nations is unfair, and that Ghana is “adolescent” on leadership. Countries with longer histories of governance, he suggested, have had more time to build systems; he mentioned nations with more than 300 years of leadership experience. That is his opinion, not a finding from the interview. It matters to the film discussion because it shifts the explanation from talent to institutional history and infrastructure. If an industry needs training routes, stable funding and distribution systems, output cannot be read off population alone. But the interview does not measure those systems, and it does not show that institutional age is the decisive cause of the difference in filmmaker numbers. [2]
Why the comparison persists
Legit.ng says the Ghallywood–Nollywood argument has persisted for years among fans and industry insiders, with many measuring Ghana's output, star power and production quality against Nigeria's. Michel's intervention shifts attention to the denominator: how many people a country has, and therefore how large its potential talent pool is. That does not make every comparison useless. It does mean that a raw count of films or famous faces cannot carry the whole judgment. The more useful question is not simply who produces more, but what each industry can support with the people and systems it has. [1]
What population cannot settle
Population can help explain why Nigeria has a larger pool of potential filmmakers and professionals, and why Michel says it has more filmmakers. It cannot, by itself, explain quality, funding, distribution, training or how opportunities are shared. A country with a smaller population can still have strong craft, distinctive stories or efficient production; a larger one can have volume without robust pay or working conditions. Neither report offers industry data, budgets, output counts or training figures, so Michel's intervention is best read as a challenge to how the comparison is framed. It does not settle whether Ghallywood is underperforming, overperforming or simply different. Readers should treat the population argument as a starting point for measurement, not a verdict. [1] [2]
What a fairer comparison needs
A fairer comparison would need more than population totals. It would need consistent counts of releases, production budgets, cinema and streaming distribution, training routes and crew pay. It would also need to ask how opportunities are shared within each industry, not only how many people live in each country. None of those measures appears in the two reports, and no Ghanaian industry body is quoted responding to Michel. Whether his framing changes fan discussion is an open question. The useful next step is not to declare a winner, but to separate the scale argument from claims about quality, funding and institutional support. [1] [2]
Published 29 October 2026 · Updated 29 October 2026 · By Cast & Credits Desk. Read our editorial standards.
