I have been dreaming of becoming a porn actor since a very young age. I live
in the Ivory Coast and I am looking for a producer or a director to sign a
contract and to be in a movie ... I am relying on you to make my dream come
true.This is the advertisement that André (not his real name), a
21-year-old, posted on the Internet with his email address and cell phone
numbers. This computer science student in Grand-Bassam -- a town some 25 miles
from Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast -- is not unusual in Africa. Hundreds
of young men and women in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory
Coast, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and elsewhere are all trying to join the
pornographic-film industry in Africa or abroad.
The world pornography
market (adult video networks, pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite,
websites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys, magazines and DVDs) is
estimated to be tens of billions of dollars, according to Dan Miller, managing
editor of XBIZ Premiere, a trade publication for the adult entertainment
industry.
Warning that exact numbers are difficult to acquire because the
vast majority of companies in the sector are privately owned, Miller says,
"America's market is by far the largest in the world in terms of scope and
revenue. It far exceeds the market in Europe. Based on the information we have,
I would estimate the market in the U.S. to be in the neighborhood of $7
billion."
A Small Industry in Africa
By contrast, the
largely Web-oriented African market is small but emerging. The leader on that
continent would be South Africa, which hosted Sexpo, a public expo focused on
all aspects of sexuality, in the second half of 2010. "The size of the entire
adult industry in South Africa is said to be worth 60 million rand ($8.9
million), but that cannot be independently verified. It is probably the biggest
in Africa.
Nigeria should be worth about half of that," says Tau Morena,
co-founder of Sondeza ("Bring it closer" in isiZulu), an African adult online
network with more than 39,000 members (almost half of them South African) and an
average of 7,000 unique visitors daily.
Why hasn't the African
pornographic sector taken off? Morena blames video piracy, which he says that
most governments are not really interested in curbing: "In South Africa in the
'90s ... about a million units were sold per annum, but now with the onslaught
of piracy, roughly 150,000 units of all titles are sold on average, and the
numbers keep declining."
Another brake is legislation. Producing -- and
sometimes even possessing -- pornographic material is illegal in several African
countries. And yet pornographic content is increasingly available in Africa,
mainly because of greater access to the Internet and to foreign channels that
broadcast adult movies.
A Growing Market
That content is
also increasingly sought after. "There is a strong demand from the lower and
upper middle classes that have equipped themselves with communication and video
equipment (PCs, modems, webcams). There is also international demand: Nigeria,
home to one of the world's largest domestic film-production industries, "exports
videos and makes different types of content it later puts online on Internet
portals," says Philippe Di Folco, the French author of the Dictionnaire de la
Pornographie.
Foreign demand explains why "African actresses become
specialized in different forms of pornography in Europe," says Cameroonian
activist Amély-James Koh Bela, who monitors the pornographic sector. She
identifies two porn-film companies, Concorde and Maeva, as the top providers of
"special black" pornography that floods the Internet.
In the meantime,
the underground amateur African pornographic sector keeps growing. More than
that: Koh Bela says that three major cities in her home country (Douala, Yaoundé
and Kribi) have been turned into porn-filmmaking centers where some actors boast
about what they do for a living.Alex (his name has been changed) has
long been proud of his job. The young Cameroonian with an Afro hairstyle
directed a handful of movies and founded a company he called Sexe Images Nature
Africaine to "create jobs and fight local prostitution -- less profitable than
pornography." He also starred in two short movies and was paid 1,500 euros
($2,100) for both by a producer based in France. This was all before he retired
from the business because he "found God."
"Super sexy cute South
African porn star"South African Palesa Mbau is not likely to be
retiring anytime soon. The 23-year-old auditioned for a movie cast through
Sondeza.com about a year ago. "The idea of creating a local film was inspired by
our members, who asked us to produce something 100 percent local and relevant to
our market," says Morena, who produced the film. "We asked for members of the
website to come forward and be part of this experience, as there are no
professional porn stars in South Africa."
There were more than 1,000
candidates (mainly men) from all walks of life. Mbau was chosen, along with four
other amateurs -- two women and two men -- for Mapona ["naked" in Sesotho],
Volume 1, which has sold some 5,000 copies since its release last September. "I
am getting proud because it is a black [pornographic movie]," says Mbau. "That
is raising black empowerment because the porn films that you [commonly] see in
South Africa are all white."
Is Mapona a turning point in the
pornographic career that she started three years ago for "personal reasons"? One
thing is for sure: The light-skinned actress, who met high-profile
representatives of the adult industry at Sexpo, is determined to get somewhere
in the X sector. "I have a full-time job in a call center, but I see my future
over there. ... I do not have any problem saying that," she says.
Mbau
has already tagged herself "super sexy cute South African porn star" on the
Facebook fan page she opened at the end of 2010, and where she today has some
2,200 fans. The woman with a teenage voice from Midrand, in the northern
province of Gauteng, is using the page to make a name for herself and share
sexual feelings and jokes with her fans.
She is also building a
reputation with her website, where she posted some explicit pictures of herself
and where she sells private shows to "high-class clients." For instance, the
rates for "personal photos and video -- additional" range from 500 to 1,000
rands (from $75 to $150), depending on whether she has to provide a
cameraman.
Exploitation, Human Trafficking and Health
RisksNo wonder, says Koh Bela, that some African youths see
pornographic actors as examples of success -- all the more because some manage
to earn far more money with one film than the average African does in a month.
What these young people do not always know, though, is that big money is rare in
this sector. Besides, the threat of human trafficking -- the third most
widespread criminal activity worldwide, according to the United Nations -- is
worrying in some countries.
Around 5 percent of the victims of human
trafficking identified in Western and Central Europe are of African origin,
mainly coming from "West African communities, in particular Nigerian women and
girls," according to "The Globalization of Crime -- a Transnational Organized
Crime Threat Assessment," (pdf), a report released in June 2010 by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "Studies of Nigerian victims report that
acquaintances, close friends or family members play a major role in the
recruitment of victims. ... The vast majority of West African women and girls
are exploited in street prostitution."
Are the victims exploited in the
pornographic sector, too? "When a child is caught in a network, the human
trafficker exploits it in every possible way," states Anne-Sophie Faysse,
project leader at the French branch of ECPAT, an international network fighting
child sexual exploitation. "You can find cases of rape; prostitution, which is
much more visible; and pornographic-material production. In this last case, this
is almost exclusively cyber pornography [photos, movies]." Adults -- women, for
the most part -- may also be trapped.
Koh Bela, who is president of
Mayina, a French association against human trafficking, indeed warns that human
traffickers do not hesitate to force some victims into extreme forms of
pornography, such as bestiality. "Some young women or mothers of victims told us
that Western tourists, for the most part, rented villas where they organize
private parties," says Koh Bela. "They make the girls drunk and drug them before
giving them to the dogs for hours of sexual intercourse. At the end of the
party, the girls can earn 150,000 FCFA [about $325]."
Like some of their
Western counterparts, African actors are also exposed to serious health risks.
The use of condoms is often not allowed during shoots, and HIV testing is not
always compulsory. This can add to the AIDS burden of Africa, where 22.5 million
of those living in sub-Saharan countries are already infected, according to the
latest Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) global report. Tau
Morena insisted that the use of condoms be visible in each sex scene of Mapona
and in his next movies, including Mapona, Volume 2, which is scheduled to be
released in a few months.
"Better" Opportunities Beyond
Africa?
The Ivorian André does not really think about the risks. He
is still focusing on building a career that he believes will get him and his
family out of poverty. Fela shares the same motivations. A native of Benin and
mother of a 5-year-old girl, she says that she earns $200 to $300 a month when
business -- organizing special events in nightclubs -- is good, and sometimes as
little as $100. So she has decided to combine business and pleasure.
"I
love all that goes with eroticism, sex and seduction," says Fela, who lives in
Lomé, the capital of neighboring Togo. "It is like second nature. My friends
circulate amateur sex videos of me free of charge, and I hope that one day,
someone will pay attention to me and call me for a shoot."
Hers may not
be the best approach. "I spoke several times by email with so-called directors
who had seen my ads," says André. "In the end, they asked for pictures of my
penis. I sent them and never heard from them again ... "
Diana, 28, has
managed to avoid such tricks. Just like Fela, she is a single mother struggling
to make a decent living for her 11-year-old child. Just like Fela, she wants to
work in pornography "for pleasure and money." Still, the Cameroonian, living in
Bata, the second-largest city in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is determined to
wait for a better opportunity -- and it may not be in Africa. "I remember an
Ivorian film shot in the bush," she says. "Everything looked dirty. There were
flies everywhere ... Western movies look classier to me."
Koh Bela, who
is the author of Mon Combat Contre La Prostitution ("My Battle Against
Prostitution"), confirms that observation. She has reviewed hundreds of African
sex films, some of which are sold in Château Rouge, a neighborhood of Paris with
a strong African presence. "The rare movies with African actors that have good
production values have been directed by European producers -- among others,
French, Dutch and German," she says. "After having flooded the Internet, these
movies are finding a place in the DVD market, while African-produced movies are
usually so poor at every level that big producers will never distribute
them."
This may explain why some youths attend informal pornographic
classes. "There are initiation circles in Douala and Abidjan," Koh Bela reveals.
"In dedicated apartments, young women watch movies to learn every kind of
caress, sexual positions and Western-style pornographic techniques. The
'teachers' do not hesitate to show the girls how to do things right. ... They
also test men's and women's abilities."Is this the best way to enter the
sector? Not necessarily, according to Philippe Di Folco. "The amateur quality is
what buyers want," he says. "Today, consumers value the effect of realism
because it is like they are voyeurs of private scenes, present in the bedroom or
in the spot where the sexual intercourse is taking place."
Meanwhile,
André relies on the visual experience he got perusing movies and magazines. He
also counts on luck. When he shares his aspirations with his male friends who
also want to become porn actors, they find hope in their fellow Africans who
have had the opportunity to perform in adult movies in France.
Habibou
Bangré is a freelance journalist based in France.
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