By Sodeinde Temidayo David
Organisers of the prestigious All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) have announced the commencement of public voting for the 2021 edition of the awards.
A statement said the voting is global and that fans and lovers of African music worldwide would determine who wins the various awards for the 38 categories.
The voting, which commenced on September 27, will end on Saturday, November 20 and can be done via the website of AFRIMA.
However, intending voters must have an account and log in with the appropriate details to access the voting platform, while new users are expected to create an account by clicking on the create account option visible on the web page, and fill in their details, ensuring they remember the details to login later.
Upon successful login to the voting platform, voters will find the dashboard area where the impact of the voting engagement is displayed as well as the shareable Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
The unique shareable URL enables voters to acquire more vote count when they share the URL on social platforms to be used for any artistes in any category as chosen.
To make this easy, AFRIMA has made the web interface user friendly, as voters can navigate to the menu and find the regional and continental categories to vote from.
On each of the voting categories, intending voters can find respective artiste, artistes images, artistes name, track title of nominations, country, including YouTube or Soundcloud link to preview before voting.
Every voter upon sign up are entitled to three vote counts per day for each of the 38 categories of the awards, more vote counts can be acquired or accumulated based on fans engagements with a unique shareable URL found on the fans or voters’ dashboard.
According to the show organisers, winners will be determined by 100 per cent public votes in some categories while a combination of 50 per cent public votes and 50 per cent of votes from the academy of voters’ will determine winners in other categories.
The AFRIMA international academy of voters comprises professionals in the music industry in Africa, including various musicologists, producers, veteran artistes, artiste managers, music or entertainment journalists and DJs among others.
The International Committee of AFRIMA has 100 per cent votes to select the winner in the ‘Legend Award’ category. It is seen that the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and King Sunny Ade who hails from Nigeria, are a few of the past winners of this category.
AFRIMA also announced that over 8,800 songs have been received as entries which were screened down to 400 songs by the jury into continental and regional categories cutting across African talents and creatives living on the continent and in the diaspora.
In partnership with the African Union Commission (AUC), AFRIMA 2021 will be broadcast live on 84 television stations in 109 countries from Eko Hotels & Suites, Lagos, Nigeria.
