Young African music talents have so much more to compete for as organizers of the annual Akinyemilaw Songwriting Contest raises the stakes to $3,000 while expanding the opportunity beyond Nigeria to reach Ghana.
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Now on its fifth year, the competition is repositioned to make more impact among the two leading West African countries thus affirming its coming-of-age and consistency to make a huge mark within the African music spectrum. The competition is powered by Amelia Songs, a subsidiary of Greysage Consulting.

To participate, would-be contestants are to submit an original 90 seconds song entry posted in video format, complete with chorus and verse which should be submitted not later than November 15th, 2023. Each submission is expected to contain credits, including the producer and songwriter, while contestants are required to follow @Akinyemilaw and @ameliasongs.forever on Instagram ad well as make use of the hashtag, #AkinyemiLawSongChallengeV5.

The contest would foster collaboration by design between a tag team of artiste or songwriter and producer. According to the organizers, entries shall be welcomed from a range of genres indigenous to Nigeria and Ghana, including Afrobeats, Highlife, Amapiano, Fuji, Juju, and Reggae, among others.
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The jury members, who would be drawn from among critical stakeholders along the music food chain, will scrutinize each entry from different lenses, such as quality of the beat, lyrics, melodies, originality, vocal performance, relevance to the theme, production quality, and the transmission of emotions. The process is broken into three stages, beginning with a shortlist of 10, which would be pruned to three and lead to the announcement of the winner.

Speaking on the new direction, Akinyemi Ayinoluwa, revered entertainment law maven, disclosed that the competition is expanding frontiers in line with the phenomenal growth of the Afrobeats genre around the continent and the globe.

He said, “It was evident from the start that the footprint of the competition will grow as young talents from outside the shores of Nigeria continue to express strong interest to participate. The number of young Africanic talents yearning for new opportunities is immense.

“Between when we started four years ago and now, Afrobeats has gone through a full cycle. After the success trajectory we have recorded in Nigeria in the last four years, we knew the time was right to pan-African expansion. We can pivot from Ghana to other parts of Africa as we evolve.”
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