Against the word “emerging”
Nollywood has been emerging for thirty years. At some point the word stops describing an industry and starts describing who is doing the looking.
There is a particular sentence that appears in almost every international piece written about African film. It arrives around the third paragraph, and it says that the industry is emerging. It has been emerging since the VHS era. It emerged through the digital transition. It is, apparently, still emerging now that it is the second-largest producer of films by volume on earth.
A word that survives thirty years of contradicting evidence is not a description. It is a position. It places the speaker at the destination and the subject somewhere on the road.
The vocabulary problem is a valuation problem
This matters beyond etiquette, because the language of emergence sets the price. An emerging market gets development money. An established one gets investment. The difference is not sentiment; it is the multiple.
The correction is not to insist on flattering adjectives. It is to write about the business the way the business actually runs: with slates, windows, recoupment, and people who have been doing this for a very long time.