The All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) has partnered with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Nigeria in a bid to make sure the vote-counting and results-distribution processes of the upcoming awards are credible and transparent.
PwC who made this known in a statement on Wednesday, disclosed that the collaboration with Afrima involves the assessment of AFRIMA’s voting system’s controls and functionalities for vulnerabilities, accuracy as well as integrity.
PwC also indicated that it will monitor the public and academy voting portals in order to collate and present the sealed results at the awards ceremony.
The company stated that this measure is very important because of the need to sustain AFRIMA’s extant reputation in order to ensure that the selection of its award winners will be transparent and credible.
The statement reads: “AFRIMA exists to reward rising and established talents and showcase their music to the African population and global audience. Thus, it is vital that the event is void of voting irregularities, fraud and counterfeiting, and that awarded artists are well-deserving of the recognition.”
The 2021 AFRIMA edition is billed to hold between November 19-21, 2021.
Femi Osinubi, PwC West Africa telecoms, media and technology industry leader, expressed optimism that the collaboration would further improve AFRIMA’s system.
“Today’s audiences are far more socially connected, informed and empowered. With a little bit of information, they can detect and call out fraudulent schemes in no time. Accordingly, businesses must ensure the legitimacy of their practices,” Osinubi said.
“More importantly, award ceremonies like AFRIMA must follow strict protocol handling their balloting processes. They must handle these processes with the highest level of professionalism and trust.
“In addition, in recent years, the dynamism of Nigerian and African music has been reflected in the widespread recognition of works produced by African artists on the international scene. We are proud to support the growth of the industry.”
