By Temitope Ojo

African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) has announced Rwanda as the host for the 2018 edition.

This is the second time AMMA will be holding outside Nigeria after South Africa hosted in 2015.

According to a statement issued in Lagos by the organisers, the event will hold at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre in Kigali on Saturday, September 22.

The 2018 nominees for the awards will be unveiled on July 21 at a media and industry event.

German filmmaker and Berlin Film Festival curator, Dorothy Wenner, has also been announced as the President of the AMAA Jury for 2018.

It will be recalled that the awards which have been in existence since 2005 held the nominations gala event in Kigali in 2017 as part of the activities to expand the frontiers of unity and integration in Africa.

AMAA according to the founder, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, remains the biggest and most credible jury-based reward system for filmmakers and professionals in the motion picture industry from Africa and Africans in Diaspora.

“It remains a fact that AMAA is the longest running Pan-African awards in the whole of Africa. Similar awards in film, music and virtual arts have come and gone. Since 2005 we have worked to keep and protect the integrity of the awards. This is why we can partner with Rwanda, a country where excellence and professionalism drive business and governance. The interesting thing about AMAA this year is that visitors especially Africans will not struggle to have visa as all visas will be processed on arrival.

“We want to thank President Paul Kagame and other African leaders that are making people’s movement within our continent very easy while we call on other African countries to have Visa on arrival policy if we can’t remove visa completely. Our people will prosper and there will be shared prosperity when we can travel and do business and even for holidays easily within Africa,” Ms Anyiam-Osigwe said.