I have been dreaming of becoming a porn actor since a very young age. I live in the Ivory Coast and I am looking for a producer or a director to sign a contract and to be in a movie ... I am relying on you to make my dream come true.
This is the advertisement that André (not his real name), a 21-year-old, posted on the Internet with his email address and cell phone numbers. This computer science student in Grand-Bassam -- a town some 25 miles from Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast -- is not unusual in Africa. Hundreds of young men and women in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and elsewhere are all trying to join the pornographic-film industry in Africa or abroad.
By contrast, the largely Web-oriented African market is small but emerging. The leader on that continent would be South Africa, which hosted Sexpo, a public expo focused on all aspects of sexuality, in the second half of 2010. "The size of the entire adult industry in South Africa is said to be worth 60 million rand ($8.9 million), but that cannot be independently verified. It is probably the biggest in Africa.
The underground amateur African pornographic sector keeps growing. More than that: Koh Bela says that three major cities in her home country (Douala, Yaoundé and Kribi) have been turned into porn-filmmaking centers where some actors boast about what they do for a living.
Alex (his name has been changed) has long been proud of his job. The young Cameroonian with an Afro hairstyle directed a handful of movies and founded a company he called Sexe Images Nature Africaine to "create jobs and fight local prostitution -- less profitable than pornography." He also starred in two short movies and was paid 1,500 euros ($2,100) for both by a producer based in France. This was all before he retired from the business because he "found God."
"I love all that goes with eroticism, sex and seduction," says Fela, who lives in Lomé, the capital of neighboring Togo. "It is like second nature. My friends circulate amateur sex videos of me free of charge, and I hope that one day, someone will pay attention to me and call me for a shoot."
Hers may not be the best approach. "I spoke several times by email with so-called directors who had seen my ads," says André. "In the end, they asked for pictures of my penis. I sent them and never heard from them again ... "
Diana, 28, has managed to avoid such tricks. Just like Fela, she is a single mother struggling to make a decent living for her 11-year-old child. Just like Fela, she wants to work in pornography "for pleasure and money." Still, the Cameroonian, living in Bata, the second-largest city in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is determined to wait for a better opportunity -- and it may not be in Africa. "I remember an Ivorian film shot in the bush," she says. "Everything looked dirty. There were flies everywhere ... Western movies look classier to me."
Meanwhile, André relies on the visual experience he got perusing movies and magazines. He also counts on luck. When he shares his aspirations with his male friends who also want to become porn actors, they find hope in their fellow Africans who have had the opportunity to perform in adult movies in France. Isn't this a sad story you all.
***Info. provided by TheRoot***
D. Martez
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