Nollywood makes up 1.4% of Nigeria’s 2013 gross domestic product (GDP) of $509 billion, presenting significant digital content opportunities in this space according to an expert.

On Sunday, Nigeria overtook South Africa to become Africa’s biggest economy and the 26th largest in the world following the first statistical revision of the West African country’s GDP since 1990. Nigeria is also Africa’s most populous nation with over 160 million people.

For the first time ever, Nigeria’s film industry, Nollywood, was included in the economic basket calculation.

Nollywood is regarded as the world’s third largest film industry after Hollywood in the US and Bollywood in India.

And digital companies looking to capitalise on the Nigerian film industry have also sprung up, with the likes of iROKO Partners launching a video on-demand service while the likes of Afrinolly offers a mobile content service.

“The opportunities are endless for Nollywood,” Jason Njoku (pictured), chief executive officer of iROKO Partners, told ITWeb Africa.

“From a digital perspective, so far video on-demand (VOD) has only really penetrated the Western market, but we're laser focused on building our pan-African online audience as of 2014 and beyond.

“The potential to reach such a huge potential audience is extremely exciting for iROKO and we are spending considerable resources on growing our paid user base on the continent - for us, without a doubt, Africa is the future of digital content for Nollywood,” he added.

Even though iROKO has attracted a large audience outside of Nigeria, the service claims it has notched up around one million unique visitors.

And while Nollywood is not contributing to Nigeria’s economy as much as the likes oil and agriculture -- which each respectively stand at 14.4% and 21.6% of the country’s revised GDP -- Njoku told ITWeb Africa that the film sector is still key for the country.

“Its inclusion is particularly significant because it is a million miles away from the country's big industrial players - oil and agriculture,” Njoku said.

“However, just because it is a million miles away from said sectors, it doesn't mean it shouldn't receive the recognition it has done today - in fact, I believe it's important to have a diverse range of sectors that act as key contributors to the economy,” he added.

Looking forward, Njoku noted that Nollywood also has further room to grow as a sector.

“The emergence of new Nollywood is paving the way for enhanced creativity and quality in the sector and whilst the industry is still maligned for its formulaic story lines and often low quality production values, we have to remember that Nollywood is only just celebrating its 20th birthday, so it's still maturing as a film market.

“With more money being invested into the industry, we're seeing some amazing new content that will help officially propel Nollywood onto the global movie stage I'm the coming years,” he said.