As told by Francis Nolly TV founder, Okoye Kosiso Francis
Okoye Kosiso Francis is the founder of Francis Nolly TV, a Nigerian digital entertainment platform he started on TikTok in June 2024, which has since grown to work with over 100 Nollywood producers on movie promotion.
I was fresh out of secondary school when I started Francis Nolly TV. It came from a love of Nollywood. I grew up in a family that watched a lot of movies together, and something about that just stayed with me.
People sometimes ask me which specific film made me fall in love with Nollywood, but honestly, I can’t point to one. We watched so many growing up that the love was never about a single movie, it was about all of it. I started cutting out clips from my favorite scenes and posting them, just wanting other people to feel what I felt.
The hardest days weren’t really about doubt, they were technical. TikTok would flag a video for a violation, views would drop for no clear reason, and on top of that, network issues here in Nigeria were a constant fight just to keep posting. But the part that really tested me was when a producer had already paid us for a promotion, and then the video underperformed or got taken down. That’s a different kind of pressure than just posting for fun, because someone’s money and trust are riding on it working.
There was also a period where I felt like my community wasn’t as active as before, and I genuinely thought about quitting. I realised I’d gotten too caught up in what I wanted to post and lost touch with what my community actually wanted. Once I drew back and paid attention to that, things turned around. That moment taught me a lot.
I have to give credit to my sister, Okoye Chidimma Annastesia. She was there with me from early on, and today she’s essentially my personal assistant.
For a while, the rest of my family just saw me on my phone constantly and didn’t understand what it was for. The moment they realized this wasn’t just me playing around, that it had actually become something generating income, felt like a prayer answered. It was a real breakthrough for the family, seeing that what I was doing on my phone had turned into a business.
A typical day for me now is something I genuinely thank God for. I go through movies looking for the right clips, the scenes I know my community will connect with. I’m careful about it; every clip has to pull the right audience for that movie. Editing has become therapeutic for me, honestly. It’s where I get to feel my own creativity.
Building this taught me patience more than anything else. There are low-view days, videos getting flagged, things that don’t go the way you expect. Staying patient through that, trusting the process and trusting God, is what got me through. I’ve become a lot more resilient because of it.
For anyone in Nigeria thinking about starting something similar, my advice is: don’t rush into it just because you think there’s money in it. Do it because you love it, the same way you’d recommend a movie to a friend or your family. Let it come from love first. And you don’t need much to start. You genuinely just need your phone.
Everything Francis Nolly TV has become started from almost nothing. All glory to God for how far it has come.
