AFRICA’S CREATIVE SECTOR

The African Leadership University (Rwanda and Mauritius) is hosting a celebration of the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020 with the organisation of a virtual event under the themes of "Education & Ecosystem” from November 16th – 19th 2020.

I am delighted to be joining a virtual Fireside Chat (Panel Discussion) on Thursday 19th November 2020 at 3:00 PM GMT to discuss the interplay between the Creative Industry and Entrepreneurship.

This discussion will be an opportunity to share my four-decade long experience of working in the creative industries, from the arts & culture to television and film production and then financing for media and creative industries in the UK. This sector has sustained me and my family as a working professional since 1979!

Over the decades I have contributed to several UK Creative Industry reviews as a stakeholder and in my capacity as the non-executive director at the Department for Media, Culture and Sports (2006-2010), on transforming this sector for economic growth.

In early 2000, in my capacity as Board Director of the UK Film Council (now BFI), I pushed for the UK film industry to establish co-production treaties with India, South Africa and Morocco. This further deepened my engagement with the African media and creative industries, working with media business owners, government agencies, content producers and investors for business growth, especially in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya.

Engagement with Africa’s Creative Sector

My engagement with Africa’s creative sector began in the early 1990s, first as a film and television producer, producing several award-winning films working with African producers, directors, and writers, telling local stories for international broadcasters from Angola, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Algeria, Palestine, Iran and Tunisia! Producing films with African talent across the continent gave me a greater understanding of the soul of Africa, through its compelling stories.

For five years, from 2014 -2019, I lived and worked in Lagos, Nigeria, the creative hub of Africa as the CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation. As I travelled across the continent and within Nigeria, I saw and felt Africa’s growing creative and cultural influence from film, photography, music, fashion, design, literature, and theatre on the continent and the world!

Why the Creative Sector is Important for Africa?

The African creative industries are important because they create jobs, generate revenues, and contribute to the national and pan-African GDP. African creative industries encompass advertising, architecture, arts and crafts, design, fashion, film, video, photography, music, performing arts, publishing, computer games, electronic publishing, and television/radio. These sectors have commercial and cultural value and are powerful expressions of human imagination while being among the most dynamic sectors on the continent.  

We recognise the close economic relationships the creative industries have with other sectors such as tourism, hospitality, transport, leisure, and sports. They are at the intersection of business and technology and the drivers of sustainable economic development, critical to social cohesion, transformation, and political stability.

Even more fitting for Africa’s demography, reports on the cultural and creative industries show that players within the industry have certain qualities: they are often young people with high productivity, demonstrating independence and entrepreneurship. With the emerging middle class, rapid urbanisation and increasing internet connectivity on the continent, Africa also represents a significant consumer market for the industry.

Africa’s Creative Sectors Generate Revenues

In Africa, the creative industries are estimated to generate US$4.2 billion of revenue, mainly through an informal and SME-based economy. They have become increasingly prominent and are beginning to attract investment from governments and private sector players.

Key creative and cultural sectors across the continent include:

·          Film

I was born on a continent with the world’s largest film industry – Bollywood. My earliest abiding memory is sitting on my grandmother’s knees, watching Bollywood films in the local cinema in Punjab, where I was born. In 2010, I was invited to produce “Connecting Bollywood and Nollywood”, a session with Indian and Nigerian filmmakers for the ION International Film Festival, connecting two of the world’s largest film industries.

Nollywood, as the Nigerian film industry is popularly known, is the second-largest film industry in the world, producing an estimated 2000 films per year. Nollywood has its own star system, a critical infrastructure, an array of ancillary industries (including magazines, websites, and promotions) and a range of emerging international distribution networks. Nollywood contributed an estimated US$7.2 billion to Nigeria’s GDP in 2016, directly employing 300,000 people and indirectly, more than a million.

Meanwhile, countries like Morocco, Namibia, South Africa are attractive locations for international film production, with government incentives and low costs.

·          Music

African music is everywhere! Master KG’s Jerusalema has the entire world dancing, with 85 million streams on Spotify while it has topped 185 million views on YouTube! Nigerian artists like Wizkid, Burna Boy, Patoranking, and Banky W, who I had the pleasure to meet, dominate the African continent, redefining the contemporary music business. With the adoption of digital streaming services, music-streaming revenue is estimated to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 20% in South Africa, 30% in Kenya, and 40% in Nigeria, resulting in revenues of about US$40 million, US$5.2 million, and US$17.5 million respectively between 2019 - 2023.

·          Fashion

From London to Paris, New York and Milan, African fashion designers are making a splash on the world stage. Michelle Obama and Beyonce Knowles wear outfits made by African designers. Today they are in global demand and contributing significantly to revenues at home. Sub-Saharan Africa’s combined fashion industry has evolved significantly over the past two decades and is estimated to be worth US$31 billion. In Lesotho, the apparel industry is 94% of merchandise exports.

·          Digital Technology

Africa’s growing digital economy and decreasing data costs present an avenue for success for its cultural and creative industries, and leveraging on digital technology has kept sectors such as music, film and television afloat, especially with investments by Apple Music and Netflix into African countries.

·          Publishing and Printing

Other creative sectors like publishing and printing and Africa’s gaming market are also growing. The International Publishers Association estimates that the African book market is worth US$1billion and is growing at 6% per year, buoyed by the emerging digital publishing industry. Morocco’s publishing and printing industry employs 1.8% of the workforce and is an industry worth more than US$370 million.

·          Gaming

Although nascent, and facing challenges of monetisation, the African gaming market grew over 500% from 2014 to 2018 and is now worth US$570 million, driven by the adoption of mobile phones.

Covid19 Impact on Africa’s Creative Sector

The Covid19 pandemic has impacted all economic sectors, and the creative industries are not exempt. During the pandemic lockdown across the African continent, the creative industries have been severely hit, due to their primarily informal nature, a greater number of freelancers, part-time and short-term contract workers who rely on constant work to generate revenue, and modes of production and distribution.

HEVA Fund, a finance, business support and knowledge facility for creative industries in East Africa conducted a study in Kenya to generate insights from most sectors of Kenya’s cultural and creative industry. The April 2020 study showed that 88% of respondents noticed a decrease in incomes over the Q1 2020 as a result of the pandemic, and 76% registered instances of financial loss of up to KES 500,000 (US$4,500) in the same period.

Some governments have taken measures to assist the sector – the Kenyan government released about US$1 million to sustain creative industries during the lockdown, and the equivalent of US$9 million was announced as a relief for the arts and culture sector in South Africa, despite concerns about the distribution of the funds.

Africa’s Creative Sector Challenges

Even without the Covid19 pandemic, unfortunately, creative sectors on the continent have historically been plagued by credit challenges and a poorly structured (and mostly informal) setup. In 2019, only 1.1% (US$22 million) of African start-up investment funds were put into creative industries. The formalised creative industry often cannot access funding because they cannot offer collateral and find it difficult to maintain the working capital needed to stay profitable. Other challenges include inadequate protection of intellectual property rights and widespread piracy and poor support from government policies.

Meeting The Challenges

The challenge is how to transform the underdeveloped and unstructured creative ecosystem into an organised and profitable pool of creative industries that can create jobs and generate revenues for Africa. The single most important step is to move to a mindset in which support for the creative sector is seen as essential. African Governments need to view this sector as an industry with important economic, social and culture paybacks.

Building Business Capacity

Africa’s creative sector needs to build business capacity in the sector; the issue is not about the quality of the African creative talent base, but rather the quality of business management within the sector. Governments must create the enabling business environment for the creative sectors with incentives such as access to finance, legal protection, tax breaks and waivers, subsidies and guarantees. The government must also invest in infrastructure such as power and internet access, to support creative entrepreneurs. 

Teaching business skills to creatives, and a greater awareness of commerce within the creative community is critical. Equally important is for financial and business people to understand the creative process.

Measuring Economic Contribution of Africa’s Creative Sectors

Measuring the economic contribution of Africa’s creative sectors, identifying the opportunities and threats they face, and providing a blueprint for action for both government, funders, and the stakeholders are vital if they are to be taken seriously. The creative sector must be mapped to understand its players, size, opportunities and growth drivers, and routes to market.

This evidence-based approach will help to provide the necessary framework for building business capacity in the sector and for attracting sustainable investments. The challenge facing Africa’s creative sectors is how to control the commercial opportunities generated by the exploitation of Africa’s greatest assets – its creative excellence and cultural intellectual property. African creatives are good at starting new creative businesses, but they usually stay small and precarious. They lack the scale of ambition, quality of business management and supply of investment necessary to allow them to become self-sustaining. The industry needs quality business managers to match the quality of creative talent, which simply does not exist at the moment.

Africa’s Creative Sector – Reimaging Africa

Throughout the Covid19 pandemic, we have witnessed the extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness of the African entrepreneurs and their overwhelming positivity in the face of change. The crisis could offer an opportunity for the African creative entrepreneurs to be the catalyst for long-term change in this vital sector.

African societies are the custodians of rich cultures that can embrace the opportunities of new technology and new markets, and the creative economy has both commercial and cultural value. Creative work promotes fundamental rights, such as respect for human dignity, equality, and democracy, and have the potential to contribute to the re-emergence of Africa post Covid19.

Parminder Vir OBE

Research by Oluchi Buchi-Njere