HUSTLE & FLOW #60: Funding Creative infrastructure; Dstv struggles; Creators thrive; and more

😏 According to the internet, the biggest news of the past month was that Idris Elba plans to move to Africa, “in the next five, 10 years, God willing”.

Well done to the Africa Cinema Summit for spurring this viral moment.

As we wait for Idris, new funding is being committed to the Creative Industries (but voices are starting to question where the cash is going), Dstv is in trouble, a revolution is brewing in the world of sports broadcast rights, and digital creators are doing their own thing and thriving.

⚠️ If you enjoy my insights on the African Creative and Sports space, make sure to subscribe to my monthly newsletter Hustle & Flow.

Start by getting a taste below 👇

NEW FUNDING

Afreximbank has doubled its commitment to finance the Creative industries.

The announcement was made during Afrexim’s annual CANEX event, which took place in Algiers this year.

🤯 The Cairo-based trade bank says it will now aim to disburse not 1 but $2 BILLION in the space over the next 3 years, with most of the new funding going towards creative and sports infrastructure.

Indeed, the lack of infrastructure is a key - if not the main - bottleneck to the true explosion of the creative sector on the continent.

In the same way that you could not grow ecommerce without fintech or affordable shipping and logistics solutions,

🎤 You cannot nurture new music stars without a network of performance venues of all sizes.

📺 You cannot monetize local content without more distribution options, be they cinemas, television channels, or digital platforms.

🎥 You cannot improve production quality without properly equipped physical film studios.

🏭 You cannot produce affordable African fashion without factories and manufacturing hubs that lower costs.

🏋🏿 You cannot identify and train new football players or MMA fighters without gyms and academies.

💫 You cannot host major sports and entertainment events without world-class arenas.

🧑🏾‍🎓And you cannot acquire specialized skills, from cinematography to data analytics applied to music distribution, without schools and universities.

So, the need is there.

The question is, is the industry ready to absorb this amount of funding? 

Will Afrexim find enough well-developed, ready-to-go projects to finance in such a condensed time frame?

When I initially posted this story on Linkedin, the comments reflected industry operators’ frustration about the multiplication of big announcements from DFIs (Development Finance Institutions) that seem followed by little action.

 I’ll dig into this issue in a future post.


BROADCAST

DStv is in trouble, you guys.

📉 According to MultiChoice’s latest annual report, active DStv subscribers in South Africa have dropped from 8.0 million to 7.6 million. 

Although South Africa comprises 48.5% of MultiChoice's subscriber base, it accounts for a significant 60% of the group's revenue, so these numbers are BAD.

🤑The company's financial statements show a $232.4 million loss, which makes Multichoice technically insolvent, as I’ve pointed out before (read my viral post here).

So where did these 400,000 subscribers go?

MultiChoice cites severe economic pressures, financial distress, high living costs, and load-shedding as reasons for this decline, which spans all subscriber segments from mass market to premium.

📺 💥But the real reason is, of course, the rapid expansion of uncapped fiber internet in the country and the relentless and inevitable growth of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, which present an existential threat to MultiChoice’s traditional Pay TV business.

The company’s future now hinges on its ability to expand its own streaming services, Showmax and DStv Stream, and on a successful execution of its planned merger with the deep-pocketed Canal+.

🤞🏾 MultiChoice continues to aim for Showmax to break even in 2027 and reach $1 billion in net revenue by 2028. In the last financial year, Showmax generated $56.5 million, up from $46.3 million the previous year. That’s one long, ambitious way to go.

SPORTS 

Television is dead, long live television.

While MultiChoice is fighting for its survival, Afreximbank (again) has announced the extension of a $264 million debt facility to New World TV (NWTV), to be used in part to finance the acquisition of Africa broadcasting rights for several premium international and African sporting events.

⚽️ Some of the events covered include football games from FIFA, UEFA, CAF, the French Ligue, and Spanish LaLiga.

Founded in 2015 in the tiny country of Togo (population: 9.5 million), NWTV burst on the pan African broadcast scene in 2021 when it snatched the rights to the 2022 Qatar World Cup from under Canal+’s nose.

And then it did it again with the rights to AFCON 2023.

🌍 NWTV itself currently broadcasts in seven local languages across 24 countries, but its business model is based on the sub-licensing of these valuable sports rights to other Free-to-Air, Pay TV and streaming operators across the continent.

For example, earlier this year NWTV sold AFCON licenses to Azam TV, StarTimes, SuperSport, AfroSport, and NTA, among others.

Many of NWTV’s potential sub-licensees are public, Free-to-Air channels that reach very large audiences in their respective countries but had no way to access these premium sports properties when they were locked up by a Canal+, MultiChoice or beIN.

💡Besides the potential financial boon for NWTV, one key outcome of this strategy, if successful, will be the democratization of access to premium sports content and a complete revaluation of the size (and so the commercial worth) of African sports audiences.

Nigeria's leading Dambe promoter, African Warriors Fighting Championship (AWFC), has secured the backing of Sports, Tech and Entertainment investor Silverbacks Holdings.

🥊 Dambe is a traditional form of boxing originating from northern Nigeria, in which fighters use one hand wrapped in cloth as the striking hand, while the other hand is used for defense. 

A very popular form of local entertainment, dambe’s live matches draw thousands of rabid fans, just like Senegalese wrestling and other similar types of traditional fighting do across the Sahel.

🤼 I became fascinated by this world 17 years ago when I attended a Nuba wrestling match in Khartoum (long story).

The connection between ancient African combat sports such as dambe and the booming MMA market is clear. AWFC is one of the few players attempting to elevate traditional African fighting and take it global.

📈 AWFC says its platforms have already generated over 500 million views, and racked up 600,000 social media followers. Beyond Nigeria, their largest audiences hail from the US and Brazil, countries with huge markets for combat sports.

The company’s revenue streams include live events, media rights, talent management, and the upcoming AWFC TV, featuring collaborations with renowned UFC stars. 

Previously, AWFC secured a landmark sponsorship with Stake, a leading crypto-betting company and official UFC sponsor, marking Stake’s first foray into Africa.

🎯 The deal with AWFC marks Silverbacks' third sports investment since its launch in 2019, after the Cape Town Tigers and NERGii, a South African sports technology company.


CREATECH

How can tech help scale the Creative industries?

🚀🌑 That’s the question I asked my panelists at the Moonshot by TechCabal conference That took place in October 9-10 in Lagos.

The tech sector gets a lot of press, but the reality is that 90% of businesses (and by extension of creative businesses) in Africa are SMEs.

🏭 They look less like Flutterwave and more like your traditional production company, fashion label, publishing house, or equipment rental business.

Most African creative businesses have barely started integrating digital tools, and yet, those could be transformative for the sector, just as they have been for other industries such as health or education.

💡On the panel, we were lucky to have two companies that are successfully leveraging technology to open new markets for creatives: 

Filmmakers Mart connects producers and content commissioners such as Netflix and Multichoice with film resources, locations and collaborators on the ground in various countries, using technology to facilitate networking, payment, and project management.

Selar offers tools for creators to sell digital products like e-books, courses, films, and music. By providing easy payment options in various currencies and digital delivery, it enables creatives to reach global customers efficiently.

💰We also had two key investors in African CreativeTech companies: IFC (Elom Lassey), which invested in ANKA, and 4DX Ventures (Harriet Adinkrah), backers of Wowzi, Eksab, Minly and MAKA.

Key takeaways:

✅ Global platforms like YouTube, instagram, Spotify, and Netflix, but also homegrown ones like ANKA, have revolutionized distribution and been instrumental in putting African creativity on the map 

✅ Technology is now enabling new ways to generate revenue, such as advertising on social media content and online stores connected to local payment systems

✅ Thanks to cheap digital creation and distribution tools, anyone can now make money from their own talent or expertise without any need for intermediaries - this is the new “permissionless economy”

✅ The Creator Economy will employ millions of young Africans in the next few years. Already, tens of thousands (if not more) people are living off platforms like Selar, Wowzi, and Youtube

✅ Automation and AI improve workflow, social media campaign management, data analytics, and can even enhance creative processes. In fact, all panelists were optimistic about the impact of AI on creative businesses.

While I am personally bullish on the Creator Economy, there is not a lot of hard data to back up this statement yet.

Thankfully, a new report by TM Global and David Adeleke has come to plug some of this gap.

In it, we learn that:

📈 Africa's Creator Economy is rapidly expanding. Valued at approximately $3.08 billion in 2023, it is projected to grow to $17.84 billion by 2030, with a projected annual growth rate of 28.5%.

👧🏾 The majority of African creators are young (96% are between 18-34 years old), with women slightly outnumbering men. This dynamic demographic is shaping the industry's future.

🤏🏾 87% of Creators have less than 10k followers, which makes them micro or even nano creators. Half have been in the industry for less than 3 years, and 70% currently earn less than $60 per month. This underscores the nascent nature of this ecosystem.

🛒 Selling digital products tops the list of how they make money (52.8%). Sponsored content, physical merchandise and ad revenue follow at 19.4%, 13.9% and 12%.

🎤 Creators’ main areas of interest are Entertainment & Media (53.2%), followed by Fashion & Lifestyle (14.3%) and Technology (13.5%). But there are other niches, such as Finance, Food, or Health and Fitness.

🤳🏾Instagram and TikTok are the primary platforms but most Creators are betting on YouTube for long-term success.

💰 Among the main obstacles to growth include limited monetization options (23.8%) and funding shortages (22.2%), and the same-old, pervasive infrastructural issues (internet access, equipment). 

🌐 Another challenge comes from platform-specific limitations, such as the lack of integration with local payment methods, and fickle content algorithms that make it difficult to maintain and grow an audience.

One way to solve some of these challenges is through the development of independent platforms or services like the previously mentioned Wowzi and Selar, that work to close the gap between global audiences and Africa-based creators.

🌍 Another such platform is AMAKA, founded in 2020 by Adaora Oramah as a social publishing platform for Pan-Afrian creators to monetise their creativity through subscriptions and gigs with businesses and brands. 

The company has already worked with blue chip clients such as Nike, YouTube, The Access Bank, ETG & Arise IIP. 

💰 Earlier this month, AMAKA announced that it had closed a $2 million seed funding round led by Equitane, alongside Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab, Silverbacks Holdings, and a group of angel investors, to grow its Black and African creator platform.

The investment will go towards three core areas:

✅ Expansion of AMAKA Gigs to allow brands to easily discover, commission, and manage relationships with Black and African creators worldwide 

✅ Enhance Payment Solutions by integrating digital wallets and accounts

✅ Targeted Marketing Campaigns to drive user acquisition, activation, and retention.

HUSTLE & FLOW #59: Next Narrative Africa's film fund; Botswana throws its hat in the ring; NBA Africa picks winning startups; and more

🗽The African Creative and Sports industries took center stage during the UN General Assembly week in New York last week. 

Prestigious events, such as the Global Africa Business Initiative’s (GABI) flagship Unstoppable Africa conference, Semafor’s Next 3 Billion Summit or The Bridge: Next Narrative Africa, showcased the Creative and Sports sectors as a central theme in numerous discussions -- and not only as an entertainment break to the main show.

😎 The Creative and Sports industries are now given the same level of attention in global forums as other major topics such as development, finance and geopolitics -- signaling a pivotal shift in perception and perhaps, an upcoming transition from advocacy to real action.

In this new edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, we look at new film finance initiatives, Africa-diaspora collabs, Tyla’s MTV award, Lupita’s podcast, sports tech startups, and even electric boat racing.

If you enjoy this newsletter, make sure to subscribe.

And if you’re in Lagos next week, meet me at TechCabal’s Moonshot Conference (DM for a discount!).

FILM

🚀 One of the biggest announcements made during UNGA was the launch of a new, $40 million investment fund for African content, led by Next Narrative Africa’s Akunna Cook and HEVA Fund’s Wakiuru Njuguna.

👨🏾 👩🏾 The Next Narrative Africa Fund aims to raise and invest $30 million in equity financing and $10 million in grants in film, television, and podcast projects by African and diaspora creators that challenge negative stereotypes in storytelling about people of African descent.

Starting in early 2025, the fund plans to invest between $1 million and $5 million, depending on the project's stage and requirements, and will require that 60% of each project's production take place in Africa. The fund will also establish a venture studio for idea incubation.

The fund’s first backers are the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and USAID’s Prosper Africa initiative, with more expected to join.

Next Narrative Africa’s initiative is the latest in a recent wave of film fund launches, which includes Afreximbank’s $1 billion finance facility, NISK Capital’s Anansi fund, Logical Picture’s Africa fund, as well as several Nollywood-focused vehicles. 

📤Although all these positive initiatives should be celebrated, I mentioned in the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW that the main bottleneck to the growth of African film and television today is not financing but distribution. 

ـــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ In a context of declining content spend (Hollywood is in crisis, you guys), the demand from global buyers for African content is not rising. Worldwide, only the lucky few can hope to make money through a cinema release. On the continent itself, free-to-air broadcasters are not investing because they’re not making enough advertising revenue. 

Who besides Netflix and Canal+Multichoice will buy all these new titles that will be produced? 

⚠️ How will all these new investors make their money back?

Tech founders and consumer goods operators are familiar with the concept of non-consumption in Africa and know that they need to build their business around it.

Film producers and investors need to have a solution to this equation too.

One thing that Next Narrative Africa gets right is that two of Africa’s major strengths are the creativity and talent of its people, and the power and influence of its diaspora.

🤜🏾🤛🏾 This month, two new high-profile Africa-diaspora film collaborations were announced, boosting the chances of seeing African stories hit the global stage.

First: Hollywood star Idris Elba is developing a TV series based on "Things Fall Apart," the renowned novel by the late Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

Elba is set to portray the main character, Okonkwo, and will also serve as an executive producer, alongside British-Nigerian actor and director David Oyelowo. The Achebe family will also be among the executive producers. A24 is the studio.

📕"Things Fall Apart", widely considered a classic of global literature, was translated into over 60 languages and sold more than 20 million copies since it was first published in 1958. 

Set in the 1890s in pre-colonial Igboland (present-day southeast Nigeria), it follows the life of feared warrior and local leader Okonkwo, as European colonialists and Christian missionaries arrive in his community.

👅 As is customary these days, the announcement led to a mini-controversy, with some Nigerians complaining about the choice of Elba, who is British of Ghanaian and Sierra Leonean descent, to play a pre-colonial-time Igbo man. More specifically, they are concerned that their beloved classical hero may end up with a nebulous “Wakanda African” accent.

Unfortunately, this might be the price to pay for a spot under the Hollywood sun.

Meanwhile, Nollywood’s Golden Boy Editi Effiong (“The Black Book”) has enlisted the support of NBA All-Star Joel Embiid and LeBron James’ athlete empowerment brand Uninterrupted, for his new film project “Backline”.

🏈 Inspired by real-life stories of current NFL players and written and directed by Effiong, “Backline” centers on two Nigerian friends pursuing their dreams of playing professional football in the U.S. 

Embiid is joining the project through his Miniature Géant outfit, which he established in 2023. The studio focuses on highlighting individuals who have achieved success through unconventional paths in various formats, including scripted and unscripted content. 

Embiid’s own journey from Yaounde, Cameroon, to the NBA exemplifies the stories Miniature Géant aims to tell.

💡Betting on inspirational sports content is smart, as it is one of the most in-demand genres out there. 

Production on “Backline” is scheduled to start in 2025, with filming locations in both Nigeria and the United States.

🇧🇼 Joining the ranks of much larger countries such as South Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Ghana or Ivory Coast, tiny Botswana (population: 2.63 million) is taking steps to establish its first film commission and film fund, alongside expanding film studio capabilities to boost the country's film and TV production.

The Botswana government is collaborating with American TV show host and comedian Steve Harvey and his Steve Harvey Global Company, along with South African producer Duncan Irvine, on the initiative dubbed “Botswana Ignite”. Irvine is the director of the project.

🤔While the participation of Irvine, a veteran producer and former CEO of Rapid Blue (acquired by BBC Studios), makes sense, the partnership with Harvey appears like an unlikely alliance -- but one that has nevertheless been going strong for over 5 years.

According to the government (who was forced, at some point, to explain itself), Harvey’s interest in Botswana was sparked when he attended something called the Diamond Conference Women Summit in Gaborone in 2028, and struck up a friendship with President Mokgweetsi Masisi. 

“Botswana has diamonds, but we want to expand our creative industry. Steve Harvey visited and decided to help us with our vision,” said Goitsemang Morekisi, secretary for the Ministry of State president.

💪🏾 “In 10 years, Botswana will become one of the top film industries on the African continent,” said Harvey, who is also a motivational speaker.

Botswana Ignite has so far launched a TV academy in Gaborone, offering courses in scripted and unscripted content, as well as a specialist wildlife film school in Kasane focused on natural history filmmaking. It plans to attract experienced Bastwana currently working abroad back to Botswana.

📽 Botswana Ignite is also assisting the government in developing a film rebate scheme to boost the film economy and encourage the establishment of local production companies.

“The thing that really excites me about Botswana is they understand and recognise they’re a small market so there is a real appetite there to work collaboratively with foreign producers and platforms,” said Irvine. 

“The government is looking at how they can create a really exciting, dynamic film and television industry, rather than just how to create great content for Botswana. (...) They’re less fixated on whether it will work for a Botswanan audience and more on whether this is a great show that can find an audience, whether that’s in Botswana or not. That really opens the field quite a lot.”

It not only opens the field, but that’s the only viable play for such a small country. And when there is a will, there is a way. We’ll be rooting for you, Botswana.

MUSIC

Tyla continues her ascent into global music stardom, but… she will have to create her own space in it.

🏆Two weeks ago, the 22-year-old musician received the MTV Award for Best Afrobeats Video. While this is a significant achievement, Tyla called the moment “bittersweet” as her song isn't, in fact, Afrobeats.

🤔 Tyla was nominated in the “Best Afrobeats” category alongside  Burna Boy, Tems, Tyla, Davido, Ayra Starr, Lojay, and Pheelz. She was also nominated for “Best New Artist” and “Best RnB”... which really shows that the organizers did not know where to place her.

In her acceptance speech, the singer described her win as “a big moment for Africa,” adding that the success of “Water” not only made a global impact but also proved that “African music can be pop music too.”

🎶“This is just so special but also bittersweet, because I know there’s a tendency to group all African artists under Afrobeats,” she said.  “African music is so diverse, it’s more than just Afrobeats.”

The 22-year-old musician spoke about how she specifically makes amapiano music, a South African genre that fuses house, jazz, and the '90s-originated sound known as kwaito.

Because she infuses amapiano with pop elements, Tyla has been called the ‘Queen of Popiano.’

Teaching the world about the diversity of African music may just end up being one of Tyla’s most important creative contributions.

PODCAST

🎤 Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o goes back to her roots in Mind Your Own, her new storytelling podcast.

Nyong’o came up with the idea for this podcast while she was stuck in traffic and wanted to hear a story from Kenya, where she grew up. In Mind Your Own, she’s inviting others in the African diaspora to tell real-life tales from Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Johannesburg and more. 

But Nyong’o also shares tales of her own, such as when she talks about how uncomfortable it felt to lose her accent for the American market, before finding her authentic voice again.

To listen, head over there.

SPORTS 

🏀 NBA Africa announced the four winners of its inaugural Triple-Double accelerator, which was launched last April to unearth innovative solutions in sports-adjacent sectors across the continent such as event management, ticketing, youth development, and digital marketing.


Ten African startups from 7 countries – who were whittled down from an initial pool of more than 700 applicants – presented pitches to a panel of five judges.

💫 The lucky winners were:

🥇 1st place ($50,000): Festival Coins (Nigeria) offers a customizable, no-code event registration and ticketing platform called Tix Africa for events in Nigeria and Ghana. Tix Africa already has a partnership with MasterCard and a year-over-year revenue increase of 364%.

🥈 2nd place ($40,000): Salubata (Nigeria) creates modular shoes repurposed from plastic waste to reduce the global carbon footprint through its environmentally friendly products. A Techstars accelerator alum, the company dedicates 5% of its profits to empowering women and youths in underserved communities.

🥉 3rd place ($30,000): HustleSasa (Kenya) provides live event management services that support payment processing, attendee check-in, merchandise sales, customer data management, and influencer tracking across 4 countries.

🏅 4th place ($20,000): UBR VR (Egypt) delivers state-of-the-art, fully immersive, in-person virtual reality (VR) experiences across Egypt, ranging from shooter games to museum tours.

The six other finalists each received a $10,000 prize. 

Besides the cash prizes, the four winners will receive mentorship, including an opportunity to participate in workshops and development programs facilitated by NBA Africa or its partners. 

“The entire [NBA] is committed to Africa,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. “We see enormous opportunity there. We see an opportunity to continue to develop the game of basketball, and we see economic opportunity.“

🚤 If you were to guess where football icon Didier Drogba would put his efforts next, I bet you wouldn’t have picked electric boat racing.

And yet.

Co-owned by Drogba and Lilium Capital Group, Team Drogba is competing in the inaugural E1 Series, the first-ever all-electric boat racing championship.

🐳Team Drogba aims to elevate Africa’s presence on the global sports stage and bolster the continent’s blue economy, emphasizing Africa’s role in sustainability, marine ecosystem restoration, and environmental awareness. It recently received the financial backing of the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the investment arm of Afreximbank.

Turns out that is a thing. Drogba is not the only global sports icon competing in the new electric boat racing series: Rafael Nadal, Tom Brady and Virat Kohli are also team owners.

If, like me, this is the first time you hear about electric boat racing, this is what it looks like.

On a sad note, we bid farewell yesterday to DRC-born NBA All-Star and humanitarian Dikembe Mutombo, who passed away after a 2-year battle with brain cancer. 

FINANCING

HEVA Fund has launched Ota Growth, a loan facility for creative businesses in Kenya backed by the Mastercard Foundation.

This facility is designed for the growth of creative businesses operating in:

✅Fashion, Garments, Beauty and Accessories

✅Film, TV, Content Creation, Gaming and Audio- Visual

✅Live Music, Theatre and Performing Arts

Eligible businesses can apply here for KES 5M to 20M at a 9% interest rate.

LET’S MEET IN LAGOS NEXT WEEK

🌚I've partnered with TechCabal's Moonshot conference, taking place in Lagos next week on October 9th and 10th.

I‘m excited to have worked with Moonshot on its Creative Economy track, which will include keynotes, case studies, panels, a strategic round table on Creative infrastructure, as well as a startup pitch session showcasing handpicked Creative companies looking for investment.

Key speakers will include Dr Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital; Hannatu Musa Musawa, Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy; Editi Effiong (The Black Book); Tobi Alabi (Mavin Record), Godwin Tom (Sony); Gbemisola Abudu (NBA Nigeria), among many more.

🎉DM or email me (marie@restless.global) to get a 20% discount on your ticket!

HUSTLE & FLOW #58: IFC, Proparco and Helios join forces; Nile becomes Nollywood’s newest player, PFL Africa launches, and more

Letsile Tebogo wins Botswana’s first ever gold medal at the Paris Olympics

© Ben STANSALL / AFP

Hello everyone,

☀️ I am back after taking some time away from Linkedin over the summer.

So what did we miss? Quite a lot, turns out, including some key transactions  in film, music, and beauty.

🗼🥇There was, also, the Olympics, which showed us two things: one, that uplifting sports content might well be the most engaging content of all, and second, that there would be much, much to gain from investing in and supporting African athletes. 

Thankfully, some investors are now getting into formation to do just that.

Read on for more, in this special Back to School edition of HUSTLE & FLOW 👇

FILM

🎬 When highly respected former FilmOne MD Moses Babatope left the company he co-founded in March this year, the African film industry was less interested by the corporate drama at play than by Moses’ next move.

The cat is now out of the bag: Moses’ new venture is called Nile Media Entertainment Group (Moses, the Nile - get it?), and it aims to position itself as a market leader right off the bat.

😎 The launch announcement bore Moses’ signature golden touch for marketing:

  • A presence in each segment of the film value chain, with five subsidiaries: Nile Entertainment (distribution), Nile Cinemas and Nile X (exhibition), Nile Motion Pictures (content production), Nile Studio Lab (premium content production), and The Nile Foundation (community development)

  • A strong team of experienced female executives

  • A bunch of deals already signed, such as the acquisition of distribution rights for 31 films, including Omoni Oboli’s “Wives on Strike 3”, and two cinema management deals 

  • Solid partnerships, including one with media mogul Mo Abudu to launch luxury cinemas called “The Pods” 

As he strikes out on his own (albeit well surrounded), Moses benefits from a lot of industry goodwill. Nile will certainly be a company to watch.

🌴The Durban Film Festival took place in July as usual, and this year’s edition buzzed with the launch of a few new funding initiatives, riding on the coattails of Afreximbank’s much talked-about $1 billion African film fund.

Frédéric Fiore from Logical Pictures Group was there promoting its new Logical Picture Africa fund, a smartly positioned venture aiming to bridge the gap between large institutional funds and smaller budget projects. I talked about it in the previous edition of HUSTLE & FLOW - head over there for more details.

New on the African film finance scene are initiatives by veteran US talent agent Dana Sims and producer Erica Grayson, who will focus on commercially driven movies with Africans for a global audience, and a partnership between Kathleen Burke and Beverley Mitchell's Rare Bird Studios and Paris-based Betty Sulty-Johnson’s Habebo Studios targeting pan-African, diasporic, and international content.

⚠️ This is all well and good, but it doesn’t solve the most pressing problem faced by African producers: the lack of actual buyers for their content.

Indeed, besides Netflix and Canal+Multichoice, there’s not much out there. The African free-to-air broadcast industry hides some big opportunities, but is so chaotic that it has so far proven a graveyard for investors (RIP Kwese).

📱In a future edition, I’ll talk about how some producers are circumventing the problem entirely by going straight to YouTube, even with premium content.

CREATOR ECONOMY

💡In 2016, Paystack’s founding team member Douglas Kendyson launched Selar, after noticing a need for a marketplace to sell creative digital products like ebooks and online courses.

💲Kendyson iterated on his passion project for four years, self-funding Selar while working at Flutterwave and startups in Dubai. Selar progressively integrated with PayPal, Stripe, Paystack, and MPesa to simplify payments. It also developed features like tips and donations through its Show Love product, accepting over 11 currencies.

During all this time, Kendyson opted not to raise external capital.

💥And then in 2023, he quietly announced that Selar creators’ annual revenue had reached ₦4 billion ($4.4 million) on the platform — double the previous year’s earnings. Selar itself makes money through commissions, SaaS subscriptions, and forex spreads.

Today the platform counts 21 team members, servicing 200,000 creators and 20,000 affiliates. Already used by creators in some 15 countries, it is now officially expanding to Kenya.

The story of Selar is one of my favorites in the Creative Industries. Selar is a product that responds to a real need, leverages its founder’s particular expertise (in this case, digital payments), made money from the first transaction, and grew organically at a sustainable pace. Selar is good. Be like Selar.

📢 In another good news for Kenyan creators, TikTok is rolling out its advertising platform in the country, a major step towards enabling monetization in Kenya.

While not all business accounts have access yet, brands like Infinix, Itel, Tecno, Oraimo, MESH, and Glovo have been able to test out TikTok ads in Kenya - sparking optimism for smaller businesses eager to tap into creative short-video ads without hefty budgets.

Although creators are not able to receive payments yet, this move signals TikTok’s commitment to a full launch in Kenya.

💰Currently, TikTok only offers monetization in South Africa, and my sources tell me that even there, things are not very smooth yet. The popularity of the Chinese social network across the continent means that, once it gets it right, the earning potential for creators is enormous. TikTok, TikTok, we are waiting.

MUSIC

🎟️ US ticketing giant Ticketmaster has acquired Quicket, a 13-year-old Cape Town-based ticketing company, in a strategic move to expand its footprint across Africa. 

This acquisition, though undisclosed in financial terms, is set to leverage Quicket’s local expertise in countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia.

🎪Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation, began operations in South Africa in 2022 and has already been serving some of the country's top festivals, sports, music, theater, and venue clients. 

By teaming up with Quicket’s self-service platform and event organizer tools, Ticketmaster will now be able to offer solutions for events of all sizes, from small clubs to large festivals and stadiums, across the continent.

🤝 While Quicket will continue as a standalone business unit from Cape Town, it will benefit from Ticketmaster’s global presence and technological capabilities, such as secure encrypted mobile tickets. 

With the increasing importance of live performance in the music industry's revenue, there's been a significant push to build out local live industry infrastructure in Africa. This means developing solid ticketing solutions.

Other companies tackling the same challenge/opportunity include Kenya’s HustleSasa, which powers various events in East Africa and Ghana. Move Afrika’s producer Global Citizen has also announced plans for a pan-African platform that would streamline tour planning for international and African artists by solving the current fragmented model.

BEAUTY

🧴Kenyan skincare marketplace Uncover has raised $1.4 million in seed funding to expand into the US, Ghana, and Uganda. 

Founded in 2021 by Sneha Mehta and Jade Oyateru, Uncover leverages user data from its app to create personalized skincare products through labs in South Korea, aka the world’s beauty HQ. 

These customized products are then distributed via Uncover’s e-commerce platform and retail partnerships with pharmaceutical chains like Goodlife and Medplus in Kenya and Nigeria.

🚀The startup says it currently has over 200,000 users across these two countries and the diaspora, with a revenue growth of 10x over the past 24 months. It recently broke even and is moving towards profitability.

"The industry has represented only a few skin tones in testing, and we are one of the first brands testing on women in Africa. What’s exciting is that we are starting in Africa but seeing global demand and opportunity for our solution," said Sneha Mehta, CEO of Uncover.

This latest funding marks Uncover's third funding round, following a $100,000 pre-seed from Antler VC in 2021 and a $1 million seed round in 2022. It was led by EQ2 Ventures and IgniteXL Ventures, with participation from Chui Ventures, Samata Capital, and Altree Capital. 

INVESTMENT

Announced at the height of the summer, this news did not get any press - and yet this is a partnership that could be truly transformative:

💪 The International Finance Corporation (IFC), Proparco and private equity firm Helios’ new Sports & Entertainment Group (HSEG) have come together in a strategic alliance to explore joint investment opportunities in African sports and entertainment, with a focus on projects or companies that can stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and enhance ancillary sectors like tourism, real estate, and media.

💰💰💰IFC and Proparco are among the largest private-sector focused development finance institutions active in Africa. Meanwhile Helios, which was founded in 2004 by Tope Lawani and Babatunde Soyoye, has since become the world’s largest Africa-focused private investment firm with $3 billion under management.

🏀Helios started developing their sports and entertainment strategy in 2021, with an initial investment in NBA Africa, before officially setting up its dedicated entity HSEG. 

🎤 Since then, HSEG has taken equity stakes in The Malachite Group, the company which owns and manages the Afro Nation brand (previously controlled by Event Horizon, also a Helios portfolio company), and Zaria Group, a developer of mixed-used sports, entertainment and recreation properties in major urban centers in Africa. And just a couple months ago, HSEG backed the launch of the African division of the Professional Fighters League (PFL) - more on this below.

With HSEG leading the way, we can expect the consortium of heavyweights to focus on premium brands and properties, and ambitious infrastructure plays, including green field ventures.

SPORTS BUSINESS

🥊Talking about heavyweights, investment from HSEG is now turning the highly anticipated launch of PFL Africa into reality.

Created in 2018, PFL is generally considered the number 2 MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) league in the world, after UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).

Cameroonian star fighter and current PFL athlete Francis Ngannou will serve as Chairman of PFL Africa.

🤼Ngannou, a former UFC heavyweight champion, famously left UFC last year following disputes over pay and independence. He quickly joined PFL under more beneficial terms and the promise to help develop the league on the continent.

With many African fighters - such as Israel Adesanya and Kamaru Usman - outperforming in the sport, the potential of African MMA is obvious, both in terms of unearthing new champions and as a new market for digital MMA content.

PFL Africa is set to kick off in Q2 2025 and aims to position itself as ‘Africa’s most accessible sports league’. Its distribution strategy will cut across linear, digital and mobile platforms, with all events to be hosted on the continent and also available via regional media partners.

🏃‍♂️Silverbacks Holdings has made a strategic investment in South Africa's NERGii. The Cape Town-based company offers innovative products for athletes, including advanced performance-enhancing shoe innersoles which serve as a biological wearable battery to boost energy.

This investment aligns with Silverbacks Holdings' strategy to support the growing sports sector. Silverback’s sports portfolio also includes BAL quarterfinalists Cape Town Tigers.

⚽ And finally, Nigerian Afrobeat star Burna Boy is following other prominent Nigerians into the wild world of Nigerian football by launching the Burna Boy Football Academy.

The new initiative, which aims to nurture young African talent (aged 4-15 and 16-21) by combining football fundamentals with education and discipline, will prepare players for success beyond the sport through its training centers in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. 

💫 Leveraging Burna Boy’s global network and influence, the new Academy has already partnered with top-tier clubs like Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City, Brighton, Watford, and Scottish clubs Hearts and Hamilton.

HUSTLE & FLOW #57: Canal+Multichoice hot take; the Creator Economy $$$ moves; the Grammys enter Africa; and more

Afro Nation 2024

🎵 🎶As I am sending this new edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, I am just back from Afro Nation, the world’s top Afrobeats and Amapiano festival that took place for the 4th time this year in Portimão, Portugal.

🌍 It was fascinating to see the physical embodiment - through the festival’s 40,000 attendees - of the African and diaspora entertainment market we keep talking about: young, multilingual and multicultural, with solid purchasing power (tickets, travel and merch were not cheap, y’all).

I’ll dig deeper into this in future posts.

Meanwhile, this month of June brought us a new African film fund (they’re coming out like hot cakes), some pretty dire financial results for MultiChoice, progress in the financialization of the Creator Economy, the Grammys’ first steps in the continent, a new proof of concept for the NBA Africa, and more.

Read on 🤓👇 and don’t forget to subscribe 👉  https://lnkd.in/drBY8jnz

FILM

French film finance and production outfit Logical Pictures is expanding its reach into Africa, with the launch of the Logical African Stories Fund.

🎬 The new venture aims to become the go-to financing partner and leading production company for African content with global aspirations. But it also plans to invest beyond content by financing production companies, infrastructure, and distribution solutions across the continent.

According to Logical group’s head Frédéric Fiore, Logical Pictures Africa is about creating an ecosystem that mirrors their successful model in Europe, tailored to the unique creative landscape of Africa. 

📈 Established in 2016, Logical Pictures Group has become a leading player in film and TV equity, producing, financing and distributing a range of content in France and internationally. Across its various holdings, the group had a whopping 11 films at this year’s Cannes Festival.

With a focus on the key markets of Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, Logical Pictures Africa already has a slate of 18 African films and TV series in different stages of development and production. 

🌟 Pape Boye (Black Mic Mac) and Nicola Ofoego are leading content development efforts, which include projects with African A-listers such as Burna Boy, Sundance winner Sofia Alaoui, and Ladj Ly’s Kourtrajme --  the best African content slate I’ve seen so far.

BROADCAST

📉Multichoice is either worth $3 billion, or it is insolvent. Depends on who you ask.

For its fiscal year ending in March, the South African Pay TV giant reported a 5% drop in revenue, a 21% decline in group trading profit, and a staggering after-tax loss of $226 million.

⚠️ With its liabilities ($2.49 billion) now larger than its assets ($2.43 billion), MultiChoice could not settle all its debts if forced to sell its assets - making it technically insolvent.

MultiChoice’s financial “annus horribilis” was caused by the cost-of-living crisis which led to a 9% decline in active subscribers across the continent, and by unfavorable foreign exchange rates, especially in Nigeria, Angola, Kenya, and Zambia. The losses also include the recent investments made in Showmax 2.0, which will take time to offset.

👎🏾👍🏾 This is the company’s worst financial performance on record. And yet, thanks to Canal+’s buy-out offer of R125 per share, which the Multichoice board officially accepted (you bet), the company has never been worth more.

What does Canal+ see in this deal?

✅ The merger is expected to help save millions in costs as technology spending, content production and acquisitions are combined.

✅ Affordable television in Africa is still a valuable asset, especially since internet streaming remains too expensive for most.

✅ Multichoice, DStv, Showmax and SuperSport are very strong brands.

✅ Together, the merged company will have 50 million subscribers (30 million in Africa) – making it the biggest entertainment company in the world that's not American.

✅ Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada thinks that the merged entity can become one of the top-five largest entertainment groups in the world, alongside Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.

All these points make perfect sense. However, I believe that Canal+ has one key blind spot 👨🏾‍🦯:

The innate vulnerability of African media businesses operating in markets with volatile currencies.

⚖️Indeed, despite recent forays in Ethiopia and Rwanda, Canal+’s business practices are largely informed by the 30 years it has spent operating in Francophone West Africa -- a region shielded from currency fluctuations by the CFA Franc, which is pegged to the euro.

🐎In contrast, English-speaking Africa is a forex Wild West, where the fortunes of your entire business may be decided by factors as far from your control as the nose diving rate of the Naira. Just ask MTN, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, or Sanofi.

Buckle up, Canal+.

CREATOR ECONOMY

😂 Nigerian skit-makers are laughing all the way to the bank, says Forbes.

“Skit-maker” is the name given to creators of comedic social media content in Nigeria.

😷They emerged around 2015 and steadily gained prominence, with the Covid pandemic lockdowns accelerating their growth and popularity.

Today, this segment of the Creative Economy is flourishing and redefining entertainment.

📊 But that’s not all: it is now also significantly contributing to the country's GDP. According to global talent accelerator Dataleum, skit-making is now one of Nigeria's top entertainment sectors, worth over $31.2 million (and way more in Naira terms, obs). 

📱 Instagram and YouTube are key platforms. Combining ad revenue with brand endorsements, some skit-makers can earn over $20,000 per month.

Nigeria’s best known skit-makers include Kiekie (3.6 million Instagram followers) and of course Mark Angel, the OG, whose YouTube channel was the first African comedy channel to reach one million subscribers (it now has over 9 million). Last year, Angel’s Instagram skits amassed nearly 197 million views.

💡 The industry is starting to attracting transnational collaborations, such as with American actor Terry Crews. Kai Cenat, an American online streamer and YouTuber, also recently visited Nigeria.

According to the Africa Polling Institute (API), 90% of Nigerians polled viewed comedy skits as a viable means of employment.

💼 Not everyone may have the funny chops to become a professional comedian online, but digital content creation is likely to become a key component of the future of work in Nigeria, and across Africa.

As the content creation industry grows across the continent, the need for efficient, secure, and flexible payment solutions is becoming more critical.

🔔 💳 Mastercard has announced a $2 million investment in collaboration with influencer marketing platform Wowzi and Masria Digital Payments (MDP). 

📈 This five-year initiative will enable Wowzi’s content creators to obtain digital payment cards to simplify financial transactions both online and offline.

🔄 Payments from brands, fans, or sponsors will be received directly onto these digital cards, which will also come loaded with exclusive Mastercard rewards and benefits. 

🌐 "Our decision to invest in the influencer and content creation space is a testament to our belief in the transformative power of the gig economy." said Mastercard Senior VP and Country Manager for East Africa and Indian Ocean Shehryar Ali. 

Mastercard has been one of the key promoters (both through its foundation and through its main business) of the creative industries as an engine of job creation for the youth in Africa.

FASHION & TEXTILE

👙 African asset management firm TLG Capital has announced their investment into Liberty & Justice (L&J), an African swimwear brand.

Founded in 2022 by Chid Liberty and former Miss Africa Georgie Badiel Liberty, L&J is already available in over 250 Target stores across the USA.

👗 Liberty is known for establishing Liberia’s first fair-trade certified apparel factory, while Badiel is a long-time social activist.

📈 The TLG deal will extend a $5 million financing line to L&J, enabling the company to open a new factory in Liberia, create 700 jobs and bring African-inspired prints to the global market.

 This investment marks a milestone as TLG Capital becomes the first institutional investor to support the Africa-made apparel line.

It is also the 40th deal for TLG, an alternative asset management firm that “seeks out unique investment opportunities, inventing new asset classes and innovative investment structures” to capitalize on unconventional assets in Africa.

💡TLG’s model is a very interesting one to explore for the Creative industries. In fact, the firm has shown a growing interest in the Creative sector, extending another financing line to Inkblot Studios in April this year.

TLG Capital’s Aum Thacker said “The retreat of multinationals from Africa presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for nimble and passionate entrepreneurs to build things in the markets they know best. We are beyond excited to partner with Chid, Georgie, and the Liberty & Justice team, supporting their vision of ‘Made in Africa’ being on the clothing-tag in shops around the world.”

VISUAL ARTS

🌟 Google Arts & Culture strikes again, this time with a virtual exhibition platform on Rwandan history and culture.

🏛️🎨The platform is a partnership between Google and the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy (RCHA), and serves as a hub to preserve and digitize Rwandan stories, images, and more.

It provides access to past exhibitions on the history of Rwanda, visuals of museums and heritage sites, exhibitions that promote art and craft in Rwanda, as well as photos of objects that have never been on public display.

🖼️The project started in 2021, but its implementation was implemented from 2022. So far, 58 stories and 1,500 photos have been uploaded.

Once again, Google shows us one of the best contributions that technology can make to global cultural preservation and awareness. Because, obviously, there is a lot more to Rwanda than the genocide.

MUSIC

🌍🎶 The GRAMMY Awards are coming to Africa.

The Recording Academy, the organization behind the GRAMMYs, has announced the launch of its operations in Africa and the Middle East. 

🎤 This development is aligned with the Recording Academy’s mission to support music creators globally, particularly in regions with rapidly growing music scenes.

🎧 Over the past two years, the organization has engaged in extensive listening sessions and discussions with key private and government stakeholders in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, Ivory Coast, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

📚 The goal was to build a framework for enhancing the Academy’s presence and services in these regions. 

Key initiatives will include:

  • Empowering music creators through the GRAMMY GO™ online learning platform

  • Producing original content to celebrate local music scenes

  • Advocating for strong Intellectual Property (IP) legislation

  • Collaborating to strengthen the creative economy

This move by the GRAMMYs is yet another sign of the mainstreaming of African music globally, and within the Recording Academy.

🎵 Earlier this year, South African singer Tyla won the inaugural Best African Music Performance GRAMMY with her Amapiano-infused Afro pop hit “Water”.

The decision to include an Africa-specific award in the program came about because music from the continent is now "prevalent everywhere in the world", according to the Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr.

Mason Jr became the first Black person to be in charge of the GRAMMY awards in 2021.

🌐 The launch of the Grammys' operations in Africa is a historic opportunity for the continent’s music industry, providing an enhanced platform for African music to be recognized and celebrated worldwide.

SPORTS

🏀 Cameroon's Ulrich Chomche becomes the first NBA Academy Africa prospect to be drafted to the NBA.

Chomche is also the first prospect across all three of the league’s NBA Academies (located in Senegal, Mexico and Australia) to be drafted directly out of an NBA Academy, and the first player to be drafted after participating in the Basketball Africa League (BAL).

⛹🏾Chomche joined the NBA Academy training center in Saly, Senegal in 2019 when he was 14-years-old. Only five years later, he was just now selected 57th overall by the Memphis Grizzlies. He is the 7th player from Cameroon to be drafted in the NBA.

This is a welcome proof of concept for the NBA, which has invested hundreds of millions to develop its African operations. 

The NBA, as well as other international leagues such as the NFL and the PFL, are looking at the continent both as a new potential market to sell their content and products, but also as a source of premium talent.

🌍⚽️ The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has moved the dates of the next Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) from June-July 2025 to December 21 2025 to January 18 2026, in order not to clash with the FIFA World Cup (June 15 to July 13 2025), nor with the UEFA’s Champions League (ending on December 11 and starting again on January 21 2026).

🤯 This scheduling headache illustrates how congested the international football calendar has become, and many are worried that AFCON will end up being the losing party:

European clubs might refuse to release players at these dates, particularly clubs in the English Premier League who don’t take a winter break but instead run a full and intense league program. 

🎅🏿Fans may also be less willing to travel to Morocco to attend matches during the holiday period, while the general audience will be distracted by Detty December and other seasonal activities.

This could potentially be financially disastrous for the CAF, after the $80 million profit from this year’s very successful edition, which took place in (and was won by) Ivory Coast.

💡OR…could it be a great marketing opportunity for both the CAF and Morocco, which is already a popular destination for many Europeans at that time of year? Beach, football and Christmas tajine, anyone?

CONSULTING OPPORTUNITY

Talking about Morocco, one of the reasons we all love the country is because it has one of the most vibrant creative scenes in the world.

How do we take it to the next level?

My client IFC is looking for a consulting firm to conduct a study on Access to Finance for the Creative and Cultural Industries in Morocco.

This study will be used to develop specific tools that will enable IFC and its partners to channel funding to Moroccan companies in sectors such as film/tv, animation, gaming, music, fashion, design, arts and crafts, sports, and more.

Come work with me and with IFC - all details here.

The deadline for the Expressions of Interest is July 10th.

HUSTLE & FLOW #56: African films at Cannes; Kenya's growing textile industry; CREA Fund launch, and more

(c) “One becoming a Guinea Fowl”, Rungano Nyoni

🌍 On May 25 we celebrated “Africa Day”, the annual commemoration of the foundation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963.

So what’s been good on this Africa month?

African creatives shone on various stages from the #CannesFilmFestival in France, to the White House during President Ruto’s US visit, to the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali.

Nigerian artists continue to break records on Spotify, while Kenya’s fashion and textile industry surprises with its unexpected growth. Plus, a new pilot initiative by Proparco aims to encourage private investment in the Creative sector.

👇Read on for all details on those stories and more

#AfricanCreativeIndustries #Investment

FILM

🎬🌍 The 77th Cannes Film Festival recently wrapped up.

The presence of African film at the Cannes Film Festival has grown over the past decade, and 2023 was a historic year for African representation in Cannes, with 15 titles showcased. Two films from the continent competed for the Palme d’Or: a Tunisian docu-fiction Les Filles d’Olfa (Four Daughters), and a Senegalese film Banel and Adama.

This year, while no African films made it to the main competition, African (and especially North African) cinema still made its mark across various categories:

✨ Mo Harawe’s (Sudan) debut feature, 'The Village Next to Paradise', and Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni’s 'On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”, both premiered in the Un Certain Regard category.

✨ The Director’s Fortnight lineup featured 'Everybody Loves Touda' by Moroccan producer Nabil Ayouch and 'East of Noon' by Egyptian filmmaker Noora Elkoussy.

✨ Cannes’ International Critics Week highlighted Egypt’s 'Rafaat Einy ll Sama' (The Brink of Madness) by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, Moroccan filmmaker Saïd Hamich Benlarbi’s 'La Mer Au Loin' (Across the Sea), and 'Animale' by Algerian producer Emma Benestan.

🎥 The festival also celebrated African talent on the jury panels, with Belgian-Congolese singer and filmmaker Baloji, Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, and filmmakers Asmae El-Moudir and Maïmouna Doucouré serving as jury members in various categories.

ANIMATION

The long-awaited Nigerian mythology animation series IYANU is one step closer to becoming reality.

🎭Warner Bros Discovery’s Cartoon Network and Max have announced the all-Nigerian cast for the series, which is slated for release in the US on Cartoon Network and Max in 2025.

A Lion Forge Entertainment production, IYANU is adapted from the Dark Horse Dark Horse Comics/YouNeek Studios’ graphic novel series “Iyanu: Child of Wonder” by Roye Okupe.

🌍🌀The story is set in the magical kingdom of Yorubaland and follows Iyanu, a teenage orphan who discovers she has divine powers. Along with friends Biyi and Toye, she goes on a journey to uncover the truth about the evil threatening her homeland and her ultimate destiny, to save her people.

🗣️ Alongside voiceover veteran Serah Johnson, who is leading the cast as Iyanu, are some recognizable Nollywood faces (or in this case, voices): actress Adesua Etomi-Wellington as Olori, Blossom Chukwujekwu, set to play Toye’s father Kanfo, and Shaffy Bello who will voice Emi – The One Mother.

YouNeek Studios’ path to success is one of steadfastness, as it usually is the case in the creative industries.

🦸🏾 Roye Okupe started building YouNeek and its YouNiverse of interconnected African superheroes stories back in 2012.

🐎 In 2021, Dark Horse Comics, one of the world’s leading entertainment publishers, signed a deal with YouNeek to publish all 10 of YouNeek’s previously self-published graphic novels.

Around the same time, Okupe received seed investment from Erica Motley Dupuis of Impact X Capital through its Impact X Studios division, whose goal is to fund, develop and package international - including African - content focused on diversity and inclusion. Motley Dupuis, an experienced former film executive, quickly facilitated the production deal with Lion Forge.

🔮 At the time, Motley Dupuis’ investment in YouNeek was bold, ground-breaking and a real bet on the uncertain future of African animation. It looks like it’s now paying off.

MUSIC

📊 For the second consecutive year, Spotify has published revenue data for Nigerian and South African artists as part of its Loud & Clear initiative, which aims to provide unprecedented transparency in streaming economics.

Key 2023 highlights:

  • Royalties from Spotify to Nigerian artists exceeded N25B (USD18M), more than doubling the amount from 2022. Over half of these royalties were generated by independent artists or labels.

  • Royalties from Spotify to South African artists reached nearly 256M ZAR  (USD 13.6M), 240% increase since 2019 and over 500% since 2017.

  • The number of South African artists earning over 100,000 ZAR (USD 5,300) in royalties has increased more than 5x since 2018.

💰 Globally, Spotify returns about two-thirds of every dollar it makes from music back to the industry, setting a record last year with the highest annual payment from any single retailer at $9 billion.

🎶 Promoting African talent to its 615M users worldwide, Spotify featured over 1,400 Nigerian and 2,800 South African artists in its editorial playlists in 2023.

🎧 These editorial playlists are key to enabling discoveries: Nigerian artists reached first-time listeners over 950M times, while South African artists did so over 735M times.

📈 According to the latest IFPI report, Sub-Saharan Africa was the fastest-growing region for music industry revenue, surpassing 20% growth (24.7%).

🎶 Nigerian singer Tekno’s Cartel Music label and Mr. Eazi’s emPawa Africa have entered into a joint venture, with Tekno also joining emPawa Africa as an investor and partner.

📢 Mr. Eazi announced, "This phase will see us partnering with African artists at different stages of their career who want to maintain financial and creative freedom, yet move from talent for hire to equity participation. It’s a first-of-its-kind deal for Afrobeats."

🔗 Through this partnership, the Cartel Music imprint will release music through emPawa Africa. Tekno, whom Billie Eilish once named her “favorite artist” will become an investor in emPawa during its next capital call round.

🌍 Since its inception in 2018, emPawa Africa has been offering marketing, distribution, publishing, label, and management services, working with artists like Joeboy, Major League Djz, Fave, King Promise, and Minz.

FASHION & TEXTILE

👗 Kenya’s Vivo Fashion Group's opened its first store in the US in Atlanta, Georgia.

Founded 13 years ago by Wandia Gichuru, Vivo has grown to become one of the largest fashion brands in East Africa.

📈🚀 With all products designed and manufactured in Kenya, Vivo currently operates an impressive 25 stores across East Africa and employs over 380 people.

Vivo’s US store opening was attended by Kenya’s President Ruto, himself on a historic US tour.

President Ruto then visited the Tyler Perry Studios but was stood up by Perry who “couldn’t make it” and sent Steve Harvey as consolation prize. But that’s another story.

👔 The Vivo store opening is the perfect follow up to the news, released earlier this month, that Kenya had now become the largest textile and apparel exporter to the United States in Africa.

🏭 The recent launch in the country of a new $2 million apparel brand identification and packaging plant by Nexgen, supported by a $750,000 grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), is a testament to Kenya’s growing role in the global garment value chain.

Nexgen Packaging's choice of Kenya as its Africa headquarters signifies a strategic move to enhance capabilities and strengthen garment manufacturing processes in the region.

♻️In 2000, Kenya was among the first countries to qualify for trade preferences under AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act), a program that exempts the goods of some sub-Saharan African countries from duty costs in the US.

After two decades, the results of the policy are clear:

🚀 AGOA exports from Kenya have experienced a 12-fold increase, reaching $4.5 million per month in 2022, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

The sector has also experienced steady growth in capital investment, with a 7.2% increase from 2018 to 2022, during which 36 firms invested approximately $217 million, leading to the creation of 66,260 jobs and to more than $476 million in export value.

The textile and garment sector now accounts for 7% of Kenya’s total exports.

🏀🌍 Across the continent, the BAL has announced a new collaboration to produce licensed merchandise with Cacao, a label under the luxury fashion house Chocolate Clothes Global.

Kwaku Bediako, the designer behind Cacao, launched his brand in 2013 and officially established Chocolate Clothes Global in 2018. The brand won multiple awards and established partnerships with renowned luxury brands like Louis Vuitton.

🌟But Bediako’s most precious skill has been his ability to foster connections within the African diaspora, collaborating with notable figures such as Idris Elba or Boris Kodjoe.

The collaboration between BAL and Cacao arrives as the league seeks to diversify revenue streams, mirroring strategies employed by the NBA and other global sports leagues.

👕The licensed merchandise market has seen significant growth, estimated at USD 35 billion in 2023 and projected to surpass USD 50 billion by 2030. With rising interest in African fashion, the BAL x Cacao collaboration sets a precedent for sports brands to engage with African fashion labels.

😎✨Moulaye Taboure from ANKA and Laureen Kouassi-Olsson from Birimian Ventures are two superstars of the African fashion business space.

🎙️Moulaye invited Laureen to be a guest on his podcast. I recommend you watch the full video - it is simply a masterclass in African Creative Industries financing.

Among many insights, Laureen and Moulaye emphasize the importance of revenue, margin and growth for brands seeking financing, and the need for transparency in financial discussions.

💡They also provide lots of concrete advice for emerging African fashion brands.

Creative Industries financing is a business. “There is no free money,” they agreed.

INVESTMENT

🚀 This month, French DFI Proparco launched CREA Fund, its new program to encourage private investment in the Creative Industries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.

CREA Fund is part of the European Union’s CreatiFI flagship initiative for culture, under its #GlobalGateway strategy.

Endowed by the EU with a $7 million budget, CREA Fund will boost access to finance for Creative sector companies by:

1️⃣ Providing an attractive guarantee to funds that are clients of Proparco, to encourage them to make more investments in Creative companies by taking on some of the perceived risk

2️⃣ Offering Technical Assistance 👷🏾 to funds, banks, but also to their prospect or portfolio companies, to clear any hurdle to investment they might encounter (such as lack of investment readiness on the part of companies or lack of sector expertise on the part of the financier, for example)

The Technical Assistance component will be managed and delivered by my company Restless Global and our long-time partners PwC Nigeria.

🌐One of the key requests we received from investors was for access to qualified deal flow - so we organized a speed networking session to connect 20 top Creative sector companies with 10+ funds and banks.

💫 Another request was for more visibility on what success looks like in the African Creative Industries - so we’ll be releasing a series of case studies on successful African creative companies in the next few months.

Stay tuned.

AT THE TABLE

🎉This year, the Creative Industries made their grand debut at the Africa CEO Forum.

💼🌍 The Africa CEO Forum is the continent's premier gathering for Africa's top executives, global investors, and government leaders.

Every year, it brings together 2,000 participants from over 70 countries, 1,000 CEOs, +75 Heads of State and Ministers, 100 leaders of development finance institutions, and more than 200 journalists.

🗣️ All these esteemed individuals normally come to the CEO Forum to discuss business trends and opportunities in sectors such as Finance, Agriculture, Infrastructure, Energy, or Health.

But this year, the Creative Industries finally got a seat at the big boys (and girls) table, and more specifically at a strategic round table on how to "Leverage Africa’s Creative Industries to Unleash Economic Growth", which I had the pleasure to moderate.

🍽️ This echoed the tongue-in-cheek theme of the Forum this year: “At the Table or On the Menu? Shaping a New Future for Africa.”

Key Creative leaders from across the continent responded to the invitation by IFC to come discuss how to Leverage Africa’s Creative Industries to Unleash Economic Growth around 3 key points:

1️⃣ How can Creativity be turned into businesses?

2️⃣ How can digitalization help unleash the potential of the Creative sector?

3️⃣ What type of pan African partnerships can help plug value chain gaps?

😎 🤙Needless to say, the speakers understood the assignment.

In a room packed with business and government leaders, they gave a masterclass on the state of the Creative Industries today, and passionately outlined the opportunities of the sector:

✨ IFC’s Mohamed Gouled, Honorable Minister of Youth and Arts Dr Abdallah Utumatwhishima, and top Rwandan creative leader Carole Karemera kick-started the session with inspirational statements, reminding us that the impact of the Creative Industries go beyond economic growth to uplift societies as a whole.

📈 Success Stories: Jean-Michel Koenig of Triggerfish Animation Studios and Moses Babatope of FilmHouse shared their journeys in transforming Creativity into sustainable, profitable businesses.

🎭Phillip Karanja of Phil-IT Productions gave us insights about how he navigated his own transition from actor to creative entrepreneur.

💰 Challenges: George Gachara from HEVA Fund discussed barriers such as business readiness and access to finance, and explained why traditional investors need to adapt their tools to service the Creative sector.

📱Digitalization: Olivier Laouchez (Trace Group), Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy (Spotify), talked about the role of digital tools in amplifying creative reach, generating revenue, and solving challenges such as distribution and rights management.

💻Wowzi’s Brian Mogeni, Magic Carpet’s Ferdinand Adimefe and Maliyo Games’ Hugo Obi enlightened the room about the potential of sectors like the Creator Economy, Animation and Gaming to create millions of jobs for the youth on the continent.

👔Partnerships: Fashion visionaries such as Reni Folawiyo (Alara), Maryse Mbonyumutwa (Pink Mango) and Aristide Loua (Kente Gentlemen) explored the importance of pan-African collaborations to enhance supply chains and market integration, both within the continent and between Africa and lucrative export markets.

🤝Africa in Colors’ Raoul Rugamba concluded by voicing the wish (shared by many participants) that gatherings like this one go beyond talk and lead to concrete partnerships.

HUSTLE & FLOW #55: Africans in Venice; Ivory Coast finances Creatives, NBA's Triple Double accelerator, and more

(AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

This new edition of Hustle & Flow is full of new opportunities for African Creative and Sports entrepreneurs:

💪🏾 New financing options, new investors, new capacity building programs, new accelerators, new government support, new events to meet and mingle, it looks like the ecosystem is getting into formation.

And if you’re anywhere near Venice between now and November, don’t miss the Arts Biennale, where a record 13 African countries are shining this year.

For the rest, read on 👀👇


FINANCING THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

🚀 Côte d'Ivoire has launched a new initiative aimed at catalyzing funding for creative and cultural entrepreneurs in the country.

🤝The initiative, called Fin Culture, is a partnership between the Ministry of Culture and Francophonie, the Agency for Youth Employment, Orange Bank and Birimian Ventures.

You may remember that Birimian and Orange Bank initially joined forces in 2022 to launch a $163,000 pilot debt fund for Creative MSMEs, focused on the fashion and luxury sector. This first fund enabled the financing of 20 creative entrepreneurs, with a default rate of 0%. The available envelope was later multiplied by 5, reaching $813,000.

💰 Now, Birimian and Orange Bank Africa have expanded their partnership again to create Fin Culture. With a budget of $1.5 million provided by the Agency for Youth Employment, Fin Culture aims to finance 100 projects through medium-term revolving loans ranging from $1,600 to $32,500.

👷🏾Birimian Ventures will serve as a technical and implementation partner, overseeing the selection, evaluation, and financial structuring of the projects. It will also deliver capacity building programs to the selected creative businesses and entrepreneurs.

The creation of the Fin Culture initiative represents a significant financial innovation and marks the first Ivorian public-private partnership dedicated to culture and creation - an important step in positioning Cote d'Ivoire's as a West African cultural and financial hub.

FILM

Another country making moves is Zambia, which has unveiled an ambitious $100 million investment plan to transform its film industry over 4 years.

🎬 The country’s recently revised National Film Policy outlines Zambia’s strategy to cultivate a competitive, sustainable, and responsive Zambian Film Industry, poised to make significant contributions to both the national economy and cultural landscape.

📋 Key highlights of the policy include:

  • Financing the construction or rehabilitation of production houses, cinemas, studios, and digital distribution hubs

  • Appointing experienced individuals within relevant ministries and agencies

  • Investing in skills development through partnerships between the public and private sectors

  • Establishing a National Film Fund and a National Film Market Hub

  • Modernizing existing legislation to create a more conducive legal environment

The new policy represents a significant boost to Zambia’s film industry, which has so far been under the radar, especially compared to leading film countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, or Senegal.

💫 However, Zambia is no doubt brimming with talent, just waiting for an opportunity to shine.

In fact, the country’s most prominent filmmaker, Rungano Nyoni will be back in Cannes in May with “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”. This will be her second feature showing at the festival, after her acclaimed 2017 debut “I Am Not a Witch.”

🎬 In Nigeria, leading studio Inkblot Productions Limited, who is behind major Nollywood hits such as 'The Wedding Party', 'The Set Up, and Netflix’s ‘Far From Home’', has received venture funding from TLG Capital.

Coming on the heels of Editi Effiong's groundbreaking financing strategy for 'The Black Book', this new deal represents another major step towards more structured financing in the Nigerian film industry.

CAPACITY BUILDING

The US Department of State is bringing more grease to Africa’s Creative elbow.

Over the past few weeks, it has announced various initiatives to strengthen the African cultural and creative industries.

🎧First is the American Music Mentorship Program (AMMP), a collaborative project between the State Department and the Recording Academy aimed at mid-level music industry professionals from Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana and Morocco.

📽 For the audiovisual sector, the African Creative TV (ACTV) initiative will include two components:

  • a film-focused pilot programme for Nigerian students which draws from the US community college system to offer educational and technical training to international students, aiding in their preparation for the workforce in their home countries.

  • a four-week residence at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts for African television professionals, where they will be mentored by American TV writers, producers and industry experts.

🎯 The main goal is to give African TV professionals the skills to create content that can compete globally and build a network of African TV creatives.

BROADCASTING

🐍Slowly but surely, Canal+ continues its creeping acquisition of Multichoice shares.

Quick recap: In February, Canal+’s stake in MultiChoice passed the 35% mark, triggering a mandatory firm buy-out offer to shareholders of the South African broadcaster.

But while that offer is under consideration, Canal+ has continued to snap up MultiChoice shares on the open market, increasing its stake to 41.59%.

😎 Canal+ is mopping up these additional shares at a significant discount on its own offer of R125 per share. Indeed, it saved a cool $1.6 million on the acquisition of the latest 3 million shares.

And we can bet that it won’t stop here.

Meanwhile, another French broadcaster is also seeking to strengthen its African ties.

📺 TV5 Monde, an international French channel with an 80% Africa-based audience, has announced plans to open its ownership shares to seven African countries.

🌍 Currently, TV5 Monde's annual budget is supported by six Francophone governments, including France, Switzerland, Canada, Quebec, Monaco, and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.

🤝 The African countries invited to participate in TV5 Monde's ownership are Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Congo, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon.

The potential additional funding would allow TV5 Monde to enhance its African programming to better cater to its African audience.

FASHION

💵 B2B marketplace The Folklore has raised a $3.4M seed round to get fashion brands from emerging markets into global stores.

This new round brings the total funding raised by The Folklore to $6.2 million

👠 Founded in 2018 by Amira Rasool, The Folklore facilitates sales for fashion, beauty, health, and wellness brands from Africa, Asia, and The Caribbean, by partnering with global retailers such as Nordstrom.

💪🏽 The new funding, led by Benchstrength, alongside existing investors Slauson & Co., Techstars, and Black Tech Nation Ventures will enable The Folklore to roll out more services to support brands in scaling, such as:

  • The Folklore Capital, which will provide brands with access to loans of up to $1 million in working capital, as well as purchase order financing, crucial for managing wholesale orders and production expenses.

  • A labor marketplace, which will connect brands with freelance talent, catering to those unable to hire full-time teams.

The Folklore integrated approach follows the trend of ecommerce businesses pivoting into full-service sales and distribution platforms for brands.

Ivorian startup ANKA made a similar pivot recently, by closing down its legacy ecommerce site Afrikrea to focus on its SaaS business, powering African brands through its products ANKA Marketplace, ANKA Pay and ANKA Shipping.

SPORTS

There’s a new Sports and Creative Industries accelerator on the scene.

🏀 The National Basketball Association (NBA) has launched the "Triple Double: NBA Africa Startup Accelerator" for early-stage African startups.

Operated by technology incubator ALX Ventures, Triple Double will focus on supporting startups in ticketing, event management, youth development, AI and digital marketing.

These areas seem to hint at what NBA Africa sees as gaps in the continent’s fledgling sports industry supply chain.

🏆 Ten startups will win a spot in the accelerator program, where they will receive funding, mentorship, and the chance to collaborate with NBA Africa and the Basketball Africa League (BAL) on impactful initiatives across the continent.

Four final winners will be selected following a demo day slated for September in New York to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

🗓️ Applications are open until May 22nd, 2024 at TripleDoubleAccelerator.NBA.com.

VISUAL ARTS

🎨 The Nigerian Pavilion at the just opened Venice Biennale is “a hit” according to the New York Times.

Titled “Nigeria Imaginary,” the country’s second-ever Venice pavilion is ambitious in concept and scale.

🌟 Aindrea Emelife, the 29-year-old curator, has assembled an impressive lineup of 8 lauded artists. They all have Nigerian roots but live elsewhere, except London-born Ndidi Dike - the only one currently based in Nigeria.

This, however, fits in nicely with the theme of the Biennale: ‘Foreigners Everywhere’.

The Nigerian pavilion’s main attraction is British-Nigerian Yinka Shonibare’s piece, clay replicas of 150 of the Benin Bronzes stolen by the British in 1897 and whose restitution has been a key topic of debate and discussion.

🌍 The African presence at the Venice Biennale has been growing steadily over the past decade.

In 2013, Angola won the Golden Lion for best pavilion. Nigeria’s first and only prior pavilion came in 2017. In 2019, Ghana presented a star-studded show including El Anatsui and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. In 2022, 9 African countries made the trip to Venice. This year, they are 13, including Benin, Senegal, Tanzania and Ethiopia making their debut.

📢 A strong pavilion sends a message about a country’s ambition in the world of arts and culture, but also politics.

Commissioned by the Nigerian government (as required by the Biennale rules), the pavilion has been organized by the highly anticipated Museum of West Africa Art (MOWAA), set to open later this year in Benin City.

The Nigerian pavilion’s top funder is Qatar Museums, alongside galleries, private companies and collectors.

💡Artist Ndidi Dike, whose Venice piece is made of 700 police-grade batons and photographs of 2020’s End SARS protests, said:

“There’s always these not-so-positive discussions about Nigeria. But this is a very dynamic cultural catalyst and hub for the continent — and the world. It’s about time we give Nigeria its due.”

COMING UP IN MAY

The month of May promises to be one of the busiest of the year for the African Creative Industries.

Watch out for:

  • Cannes Film Festival, May 15-24 in Cannes, France -  Seven African films will show on the Croisiere this year, including Rungano Nyoni’s ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’

  • Africa CEO Forum, May 16-17 in Kigali, Rwanda - For the first time since the event’s inception, the Creative Industries will be part of the CEO Forum program through a strategic roundtable hosted by IFC, which I will have the pleasure to moderate.

  • Launch of Proparco’s CREA Fund, May 23 in Lagos, Nigeria - a new initiative aimed at encouraging private sector investment in the African Creative Industries. I’ll be hosting and will report back.

  • Africa Day, May 25 around the world - annual commemoration of the foundation of the Organization of African Unity

  • Africa Soft Power Summit, May 28-31 in Kigali, Rwanda









HUSTLE & FLOW #54: Canal+ buys into Marodi; Anansi Fund launches; textile productions draws investment; and more

Canal+ acquires minority stake in Senegalese producer Marodi TV

Happy 🥚Easter and ☪️ Ramandan to those celebrating.

In March, Canal+ continued its African acquisition spree as it waited for Multichoice’s board to respond to its revised offer. The answer should come any day now - fasten your seatbelt.

In this edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, I also talk about Netflix’s 3rd African market: Kenya; Invention Studios and NISK Capital new film fund Anansi; how Portuguese-speaking content creators are looking for gold in Brazil; on-going investments in textile production; and leveraging the rare expertise of Africa’s Family Offices.

Read on 👇and don’t forget to subscribe 👉 https://lnkd.in/drBY8jnz

FILM

🇰🇪 I just came back from Nairobi where I was invited by the Kenya Film Commission (KFC) to speak at the 13th edition of the Kalasha International Film Market and Festival - an opportunity for me to spotlight a country that I called home for 10 years.

🎥 This year’s theme for the Kalasha was ‘Reel Money in the Business of Film’ under the tagline ‘Where Art meets Commerce’, and the message was clear: the only way for Kenya to develop a sustainable film industry is to produce creative content that sells.

This is quite a mindset shift in a country where media production was for a very long time largely bankrolled by international donors and NGOs. Indeed, when I launched ‘The XYZ Show’ in 2009, donor money was the only type of funding available for independent content production.

So, here’s what you should know about the Kenyan film industry in 2024:

🧐 In November last year, Kenya launched what I believe (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is Africa’s first Film Industry Satellite account (FISA). A satellite account isolates a certain sector of economic activity to measure its total economic output as well as total employment. Hard data on the Creative Industries is severely lacking in Africa, so FISA is positioning Kenya as a pioneer on that topic.

📊 According to the report, in 2022 the Kenyan film and broadcast industry contributed $659M Gross Output Value and $298M Gross Value Added to the country’s GDP (0.4%).

💼 It also employed 44,062 people (29,635 in film / 14,427 in broadcasting) in 2022.

🦓 Even without film incentives, Kenya has long been a top filming destination for Hollywood and foreign productions looking for an “African look”, such as ‘The Constant Gardener’ or ‘Out of Africa’.

🥉Despite being often overshadowed by the bigger and more dynamic markets of Nigeria and South Africa, Kenya is one of only 3 sub-Saharan African countries in which Netflix has started commissioning original content.

Netflix’s Kenyan originals include ‘Disconnect’ 1 and 2, and the recently-released ‘Volume’, all by Tosh Gitonga, and the series ‘Country Queen’, co-funded by Germany.

🏆 Other famous, award-winning Kenyan films include ‘Rafiki’ by Wanuri Kahiu, ‘Nairobi Half Life’ by Tosh Gitonga, ‘Kati Kati’ by Mbithi Masya, ‘Supa Modo’ by Likarion Wainaina, and ‘Softie’ by Sam Soko.

⚠️ Kenyan filmmakers are generally recognized for their technical skills, however Kenyan content struggles to draw large audiences locally - an anomaly mostly due to cultural and historical reasons (as well as to limited distribution options) that the Kenya Film Commission intends to address through audience-building initiatives.

💡Another initiative that is likely to impact the status of Kenya on the global film stage is the recent partnership announcement between Hollywood’s Invention Studios, run by high-profile writer-producer Nicky Weinstock, and Nairobi-based NISK Capital, to launch the Anansi Film Fund, a new vehicle that aims to finance premium African content for the world.

Several of the projects on Anansi’s development slate are set in Kenya, to be written and directed by Kenyan filmmakers.

😎 What distinguishes Anansi from other similar film funds is the profile of Nicky Weinstock himself. 

Weinstock is a pure Hollywood Insider, with a 20-year experience working closely with A-lister Jude Apatow, Peter Chernin and Ben Stiller on movies such as ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘Total Recall’. 

But more surprisingly perhaps, Weinstock also has a deep personal connection with the continent through the years he spent living across West, East and Southern Africa as a young man.

🇺🇸 He seems uniquely positioned to do what no one has managed to do yet: bridge the gap between Africa and Hollywood.

CREATOR ECONOMY

🌍 Sixty million people live in the 6 countries that make up Portuguese-speaking Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, and, since 2011, mostly Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea).

And yet, they are rarely part of the conversation around the Creative Industries -- the language barrier is still hard to breach. 

But of course, that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening in the Lusophone world. 

🇧🇷 In a recent article, Rest of World highlights how Portuguese-speaking African creators are moving to Brazil, home to a thriving creator economy.

🤯 Rest of World found over a dozen African creators who are making content from Brazil — the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world, with the fifth-biggest social media market of more than 165 million users, and a mind-blowing 20 million people making money in the creator economy.

Several factors explain Brazil’s attraction for African creators:

📊 With $1.92 trillion in GDP, Brazil is a giant by African standards. As a comparison, Angola, the largest Lusophone African country, has a GDP of $107 billion (18 times less).

📱The low cost of data in Brazil, where 1GB costs 40 cents (vs $1.01 in Angola and $2.72 in Guinea-Bissau), means that it’s easier for popular creators to reach a massive audience.

🛠 Higher CPM (cost per million views) in Brazil makes it easier to monetize that audience, combined with the broader list of monetizing tools which are available there compared to Africa. 

These include Gifts, that allows fans to send money to creators’ Instagram reels; Stars, which are awarded by fans to creators and can be redeemed for cash; and Live Badges, which let creators receive money from their fans and communities during a live broadcast.

🤝 And finally, a bigger market also means more brand partnerships opportunities for more creators. 

Angolan creator Baptista Miranda, who moved to Brazil in 2022, summed it up this way: “We think of Brazil as the country where things happen. I’ve always said it’s Hollywood for Angolan people.”

TEXTILE PRODUCTION

Limited local textile production capacity is a key bottleneck to the development of the African Fashion industry, as it forces African designers to import fabrics from abroad or even delocalize their entire production.

🧑🏿‍🌾This situation makes even less sense knowing that the continent is home to some of the world’s top cotton producers. 

In fact, West Africa (more specifically the C4+1 Group: Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad + Ivory Coast) is the only region on the continent that is NOT a net exporter of textiles.

If the region could transform its raw products into processed and finished garments, it could become a production hub for the rest of the continent.

However, there are some bright spots. Birimian Ventures recently highlighted some projects that are moving the industry in the right direction:

🏭 Panafrican group Arise Integrated Industrial Platforms (Arise IIP) is building local industrial zones that include textile parks in Togo (PIA - Plateforme Industrielle d'Adétikopé, the biggest West African textile park and garment training center), Ivory Coast and Benin.

🧵In Rwanda, Pink Mango Group and C&D Products Rwanda Co. Ltd partnered to build a 24,000-square-foot factory producing for high street retailers such as DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, and supermarkets Aldi and Tesco. The facility, which opened in 2019 with the support of the Rwandan government, already employs 4,600 people. 

⚽️ These new production hubs create unprecedented market opportunities. A few weeks ago, FIFA announced its decision to outsource the supply of some 2026 World Cup's jerseys to the C4+1 group in partnership with the World Trade Organization. 

According to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, global football sales exceed $270 billion, 70% of which come from Europe alone. With Africa stepping up, global sales could hit $500 billion. "We need to bring some of this money back to Africa”, said WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

PAY TV

French operator Canal+ continues its Africa expansion by acquiring a stake in Senegalese production company Marodi TV.

💡Founded by Serigne ‘Mass’ Ndour, a former IBM engineer trained at Telecom Paris, Marodi is one of the most interesting success stories in African media. And it took Mass 12 years to get there.

Here’s how:

Mass initially launched Marodi TV in 2012 as a VOD platform hosting local content sourced from Senegalese TV stations. 

💸 The content quickly proved popular, and by 2015 the platform was racking up 1M views per month. However, due to bandwidth, software development, maintenance and content costs, Marodi was losing money.

🌐 So in 2015, Mass made the decision to migrate the Marodi community to YouTube. At the time (and still today), Senegal was one of only a few African countries were YouTube monetization was enabled - and this proved a key determinant in Marodi’s ability to independently finance its content.

Indeed, in the same year Marodi also started investing in the production of original series, leveraging the user data collected over its first few years of operation to tailor the content to the tastes of the Senegalese audience.

Marodi’s first original series, which quickly gained a strong following, were distributed both on television and on YouTube and financed through two main sources: direct brand sponsorship or product placements, and YouTube advertising.

🤯 In 2018, Marodi’s series ‘Maîtresse d’un homme marié’ became a smash hit in Senegal and beyond, gaining more than 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube. 

Canal+ licensed the series for its local channel A+, opening a third revenue stream for Marodi and dubbing the content to facilitate its distribution across the region. Amazon Prime also acquired the series. Marodi started its own in-house advertising agency, which became the business’ 4th source of revenue.

📈 Since then, Marodi has perfected its model. In 2023, the company produced 4 to 5 series in parallel, reaching 5,3M subscribers on YouTube, and employing 150 staff and 200 actors per month. 

The new investment by Canal+ will allow Marodi to continue to expand the quality and volume of its productions, and to venture into regional and international co-productions.

🇫🇷 Over the years, Vivendi-owned Canal+ has developed an interest in Africa and has ever since been expanding. For the French pay TV operator, Africa is the future and home to 8.1M of its 26.4M global subscribers.

The group recently acquired production companies like Rok Studios in Nigeria, Plan A in Ivory Coast, and Zacu in Rwanda, as well as Ethiopian channel Kana TV. All together, Canal+ now produces 4,000 hours of African content every year, distributed across 30 channels dedicated to the continent in 10 languages.

🦍 The next step is for the group to confirm its acquisition of the remaining shares it doesn't already own in 500-pound gorilla Multichoice, and its 21.6M subscribers.

Canal+, which started building a position in Multichoice in 2020, is now the company’s largest single shareholder with just over 35% ownership -- triggering a mandatory takeover offer.

After its first proposal was rejected by Multichoice, Canal+ upped its price to $1.77B, for a total valuation of about $33.7B. 

As Multichoice’s board is reviewing the new offer, the African audiovisual industry is holding its collective breath. 

🤼 A takeover of the South African pay TV operator and its streaming service Showmax by Canal+ would mean that the number of solid buyers for African content would dwindle from an already paltry 3 to only 2 - leaving the combined Canal+Multichoice to battle it out with Netflix.

But in reality, it’s a matter of when, not if. 

Sure, Multichoice’s shareholders can still reject the offer. But the absorption of Multichoice is a key step in the international expansion strategy of Canal+’s owner Vivendi, a media group known for its mastery of corporate tactics such as mergers, acquisitions, but also… hostile takeovers.

FINANCING THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

Late last February, I attended and spoke at the Alea Africa Family Office Summit in Cape Town.

✈️ I am very selective with my travel and speaking engagements these days, so why did I choose to cross the entire continent for this event?

Because if there is one group of people that definitely knows how to make money in Africa, it’s the entrepreneurs running family-owned businesses (FOB).

🥇And it’s not just me saying it. According to research from McKinsey, family businesses outperform all other types of businesses globally.

Some of Africa’s best known family businesses include Nigeria’s Dangote Industries and Conoil (Glo, Sterling Bank), South Africa’s Pick n’ Pay, or Tanzania’s MeTL Group.

Many others are not on your radar - companies such as Egypt’s Orientals Weavers Group, one of the largest carpet manufacturers in the world with revenues of $600 million/year.

💡McKinsey identified 4 key mindsets that distinguish the highest-performing FOBs: 

  • They put purpose beyond profits

  • They have a long-term view and emphasis on reinvesting in the business

  • They take a conservative and cautious stance on finances

  • They have processes that allow for efficient decision making

They are also great at diversifying their portfolio, are excellent operators, and have a relentless focus on talent.

📈 Once FOBs decide to launch their own Family Office or Fund, the same values typically also make them very astute investors. Ones that, contrary to many VC firms, are actually able to help with operational expertise and not just money. They don’t always need to exit, and they keep value and ownership on the continent.

💫 Many FOBs have portfolios that include hospitality, consumer products manufacturing and distribution, media, or telecom assets that they have scaled across the continent. Many have mentoring programs for young entrepreneurs. And many are already ardent supporters of the arts through their philanthropic foundations.

It doesn’t much to imagine the wealth of knowledge that they could bring to Creative Sector companies.

HUSTLE & FLOW #53: UMG acquires Mavin, Ghana announces film incentives, “Iwájú” is out on Disney+, and more

February: a short month, but full of wins for African Sports and Entertainment, from AFCON, to the Grammys, the Super Bowl, the Berlinale Film Festival, the Annie Awards and even the Michelin restaurant guide.

But the biggest winners might be Mavin Records’ investors, who have arguably achieved the biggest exit in African entertainment history when Universal Music acquired their majority stake earlier this week

If you are not one of the 180,000 people 🤯 who read my viral story, you get a second chance below 👇


INVESTMENT

I spoke to Jeune Afrique (in French) and The Africa Report about the recent interest from large development banks (such as IFC, Afreximbank or Proparco) for the African Creative Industries.

Both articles are behind a paywall, but here’s an extract for you, readers of HUSTLE & FLOW:

🤔 “Why did these large institutions wait so long to support sectors which, according to IFC, currently represent $4.2 billion on the continent?

For Frenchwoman Marie Lora-Mungai, founder of the consulting company Restless Global and specialist in the Creative Industries in Africa, the relatively recent enthusiasm of investors is the product of two factors.

On the one hand, "over the last two or three years, the world has discovered great English-speaking or French-speaking artists from the continent who have made it on their own and have proven that their activity can generate significant income", explains the one who accompanies large development finance institutions such as IFC or Proparco, to better understand the Creative Industries and to imagine suitable financing mechanisms.

On the other hand, around 2013, the rebasing of the Nigerian GDP (from $270 to $510 billion) raised awareness that an industry like film, accounting for 1.3% of national wealth, was likely to provide a significant contribution to the economy."

Development institutions have also become aware of the capacity of the Creative Industries to create numerous jobs, particularly for young people and women.

Click here to read the full article in English, and here for the French version.

FILM

🇬🇭 Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo has announced plans for the West African country to introduce a new tax incentives package for film productions.

Ghana is set to offer a 20% tax rebate for strategic film productions, alongside other supportive measures such as exemptions on import duties for film production equipment, port taxes and other cash levies. Local corporate entities that financially back the sector will also benefit from these incentives.

Over the past 20 years, tax incentives have become a popular and effective way for governments to attract lucrative foreign film shoots. 

🌍 Today, dozens of countries or territories (from obvious ones such Canada, France, Germany and the UK to less-obvious ones like Saudi Arabia, Malta, Trinidad or Fiji) compete to offer the most attractive packages and capture the interest of the world’s biggest film studios and producers.

For a country, the benefits of such schemes are many: direct forex inflows, capacity building for local film technicians, development of a local film servicing industry (equipment rental, catering, transportation, etc), country brand awareness and increased tourism. 

But African governments have been slow to seize the opportunity. Prior to Ghana’s announcement, only 3 other African nations - South Africa, Morocco and Mauritius - offered film incentives. 

💪🏿 The news is a big win for National Film Authority CEO Juliet Yaa Asantewa Asante, who has been pushing hard to establish Ghana as a regional and continental film hub since she took office 3 years ago.

🏈 Even without incentives, the NFA’s “Shoot in Ghana” campaign had already started garnering attention. Earlier in February, the NFL unveiled its Super Bowl spot ‘Born to Play’, which was shot in Ghana by renown Nigerian director Andrew Dosunmu and produced by Ghanaian production company TD Afrique Films (‘Beasts of No Nation’) led by Danny Damah and Tony Tagoe. 

STREAMING

🤔 Will Showmax maintain its lead on Netflix as the competition heats up on the African streaming market?

💡I shared my thoughts with dámiláre dòsùnmú for Rest of World:

"Showmax’s biggest advantage is parent company MultiChoice’s vast network: It runs a cable TV business and has been building TV channels across Africa since 1995, Marie Lora-Mungai, founder of consulting firm Restless Global, told Rest of World.

“MultiChoice’s level of commitment to building the African video-streaming business from the ground up is a lot deeper than the global players’ need for expansion,” Lora-Mungai said.

“The African market is essentially MultiChoice’s to lose … It has teams on the ground in most countries, constantly taking the pulse of what audiences want to see. In some places like Zambia, MultiChoice even single-handedly props up the entire audiovisual sector.”

[On the other hand] Lora-Mungai said Showmax needs to carefully navigate the risk of its partnership with Comcast not working out well in the long term.

“In practice, this type of global partnership can be tricky,” she said, adding that differences in work culture could lead to disagreements.

“Whether Comcast has fully grasped the complexities of doing business in Africa and the patience needed to overcome this market’s challenges remains to be seen.”

ANIMATION & GAMING

We’ve been waiting for it since it was announced in 2020: “Iwájú” is finally out on Disney+.

🌆 Created by Pan-African, British-based entertainment company Kugali Media and directed by Olufikayo Ziki Nelson Adeola, the highly anticipated series is set in a futuristic Lagos (“iwájú” means “the future” in Yoruba).

But not only is “Iwájú” the first Disney animated series set in Nigeria, it is also the Hollywood studio’s first game tie-in on the continent.

🍲 Developed by Nigeria-based Maliyo Games over just 14 months, “Disney Iwájú: Rising Chef” is a casual mobile game similar to “Cooking Madness” and “Cooking Fever”, but with jollof and pepper soup thrown in. It was released on Google Play and the Apple Store on the same day as the series.

"It's Disney's first time working with a studio in Africa, so we wanted to pick a project that was achievable with the time we had, because the goal was always to release this alongside the show," said Maliyo’s founder Hugo Obi.

Maliyo Games was formed in 2012 but struggled to find the talent needed to scale up. In 2021, it partnered with Google to create GameUp Africa, an animation training program. The investment paid off: 3 out of the 4 engineers who developed “Rising Chef” are graduates from the program.

🧐 Besides the lack of both funding and trained talent, other challenges slowing the growth of African games are distribution and discovery.

African games sometimes struggle to get access to the Google and Apple Stores, leading to the development of African platforms such as Gara. In a context where 10,000 new games are released every year, it’s also extremely difficult for African games to break through the noise to get noticed.

The Disney collaboration will be a great case study in that regard.

MUSIC

🔥 This might be the biggest exit ever in the history of African entertainment: Universal Music has acquired a majority stake in Nigerian record label Mavin, founded by Don Jazzy and home of Afrobeats superstar Rema.

💵 Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Billboard previously reported a likely sales price of around $125 million, with the company being valued in the region of $150 million to $200 million.

Whatever the exact amount, this means a healthy return for Mavin’s previous majority investor, PE firm TPG Growth, which has now fully exited the business.

💡But what’s even more interesting is how Mavin got there:

In 2006, Nigerian music producer Don Jazzy launches Mo’ Hits Records with artist D’banj. However, Mo’ Hits is not successful and the label dissolves in 2012.

Undeterred, Don Jazzy immediately starts another label, Mavin records. He brings onboard a young brand and marketing exec called Tega Oghenejobo.

🧐 In 2017, Don Jazzy is approached by investor Bobby Pittman of Kupanda Capital. Bobby sees the opportunity in the growth of Afrobeats, but believes Mavin needs to strengthen its internal capacity and processes in order to capture it. 

In an unusual but inspired move, Kupanda joins as founding investor and takes a very hands-on approach, sending its own team members from the US to Lagos to help Don Jazzy structure his business. Quick learner Tega rises fast and becomes COO of the company.

🎰 In 2019, Kupanda Capital and PE mastodon TPG create the joint-venture Kupanda Holdings and make a big bet by investing $10 million in Mavin. The TPG partner leading the deal tells Don Jazzy and Tega: “I’m investing in you because you have failed.”

Don Jazzy and Tega get to work doing what they do best: signing and developing new talents. 

📉 In 2020, the pandemic hits and revenue from live concerts suddenly hits zero around the world. Kupanda Holdings puts more money in to allow Mavin to survive.

💥 In 2023, Mavin artist Rema breaks the internet with his hit song ‘Calm Down”, remixed with Selena Gomes. The song becomes the first track by an African artist to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify.

By now, Mavin has a solid roster of talents, which also includes Ayra Starr (most viewed music video by a female Nigerian artist on YouTube for “Rush”), Crayon, Ladipoe, Johnny Drille and others.

🤝 In 2024, after the customary 7 years investment period, TGP exits to Universal after a competitive bidding process.

As part of the deal, Don Jazzy and Tega will remain at the helm with Kupanda as strategic advisors, and they have no intention to calm down.

Tyla just showed the world that there’s more to African music than Afrobeats. 

🏆 The 22-year-old South African sensation bagged the Grammys’ first ever “Best African Music Performance” award, beating not one but 5 seasoned Nigerian artists.

Davido, Burna Boy, Ayra Starr, Asake and Olamide all went home empty-handed.

After this unexpected turn of events, the silence from the Nigerian side has been deafening 🦗🦗🦗 Nigerians are not used to being humbled o.

Tyla’s rise to stardom has been meteoric to say the least.

 🇿🇦 She was born and raised in the eastern parts of Joburg, into a Coloured family of Zulu, Indian, Mauritian and Irish descent.

At 17, she has her first local success with her debut single “Getting Late”. Two years later, at 19, she signs with Epic Records.

🌪 And then, in early 2023, things start to snowball.

In the span of just a few months, she places on the Billboard Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop chart, performs for the first time in public at Milan Fashion Week, opens for Chris Brown during his Under the Influence Tour, and releases a single with Nigerian singer Ayra Starr.

In May, she is selected by Spotify for RADAR Africa, the platform’s program dedicated to driving the discovery of emerging artists across the world.

🚀 In July, Tyla releases “Water”, the song that will change her life. After a video taken at the Giants of Africa festival in Kigali spuns a viral dance challenge on TikTok, the song enters the top 10 in 16 countries including the United Kingdom and United States. Tyla becomes the youngest-ever South African and the first South African soloist in 55 years to enter the US Billboard Hot 100.

Tyla is invited to appear on TV shows in Europe and the US, including The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and The Voice.

📈 In parallel, Spotify continues to push Tyla, placing “Water” on more than 200 of the platform’s editorial and algorithmic playlists, including some of the most popular ones. Fans add the song to 8 million of their own playlists.

In October 2023, “Water” reaches 100M streams. It has now over 300M. 

In December, Tyla finds herself at the center of her first controversy as a public figure, when a TikTok video in which she refers to herself as Colored shocks some American fans. Americans see the word as a slur, while in South Africa, it is a distinct identity that is officially recognised.

😎 Tyla survives this rite of passage with grace, and goes on to win her Grammy.

SPORTS

🇨🇮 🎉 Once in a while, the stars align to turn the collective efforts of many into not only a great moment, but also possibly a historic one. This year, the Elephants, Ivory Coast, and CAF president Patrice Motsepe delivered an exceptional AFCON.

So what went right?


💼 Professional, business-focused leadership from South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, who took over the role of CAF president in 2021.

🏗 Solid Investment by Ivory Coast, on and off the pitch. The country reportedly spent as much as $1.5 billion on hosting the tournament, including the construction of 4 new stadiums. 

💵 Strong sponsors. This year’s AFCON had 17 commercial partners including title sponsors TotalEnergies, 1xBet, Orange and Unilever. My guess is that they’ll be very happy with their ROI. 

⚽️ The teams came prepared. From big football countries such as Ivory Coast and Nigeria to underdogs like Cape Verde and Equatorial Guinea, AFCON came with the right type of surprises and upsets that make a great tournament.

😎 Star power: Some of the biggest names in global football, such as Mohammed Salah, Sadio Mane, Victor Osimhen and Andre Onana, were on the pitch, while icons like Didier Drogba, Emmanuel Adebayor and Samuel Eto’o were cheering in the bleachers.

📺 A wide media reach. Despite the initial drama over Pay TV rights, AFCON ended up being broadcast across 180 countries (up from 157 in 2022) on Sky, Canal+, beIN Sport, BBC and MultiChoice as well as 45 Free-to-Air channels and on CAF’s Youtube page. And the audience turned up: nearly 2 billion people watched the competition, according to Patrice Motsepe.

🤳🏿 The power of social media was unleashed. Give African content creators a big cultural moment, and they will turn it into viral gold. Even the official CAF accounts outperformed expectations, gaining a whopping 3.3M followers on Tiktok and 1.3M on Instagram.

🌍 An enthusiastic involvement from the African diaspora, including in the US and UK, which turned AFCON from an African into a global event.

⚠️ Of course, there are areas of improvement, such as accessibility for fans (ticketing, unaffordable intra-African plane tickets), and business opportunities that remain largely untapped, in particular streaming rights and entertainment/lifestyle tie-ins.

But, as Pulse’s James Torvaney said, AFCON feels like the platform on which African sports can finally, properly be built. 

All eyes will be on Morocco, host of the next edition, scheduled for 2025.

MORE WINNING (ALL BY AFRICAN WOMEN) THIS MONTH

🎬 French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop won the top prize at the Berlinale International Film Festival for her film ‘Dahomey’, a docu-fictional essay on the first major return of looted treasures from Europe to Africa. She received the Golden Bear for best film from the hands of Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, the first Black person and first African to chair the Berlinale Jury.

🇰🇪 Animator Ng'endo Mukii is the first Kenyan to win an Annie award, the most prestigious prize in animation, for her  film "Enkai". "Enkai" is one of the 10 short films that comprise the groundbreaking African sci-fi anthology 🔥"Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire" produced by South African studio Triggerfish for Disney+.

👩🏿‍🍳 Nigerian Adejoké Bakare, founder and head chef of Chishuru in London, becomes UK’s first black female Michelin-starred chef.

⚽️ Twenty-three year-old Zambia forward Racheal Kundananji becomes the most expensive female footballer in a $788,000 transfer from Spanish club Madrid CFF to US side Bay FC.









HUSTLE & FLOW #52: AFCON dazzles while Amazon fizzles; Canal+ offers to buy Multichoice; Nigerian Creators come out, and more

(c) Reuters and Amazon

January 2024: A Tale of Two Africas.

This past month, AFCON dazzled in Abidjan as Amazon Prime Video fizzled, announcing a surprise exit from the market.

Amazon Prime’s exit is a boon for the new Showmax - and not an insignificant time for Vivendi's Canal+ to finally make an official offer to acquire MultiChoice (we’ve been waiting for it).

But also, the Nigerian Creator Economy came out of stealth in Lagos, showing its true potential for the first time - and it’s bigger than you think.

For the full gist, plus more stories on gaming, gastronomy, and sports, read on below!



SPORTS

AFCON feels different this year.

🎉 The 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations - AFCON or CAN for short - kicked off in January in Abidjan. Although it was six months late on the original schedule, it was worth the wait: Africa’s biggest sports competition is bold, it is shiny, and the game itself has been full of thrilling twists and turns.

It is also generating an unprecedented amount of media coverage, especially on social media. According to Nineteen31, the Confederation Africaine de Football (CAF) itself has gained 1 million new followers on TikTok and 500,000 on Instagram so far!

That is A LOT of eyeballs. And the industry is waking up to the full commercial potential of this event.

Here’s a few numbers, courtesy of Africa Sports Unified (download their full report here):


✅ Investment by host nation: Ivory Coast has spent $1 billion on hosting the tournament. The country built 4 new stadiums, renovated 2, and also constructed or upgraded airports, roads, hospitals and hotels in Abidjan, Bouake, Korhogo, San Pedro and Yamoussoukro.

✅  Stadium audience: 600,000 reported so far, despite issues accessing tickets to the games.

✅ Prize monies: $7M for the winning team. This compares solidly to the Asian Cup ($5M), the Copa America ($10M) and the UEFA ($9.8M).

✅ Sponsors: TotalEnergies (Title sponsor: $250M for 8 years), 1xBet ($64.5M for 10 years), Visa, Orange, Unilever + a raft of regional and local sports.

✅ Apparel: Puma(6 teams), Umbro (2 teams), Adidas, Kappa, Le Coq Sportif and Nike (1 team each). Interestingly, local brands and new labels are also represented, such as Lacatoni (for Angola), One All Sports (Cameroon), Guisport (Guinea-Bissau), or Airness (Mali).

✅ Media rights: So, this was a mess. If you haven’t followed the drama, the exclusive rights for 46 Sub-Saharan countries were acquired last year by mysterious newcomer New World TV from Togo, which later sold Pay TV licenses to Azam TV and StarTimes. Multichoice’s SuperSport initially turned down a deal, before settling (presumably for a hefty chunk of cash) under customer pressure. AfroSport, NTA, and SuperSport Nigeria also bagged the rights for the Nigerian market.

⚠️ No streaming platform secured the rights for the AFCON games this year. But judging by the enormous popularity of AFCON-related content online, one can bet that streaming rights will be a hot topic for the next edition.

While the spotlight was on Ivory Coast, another unique sports event took place deep in northern Nigeria.

👶🏻🥊 👨🏿 For the first time, a White fighter competed in a Dambe competition in Katsina, northern Nigeria.

British professional wrestler and boxer Luke Leyland became the first European to venture on a Dambe sandpit, according to the organizers of the event, the African Warriors Fighting Championship.

He faced - and lost, but with his dignity and body parts intact - Garakuwar Bahagon Yansanda, a boxer from Plateau State. “I am thrilled to be in Nigeria, representing the UK in the ancient art of Dambe. This marks a historic moment for the sport, and I am honored to be part of it,” said Leyland.

😁 A white lad from Liverpool taking on a battle-tested Nigerian Dambe warrior? That’s what I call a great entertainment proposition.

💡This cheeky stint is another smart way in which Maxwell Kalu and his African Warriors Championship are bringing global attention to the traditional sports of Dambe.

Back in July last year, the promoter inked a landmark sponsorship deal with leading crypto betting platform Stake.com. Already a sponsor of the UFC and Nigerian UFC Champion Israel Adesanya, the partnership is Stake’s first sponsorship deal in Africa.

FILM

🥇Meanwhile, another record was broken in Nollywood.

It came from serial record-breaker and multi-hyphenate Funke Akindele.

🚀 A few weeks ago, ‘A Tribe from Judah’ passed the N1 billion Naira at the Nigerian box office and became the highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time.

🤯 A feat made even more remarkable by the fact that Akindele is also responsible for Nigeria’s number 2 and 3 highest-grossing films, ‘Battle on Buka Street’ and ‘Omo Ghetto: The Saga”.

Akindele produced, co-directed, and starred in all 3 films.

Akindele has been a star in Nigeria for at least 15 years, since her 2008 breakout hit ‘Jenifa’. Throughout her career, she’s established herself as a master creator of popular local comedies centered around societal issues. She is, by all accounts, a major content powerhouse.

🤔 And yet, Akindele doesn’t own a house in Malibu or a villa in the South of France. She is not being inundated by offers from Hollywood.

🇳🇬 A major reason for this is that her audience - although massive - is deeply Nigerian, and that most of her revenue comes from Nigerian sources priced in Naira (cinema ticket sales, sponsorship deals, etc).

📉 The reality is that, in USD equivalent, Nollywood’s impressive growth of the past few years has been wiped out by the continuous downfall of the Naira, which lost 55% of its value in 2023, making it the worst performing African currency of the year.

Today, “A Tribe from Judah”’s N1 billion represents $1.2 million. Ten years ago, it would have translated to $2.8 million.

💸 On this one movie, Akindele and her team effectively lost a staggering $1.6 million to Nigeria’s economic mismanagement.

Nigeria’s macroeconomic woes and currency issues have been a big deterrent to foreign investment, with many international investors adopting a “wait and see” approach.

This means two things:

🌍 In order to survive, Nigerian entrepreneurs (in Creative and other fields) need to focus on products and solutions that can attract a global customer base and generate revenue in forex. License deals from Netflix and Amazon, which are priced in USD, have become lifesavers for many Nigerian filmmakers. By the way, a note to Hollywood: I personally believe that, in the hands of the right producer, Akindele definitely has cross-over potential.

💪🏿 Nigerian investors able to transact in Naira should step up. Not only as a matter of national pride, but also because this challenging state of affairs represents an opportunity for them to access opportunities before the Americans come in... or return 👇

VIDEO STREAMING

👋🏾 So long, Amazon Prime. It was nice knowing you for a couple years.

The streaming giant announced that it was restructuring its business model and retrenching its Africa and Middle East operations to focus on the European market.

🤩 Amazon had ambitious goals when it landed in Africa in December 2021. It did not spare any expense setting up teams for its first target markets, Nigeria and South Africa, and signing high profile content partnerships with local production studios.

In fact, it one-upped Netflix by landing ground-breaking multi-year partnerships with Nigerian producers Anthill, Inkblot, and Jade Osiberu’s Greoh. Osiberu’s long-awaited movie ‘Gangs of Lagos’ was released with great fanfare in April 2023, officially launching Amazon in Nigeria. Within two months, ‘Gangs of Lagos’ became the 9th most watched non-English title on Prime.

That was just 9 months ago.

⛔️ Now, the streamer has announced that it would stop commissioning African originals, and its African staff has been let go.

So, what happened?

⚠️ First, the going got tough for global tech companies, who had hired massively during the pandemic and are now facing macroeconomic headwinds. Amazon’s Prime Video Africa layoffs represent just a few of the 27,000+ jobs that the online retailer has cut over the past 12 months.

⚠️ Second, the video streaming business presents additional challenges. It necessitates huge investments in content while ARPU (average revenue per user) is low. The global platforms, which had been on a spending spree for years, have all recently cut down on content costs.

⚠️ Finally, the reality is that Africa is not yet a profitable market for these companies. When they do make money (which is not the case for Amazon Prime or Netflix) it is peanuts compared to the billions that move around in developed markets like the US or Europe.

In this context, Amazon’s decision seems like a no-brainer.

Amazon Prime’s exit is certainly not good news for the African film industry, but it is a boon for the “new Showmax”.

🚀 Ten months after MultiChoice Group announced a partnership with US media giant Comcast (owners of NBCUniversal) and UK’s Sky to create “Showmax 2.0”, the new service is ready.

The revamped Showmax app will be available for download on January 23rd, while the full service will officially launch in February.

Comcast and Sky took a 30% stake in Multichoice as part of the overall deal, whose objective is to combine top local and international assets to birth a “Netflix killer” (my words) on the African continent.

📈 Multichoice reportedly invested some $40 million* - excluding content costs - to relaunch and position Showmax for the future. In exchange, the company is targeting 50 million subscribers and $1 billion in revenue in the next five years.

Late last year, new data from Omdia showed that Showmax had edged over Netflix to become Africa’s first VOD platform, capturing 1.8M subscribers and 40% of the continent’s streaming market, while Netflix accounted for 35%.

But 1.8M is a long way from 50M. So how does Showmax intend to get there?

✅ By proposing attractive, low-cost mobile packages, including the highly anticipated standalone Premier League bundle, which offers all 380 games live for just $3.69/month, ten times cheaper than the premium subscription for DStv. Considering the popularity of the Premier League on the continent, this in itself is a game changer.

✅ By doubling down on local content. Multichoice already owns what is likely the largest library of African original content, including the mega hit Big Brother Africa franchise. In 2023, it dedicated $1 billion to African content production and acquisition. Showmax will be releasing more than 1,300 hours of new Originals in 2024, including 21 new African originals in the month of February alone.

✅ By getting its tech ready for scale. Showmax 2.0 was rebuilt using the technology behind NBCU’s streaming service Peacock, which Multichoice is paying $13 million to license for 7 years.

✅ By leveraging its new relationship with Comcast to bring top international content, such as the latest Mission Impossible or Spiderman movies, to African audiences.

“Nobody understands Africa like we do,” said MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela. That might very well be true. Let’s see if the company can keep its edge as competition intensifies.

*My estimation, adding the $13 million Peacock tech license to the other $27 million Multichoice said it invested into the Showmax relaunch.

BROADCAST

This new rejiggling of the African streaming space is not an insignificant time for Vivendi’s Canal+ to make an official offer to acquire Multichoice.

Indeed, it better make a move now, just in case Showmax is about to explode.

🤑 Canal+, already the top shareholder in MultiChoice with a 31.67% stake, sent a non binding offer letter based on a 40% premium on MultiChoice's closing share price. This offer values the South African Pay TV giant at $1.7B.

This new development is not surprising. Vivendi had already offered to acquire Multichoice several years ago, but that offer had been rejected. Then in 2020, the French company started buying Multichoice’s shares, slowly making its way towards an acquisition - or a hostile takeover (a tactic Vivendi is well known for).

🌍 Canal+ has been increasing its focus on Africa in the past decade, growing from just 1M African subscribers in 2016 to 7.6M in 2023. In 2019, it bought Nigeria’s ROK Studios to secure a pipeline of fresh Nollywood content. In 2021, it entered Ethiopia and acquired local channel Kana TV. It has also made several smaller acquisitions, bringing into the fold a couple West African production companies (Plan A in Ivory Coast, Marodi in Senegal).

Canal+ said it was planning a stock market listing in South Africa. This could potentially help the French entity overcome regulatory hurdles that include a law that restricts foreign companies from holding more than 20% of the voting rights of a South African broadcaster.

CREATOR ECONOMY

🚀 Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Creator Economy is booming, and the world doesn’t know it yet.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited to give the keynote speech at the inaugural African Creators Summit in Lagos.

The convenor of the event was Apollo Endeavor, a company headed by Oladapo Adewunmi that currently represents 300+ of Nigeria’s top Content Creators.

👑 You may have never heard of them, but they reign over legions of fans: Mark Angel has 39M followers across platforms, Lasisi Elenu and Josh2Funny each have 9.2M and Kiekie 7.7M, for example.

The African Creators Summit - one full day of panels attended by 1,000 creators, and a VIP dinner for 150 guests - was free and fully funded by Apollo Endeavor.

There, I learned that:

🤯 Hundreds of creators in Nigeria make more than $100,000/year. A few of them, like Mark Angel, make millions. This means that the Nigerian Creator Economy already is a multi-million dollar industry.

📱This money mostly comes from ads placed on Creators’ video content on YouTube and Facebook, as well as from direct brand deals.

⚠️ Facebook currently limits monetization to a select number of “partner” Creators, while monetization is not yet enabled on Instagram and Whatsapp. But it’s coming. In fact, TikTok is about to launch its Creator program. As monetization options expand in the next months and years, Nigerian Creators’ revenue is going to explode.

💵 This revenue is made in USD (and not in Naira) - the holy grail.

🤳🏿These Creators are multi-talented. They act, they sing, they write, they teach, all the while being enormously charismatic and entertaining. Their skills are easily transferable to many other creative sub-sectors such as film, music and fashion, but also to the education sector.

🌐 They create jobs. They employ videographers, editors, photographers, stylists, makeup artists, lawyers, accountants, and managers.

In a market where disposable income is very low and global streamers are struggling to gain subscribers, Content Creators have found the gold mine: a business model that works.

Highly entertaining content, available to very large audiences for free, with ad inventory and delivery managed automatically by the world’s best advertising companies (Google and Meta).

At the event, one Creator asked this question: “What do we need to do for people to take us seriously?”

The answer: Show them the numbers.

GAMING

🎮 Carry1st becomes the first African startup to receive investment from the recently launched Sony Innovation Fund: Africa.

Late last year, the Sony Corporation Venture arm launched its first African investment vehicle - a $10M seed fund - to invest in early stage Entertainment African startups.

💰 South African mobile games publisher Carry1st is the continent’s largest Creative startup, having raised more than $60 million so far from blue chip investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), BITKRAFT, Google, Riot Games, and the rapper Nas.

Founded in 2018, Carry1st works with international gaming companies such as Activision, Supercell and Riot Games to bring global game franchises like “Call of Duty: Mobile” and “Valorant” to Africa.

📱 Carry1st specializes in developing social and casual puzzle-based mobile versions of these games for the African market, enabling monetization through its localized payment service Pay1st. Next, the company is planning to develop its own original titles, with development underway on three new games.

🚀 This business model has been successful so far: Carry1st says its revenues grew by 9x between 2021 and 2023.

Sony is coming in as a strategic investor. Among other things, it will leverage its expertise in gaming to help Carry1st develop new products and access new opportunities on the continent.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s gaming industry is expected to generate over $1 billion for the first time in 2024, according to research from Carry1st and venture capital firm Konvoy.

GASTRONOMY

🇪🇹 World renowned Ethiopian-born chef Marcus Samuelsson has opened his first Africa-based restaurant in Addis Ababa.

🗽 Samuelsson, who lost his mother during Ethiopia’s 1970s civil war, was adopted by a Swedish couple and raised in Sweden. At 23, he moved to New York where he became a celebrity chef, eventually opening restaurants in Harlem (the famous Red Rooster), Montreal and London.

His new eatery, named Marcus Addis, combines flavors from Ethiopia and the rest of the world and is located on the 47th floor of the nation’s tallest building, the headquarters of the Ethiopian Commercial Bank.

👨🏿🍳 🍳 Although Samuelsson’s journey is unique, he is also part of a new generation of chefs promoting and developing a new identity of African cuisine.

Long relegated to the realm of comfort food (jollof and plantain, anyone?), African cuisine is now earning its stripes in the elite world of global fine dining.

Here are some other names you should know:

🇸🇳 The pioneer of this new wave is without a doubt the Senegalese Pierre Thiam, Executive Chef and co-founder of Teranga, a fine-casual food chain in New York that sources ingredients from farmers in West Africa. Thiam is also the Executive Chef of Nok by Alara in Lagos and the Signature Chef of the five-star Pullman Hotel in Dakar.

🇲🇱 🇸🇳 Last month, French-Malian-Senegalese culinary wunderkind Mory Sacko opened Lafayette’s, his second restaurant in Paris. The 30-year-old chef’s first venture, MoSuke, earned him a Michelin star just months after opening in 2020. Despite my best efforts, I never managed to snag a reservation there, but I enjoyed a meal at Lafayette’s a few weeks ago.

🇳🇬 In London, Nigerian-inspired Ikoyi was launched in 2017 by friends Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale. It has since gained 2 Michelin stars and reached the #35 spot in The World’s Best 50 Restaurants’ ranking.

🇨🇬 Born in Congo-Brazzaville and educated in Germany, chef Dieuveil Malonga is the owner of Meza Malonga, a culinary lab in Kigali, Rwanda, and the founder of Chefs in Africa, a social enterprise committed to shedding light on Africa and diaspora gourmet rising stars.



HUSTLE & FLOW #51: Afreximbank's $1B Film Facility, NBA Africa expands its footprint, my 2024 predictions, and more

(c) NBA Nairobi

🎅🏿 Welcome to this year’s last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW.

In November, Afreximbank announced the 2024 launch of its $1 billion Film Finance Facility, the NBA opened new offices in South Africa and Kenya, and Ghana hosted the first Africa Cinema Summit. Click and read on for more 👇

2023 was the year where the Creative Industries officially landed on the radar of institutional investors. Besides Afreximbank, other financiers such as IFC, AFD Group, AfDB, Sony, Orange Bank, and Birimian Holdings also made big moves. All combined, these investors are now sitting on some $2.5 billion of funds committed to the African Creative sector, which they are itching to deploy.

As these investors prepare to put their cash to work, next year promises to be particularly interesting. Scroll to the end of this edition to discover some of my 2024 predictions 👇

Finally, before we wrap 2023 up I wanted to thank you, HUSTLE & FLOW readers. On Linkedin or directly through my website, you are now 6,253 subscribers to this newsletter. 

🌍 Over the course of the year I had the pleasure of meeting many of you in real life in Nairobi, Accra, Lisbon, Casablanca, Paris, Cannes, Marrakech, London and Dakar. I loved hearing that you find my writing useful. Thank you very much for your enthusiastic support and your continued readership.

Happy Holidays to all!

FILM & AUDIOVISUAL

The lack of data on the Creative Industries has long been a serious hindrance to the design of government interventions and to private sector investment. But now, an increasing number of government agencies, development organizations, and industry practitioners are coming together to publish sector-specific reports.

🔎 Last month, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and the Kenya Film Commission released the Film Industry Satellite Account Survey (FISA), tracking the contribution of Kenya’s film industry to the economy for the first time.

It’s an enlightening read for those who are not afraid of numbers, and the picture it paints of the Kenyan Film and Broadcast sector is quite vibrant.

A few highlights (2022 data):

📊 0,4%  - Contribution of Film and Broadcasting activities to the Kenyan GDP 

$570 million (Ksh 86.9 billion) - Gross output value of Film and Broadcasting activities

$250 million (Ksh 38.1 billion) - Gross value added by the sector 

$162 million (Ksh 24.7 billion) - Gross output generated by Production activities only


And also:

 💪🏾 42,823 jobs created 

📃 866 Film licenses issued

📽 39 cinema screens and 14 theaters

📺 6.3 million digital TV subscriptions

🎥 Afreximbank will be launching its $1 billion film fund next year, and that's a game-changer for the African film industry.

Until now, only a few countries - such as South Africa, Morocco, Senegal or Ivory Coast - had access to structured finance for film, mostly through small national funds with very limited budgets.

Overall though, African films are still mostly financed informally through personal funds, corporate sponsors, and a smattering of foreign grants targeted at "festival" films only.

The lack of access to structured, specialized finance has stifled the growth of the African film industry in several ways:

👉 African filmmakers have had to limit their creative ambitions to match the level of funding they could raise through their personal networks, negatively impacting production values.

👉 Many have been forced to work on "commissioned" projects, perpetuating a system in which the buyer (a TV station or a streaming platform) covers the budget plus a production margin, in exchange for all rights to the content.

👉 This means that many African filmmakers don't actually own the IP on the content they created. After the one-off payment from the buyer, these filmmakers are also locked out of any additional revenue resulting from the further distribution or exploitation of their content.

👉 African producers are vastly disadvantaged compared to foreign ones when it comes to securing and developing high-profile IP into films or series. Even if an African producer manages to partner with an international company to co-produce the future "Black Panther", for example, the fact that this producer cannot contribute any substantial funding to the project robs them of their negotiating power, and they are likely to end up owning a tiny fraction of the IP - if any at all.

Afreximbank's film fund aims to change all that.

🚀 Afreximbank's mission is to finance and promote intra-and extra-African trade. In 2020, it identified the creative industries as a new sector with high-growth potential. Indeed, Africa is projected to produce up to 10% of global creative goods exports by 2030, which will amount to roughly $200 billion or 4% of Africa’s GDP.

🏦 Filmmakers seeking to access funding will have to show a solid finance plan, and present supporting documents like pre-sales or distribution agreements.

This film fund will not magically solve other challenges faced by the African film industry, such as the lack of distribution or of professional training programs. But it will make financing available for entrepreneurs with plans to tackle these issues in a sustainable way - and that's progress.

(Disclaimer: Afreximbank is one of my clients).

🇬🇭 🎥 I’m glad to have participated (albeit remotely) in the first edition of the Africa Cinema Summit, taking place mid-November in Accra, at the initiative of the National Film Authority of Ghana.

🎤 I had the privilege of speaking about Investment in the African cinema space, alongside my good friend Moses Babatope of Filmhouse Group and Motheo Matsau of Ster-Kinekor.

I made the following points:

📍Institutional investors are still very reluctant to invest in the movie theater business, which they perceive as a dying, capex-heavy industry. In reality, it seems that cinema keeps refusing to die: it was already supposed to perish decades ago with the advent of television, then again more recently with the arrival of the global streaming platforms, and then yet again with the Covid pandemic. But 2023 gave us Barbenheimer and the highest global box office on record.

📍Nevertheless, the movie theater business needs to adapt to new technologies, new trends and the audiences' changing tastes in order to survive. Two viable models are emerging for Africa. First, a high-end, rich entertainment proposal mixing cinema with other attractions for the entire family (restaurants, gaming arcades, beauty and wellness salons, etc) in the same location. Second, affordable, low-cost community cinemas servicing the enormous peri-urban and rural audiences who have so far been unable to access this type of entertainment.

📍Industry operators need to continue to collect data, document their activities, and communicate about the business models that work. As Motheo said, they also need to learn how to speak the investors' language in order to become more convincing.

📍Governments have a huge role to play in creating an enabling environment. The first step is to appoint experienced industry practitioners in key positions, so that cinema professionals have a knowledgeable person to talk to. Other measures that work: passing creative bills and film incentive packages, streamlining complex tax frameworks and removing red tape, offering tax breaks or holidays, and availing land for the development of film infrastructure.

📜 During the Summit, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo announced a set of measures going in the right direction. However, Ghana’s economic situation is dire at the moment, which might impede the country’s ability to support its film sector.


MUSIC

🎧 The competition for music streaming domination is heating up on the continent.

📱To reach customers, music platforms need telco distribution. 

Homegrown service Mdundo, for example, has access to a customer base of 185 million people (and 26.6 monthly active users) through its partnerships with Vodacom in Tanzania, Airtel and MTN in Nigeria, and MTN in Ghana, and South Africa. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese Boomplay comes embedded in Transsion phones (sold under the Tecno or Infinix brands) and works with 9Mobile in Nigeria, its largest market. These deals were instrumental in getting Boomplay its 100 million monthly active users.

🦍 But in the world of music, the 500 pound gorilla is Spotify. The streaming giant entered Africa in February 2021, by launching into 39 countries simultaneously. And now, it has picked Orange to launch its first mobile offer in Africa.

🍊 Spotify and Orange Middle East & Africa have partnered to offer all Orange mobile customers complimentary data bonuses to access to Spotify’s service, starting with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mali, and soon Guinea. Millions of mobile users in these countries will be now able to access Spotify for free when subscribing to an Orange mobile offer.

There is a lot of room for this partnership to grow after this initial phase: Orange is currently present in 17 countries in Africa, serving more than 140 million customers.

GAMING

🎮 Nigerian Game studio Maliyo will be releasing its “2024 Africa Games Industry Report” on December 5th. 

I was lucky to get early access to the document. It is a useful tool for those new to the space, especially as it clearly illustrates the budding African games value chain.

Register here to receive the “2024 Africa Games Industry Report” in your inbox.

SPORTS

🏀 NBA Africa is ramping up its activities on the continent.

 🇿🇦 Last month, the world’s leading basketball league chose South Africa as the fourth location for the expanded 2024 season of its Basketball Africa League (BAL) due to the nation's strong infrastructure. 

Johannesburg will host the Kalahari Conference in March 2024, before the BAL moves on to the already-established Nile Conference in Cairo (April), the Sahara Conference in Dakar (May) and the seeding games and playoffs in Kigali (May - June). South Africa’s team, the Cape Town Tigers, made it to the playoffs in the past two seasons.

NBA Africa will also open two more stores in Cape Town and Durban, in addition to the one that already exists in Johannesburg.

🇰🇪 In Kenya, NBA Africa announced the establishment of a new subsidiary, which will support all of the league’s business and basketball development initiatives in the country. This Nairobi outpost marks NBA Africa’s fifth office on the continent, after Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, and Lagos. 

🇸🇸 And finally, NBA Africa also announced yesterday a new junior league in South Sudan, which will kick off in early 2024.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024

2023 was the year when the Creative Industries started being taken seriously by investors, and this momentum is bound to accelerate in 2024.

Here are my 3 predictions for next year (or the next 5 - I have a tendency to be early):

🔮  Sony’s Innovation Fund: Africa, Silverback Holdings, Birimian’s Fashion debt facility with Orange Bank Africa, and Nollywood-focused funds such as the VEMA Fund from Volition Capital all emerged in 2023. In 2024, we will see the launch of more investment and financing vehicles specialized in the Creative, Sports or Entertainment sectors.

🔮 The worlds of Tech, Media and Sports will become increasingly intertwined. They will share founders and investors. Interesting companies leveraging tech to distribute and monetize high-value sports media properties will be born. The confluence of Sports and Gaming will become increasingly hot for private investors.

🔮 Good ol’ debt will become the financing tool of choice for Fashion houses and Production companies that are profitable but lack working capital to scale. This will be made possible by new programs that will teach bankers about the Creative sector, while providing risk-sharing facilities. In return, creative MSME entrepreneurs will learn how to structure themselves properly, and the industry will finally start to mature.

What other big trends do you see? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

HUSTLE & FLOW will be back next year!

HUSTLE & FLOW #50: Fashion data galore, Ngannou's Riyadh stunt, Sony's new Africa Fund, & more

(c) UNESCO, "The Fashion Sector in Africa: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth"

🏈🏆 In October, South Africa’s Springboks became rugby’s World Champions, again. They made history by being the first team to win the Rugby World Cup for the 4th time - and that’s a win for the entire continent.

🥊 Meanwhile in Riyadh, Cameroonian MMA star Francis Ngannou faced boxing legend Tyson Fury for an epic fight. Although Ngannou officially lost, he is the real winner - read why below.


In this new 50th 🤯 edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, you’ll also find more on:

👉 How Editi Effiong’s The Black Book became Netflix’s first African global hit.

👉 Why Mr Eazi, who just released his debut album “The Evil Genius”, is not your regular Afrobeats superstar.

👉 What we can learn from UNESCO ’s and ANKA ’s fresh off-the-press treasure-troves of data on the African Fashion and Crafts sectors.

👉 Why Sony launched a new fund to invest in African Entertainment.


As I sit at my desk writing this, I have major FOMO about missing the Lagos Art Season this year.

The pictures from the just concluded 2023 edition of Lagos Fashion Week are gorgeous. Congratulations to Omoyemi Akerele and team! Feast your eyes here.

Also, Art X Lagos is opening today. If you’re in town right now, head over Federal Palace to experience this new tour-de-force by Tokini Peterside-Schwebig & co.


↪️ If you enjoy HUSTLE & FLOW, don’t keep it to yourself. Subscribe and share!

FILM

🌟 Editi Effiong’s The Black Book, which premiered in September, has become “Nigeria’s first runaway Netflix hit”, according to Wired. Three weeks after its release, the movie had been watched more than 70 million times, even reaching number 1 in aspirational South Korea.

In the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, I talked about Editi’s innovative financing strategy. What I didn’t say is that Editi also took an enormous risk by spending $1 million on his passion project two years ago, at a time when neither Netflix nor any other buyer had ever spent that kind of money to acquire a Nigerian film.

🏅Thankfully, it all worked out for him, for his investors (Netflix reportedly spent $1.5 million on The Black Book) and ultimately, for Netflix. After a lackluster first few years, the platform may have finally hit gold - its first Nigerian crossover film.

“When [Netflix] started investing in its own slate of original content, Nollywood hoped that it would spur a creative boom, as well as a financial one, giving filmmakers the opportunity to explore new ground,” writes Wired. “But Netflix’s early titles were broadly similar to what came before them, in similar genres, albeit with slightly more elevated production values. And the money wasn’t great either. Reports have shown that Nigerian filmmakers are paid a lot less compared to their counterparts in countries with significantly smaller markets.” 

The Black Book is a good illustration of what can happen when the right filmmaker is liberated from creative or budget shackles.

🤼 But it is also key to note that the competitive environment has evolved since Netflix’s early Nigeria days. Earlier this year, Amazon’s Prime Video entered the market with a splash, spending more than $1 million to secure the rights to Jade Osiberu’s Gangs of Lagos.

The Black Book and Gangs of Lagos share more than a few characteristics beyond their sticker price. Both films explore the Nigerian underworld and are ambitious in scope, ramping up their production value with numerous action scenes. But more importantly, they were made by creatively gifted and business-oriented producer-directors, who are only at the beginning of their careers.

In a few years, we might look back at 2023 as the year Nollywood turned a corner.

⛏ Still in Nigeria and also setting the stage for a grander future Nollywood, the groundbreaking ceremony for the $100 million Lagos Film City, which was presided over by Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, also took place last month. 

The project, which will be built on a 100-hectare plot of land in the Epe Local Government district's Ikosi-Ejinrin district, is structured as a Public Private Partnership and is being developed in collaboration with industry players Ebonylife Academy, Delyork, and Ogidi Studios.

🧐 The announcement was short on details but I’ll be keeping an eye on it and reporting back as more information emerges.

DIGITAL CONTENT DISTRIBUTION

Telco-owned African streaming services are struggling to compete with Netflix, Prime Video and Showmax, writes dámiláre dòsùnmú in Rest of World.

⚰️  The African market is a graveyard for mobile video apps: RIP Vodacom’s Video Play (2022), Telkom’s TelkomOne (relaunched as SABC+ in 2022), Econet’s Kwese TV (2019), Cell C’s Black (2019) and MTN’s Vu (2017).

💸 Indeed, scaling a video streaming business requires spending mountains of capital upfront and enduring significant losses for years - a business model that quickly looks unappealing to telcos used to making good money through voice, data, and mobile money services.

According to Iroko TV founder Jason Njoku, to grow a streaming platform “you need hundreds of millions of dollars and lots of patience. I don’t think I have seen a telco-first model work anywhere. The DNA of the company needs to be content. Live, breathe, and market it.”

🤝 So rather than “owning the entire pipe” as they once dreamed, telcos are going back to a model they’re a lot more comfortable with: working with specialized content partners to offer value-added services to their customers. Yes, the good ol’ call back ringtone or premium SMS model.

⭐️ One of the companies taking advantage of the situation is Starnews Mobile, a mobile video network that allows African creators and celebrities to monetize their content directly from their fans. (Disclaimer: I am an early investor in Starnews). 

Despite the current VC funding winter, Starnews just raised a $3 million pre-series A led by Janngo Capital. Interestingly, other investors in the round also included football players Aurélien Tchouaméni of Real Madrid, Jules Koundé of Barcelona and Mike Maignan from AC Milan, all affiliated with athlete representation agency Excellence Sport Nation.

📈 Launched in 2017, Starnews Mobile works with more than 120 creators and boasts an active subscriber base of over 4 million through its partnerships with MTN and Orange across Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Congo, Benin and Ivory Coast. Starnews CEO Guy Kamgaing said that the platform distributed $1 million to content creators last year. 

Most of the content available on Starnews is organized into topical, hyper local channels, such as local celebrities lifestyle feeds, or channels on motorbike taxis in Cameroon or food recipes in Ivory Coast. For this type of content, YouTube or Instagram don’t provide real monetization options, while Starnews is able to leverage its telco partnerships to push these videos to the right audience and monetize through airtime micro-payments.

FASHION

🧥 UNESCO 's new report on the African Fashion sector is out and it's a must-read.

Entitled "The Fashion Sector in Africa: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth", the UNESCO study shows that the continent holds all the cards to become a global fashion leader.

A few key insights stuck out for me:

💰 The market value of clothing and footwear in sub-Saharan Africa was estimated at $31 billion in 2020 - but this includes foreign imports. In fact, Africa's textile, clothing, and footwear trade deficit stands at roughly US$7.6 billion. This represents a huge opportunity to redirect some of this consumption towards local brands, especially with the growing appetite on the continent for fashion Made-in-Africa.

🧑🏿🌾 Africa is a major producer of raw materials - 37 out of 54 countries produce cotton. However, while African cotton fiber accounted for 7.5% of global production in 2022, sub-Saharan countries exported more than 81% of their raw cotton rather than transforming and using it locally.

🏗The lack of industrialization and the resulting high production costs impede the growth of the African ready-to-wear segment, as many designers are forced to focus on a niche, luxury clientele who can afford their products. How to scale up production capacity is a major challenge for most of the small and medium-size enterprises that make up 90% of the Africa fashion sector.

🏭 A few countries (Egypt, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Morocco, and Tunisia) do have a significant manufacturing sector geared towards outsourcing for major global brands such as Guess, H&M, Levi’s, Mango, Zara, Chanel, Dior, and Hermès.

💃 Despite all these challenges, African haute couture is particularly vibrant, with 32 Fashion Weeks taking place annually across the continent and an increasing number of African brands being recognized internationally. A 42% increase in demand is expected in that segment over the next 10 years.

📝 The report also makes recommendations for decision-makers to tackle weak points of the ecosystem such as legal frameworks, skills and capacity building, investment, and environmental standards, in order to unleash the full potential of the African Fashion sector.

E-COMMERCE

📊  Another new great source of market insights is the white paper that was just released by sales platform Anka.

ANKA, which started out 7 years ago as Afrikrea, a marketplace for made-in-Africa fashion, design and crafts, has since transformed into an Africa “Paypal and Shopify” hybrid that helps aggregate shipping services to reduce costs. The company raised a $5 million extension round in September, and says it has more than 20,000 sellers in 100 countries (45 in Africa) -- providing it with scores of precious data points on how small African brands sell online.

A few elements stand out:

🤳🏿Social media (especially whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram) is the leading online sales channel for independent retailers - not dedicated e-commerce websites or apps.

🏬 In fact, social media accounts for 43.6% as the largest point of sale for retailers, while ‘physical shops’ are a distant second at 20.9%.

🇫🇷 France has Anka’s highest number of online shops with over 4,000, while Nigeria is second with 3,549. 

🇳🇬 Nigeria has the highest seller average annual volume in the top 10 countries coming in at over $11,000 — more than three times the next country, Ghana.

💵 The average seller on Anka earns around $185/year.

Anka concludes: 

“In our humble opinion, rather than pushing people to buy what they can’t, we should also empower them to sell what they do have, especially through export. Exporting is not a panacea but a real remedy for the many difficulties that African economies suffer from, such as trade deficits, currency instability and chronic unemployment.”

MUSIC

🔥 😈 After a decade of attention-grabbing singles and high-profile collaborations, global Afrobeats artist Mr Eazi has just released his own debut album entitled “The Evil Genius”.

🎧 Mr Eazi reached global stardom with his mixtapes and cross-genres hits featuring other big names, such as “Don’t Jealous Me” with Beyonce, Tekno and Yemi Alade, “Como Un Bebé,” with Bad Bunny and J Balvin, “Miss You Bad” with Burna Boy, or “Oh My Gawd” with Diplo from Major Lazer and Nicki Minaj.

🎨 But for all the music that he had made until now, Eazi had not yet produced his own album. This is now done. More than a music project (which features signature collabs with Angelique Kidjo or the Soweto Gospel Choir), the 16-track “The Evil Genius” takes Eazi’s taste for breaking boundaries further by matching each song with a specially commissioned work from a leading African visual artist.

Many things distinguish Eazi from the other Nigerian superstars (Davido, Burna Boy, Wizkid) whom he’s often bundled with.

🕵🏽 Here’s why I’ve been closely tracking Eazi’s moves for the past few years:

🎓 He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering at the age of 19, and at just 32 years-old today, he already has a 13-year career behind him. He’s more than a fine boy no pimple.

😎 He’s an entrepreneur who then became a music star, not the other way around. 

🔮 He opted to stay independent instead of signing with a major music label, trusting his ability to stir and develop his own career, but also recognizing early on the true value of the Afrobeats cultural movement. “I was like ‘Nah, this thing we’re holding is going to be big and it’s happening in our very own hands,’” he said.

🤝 He’s a master at cross-cultural partnerships. He is the creator of “Banku music”, a fusion of Nigerian Afrobeats and Ghanaian highlife. His collaboration with reggaeton superstar J Balvin won him a Latin Grammy earlier this year. His band ChopLife Soundsystem with Kenyan-born DJ Edu mixes South African amapiano influences with Afrobeats and Jamaican party culture.

💪 He supports emerging artists from across the continent - such as breakout star Joeboy - by providing mentorship and distribution through his emPawa Africa initiative.

💵 He is an astute investor and the founder of Zagadat Capital. His areas of interest include fintech, betting, and sports.

😇 Despite his own financial successes and his upcoming marriage into a billionaire family, you won’t see him chopping money on Hennessy.

🦆 Instead, he is a “duck”, according to DJ Edu. “You see a duck flowing, floating on water. Yet there’s a lot of stuff going on underneath the surface. That is exactly what he is.” Hard working with a smooth exterior.

SPORTS

🥊 💫 On October 28, Cameroonian Mixed Martial Arts star Francis Ngannou faced British Boxing champion Tyson Fury in an epic match in Riyadh, in front of a celebrity-studded audience which included Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mane, Kanye West and Eminem.

🏆 Although Ngannou officially lost to Fury, for many observers the Cameroonian fighter is the ultimate winner. Why?

👉 Fury was granted the victory after a controversial split decision by the judges, despite the fact that Ngannou dominated the fight overall. It could have easily gone the other way.

👉 Ngannou went into the match as the clear underdog. Thirty-five-year-old Tyson Fury is a World Boxing Championship heavyweight champion on a 34-bout winning streak. In contrast, 37-year-old Ngannou, despite his status as former UFC heavyweight champion in Mixed Martial Arts, had never boxed professionally. The Cameroonian came into the challenge still recovering from an injury and his training camp - with Mike Tyson - only lasted 3.5 months.

👉 But more importantly, Ngannou used the highly publicized fight to quietly revolutionize the sports content market in Africa.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ "The Battle of the Baddest" was promoted as a premium Pay-Per-View event in the US, where fans could stream it live for $79.99 on ESPN+ PPV, and in the UK, where it was available for £21.95 through TNT Sports Box Office.

But that was leaving Ngannou's legions of African fans off the table.

💡 So Ngannou's teams at 3points0Labs, Gimik Fights and AMDM Africa came up with a solution to turn the Riyadh match into the first major Pay-Per-View sports event at affordable prices for Africa.

📲  By leveraging Africa's widespread mobile money services and some strategic partnerships, they made the fight accessible to African fans across the continent for just $3.99-$4.99 per view, and even as low as $0.80 for airtel customers. Awareness of the event was pushed through SMS marketing and collaborations with local social media influencers.

🌍  Although audience numbers are unknown at this point, it is easy to see how this type of approach could unlock massive revenue from the continent. Considering the 287 million mobile internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa, if 1% of those paid for the cheapest access package (airtel at $0.80), that would already represent close to $2.3 million.

And this doesn't include additional revenue such as booking fees (estimated at $50 million for Fury and $10 million for Ngannou) or sponsorship deals.

Ngannou, we see you 😎 🤑

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES FINANCING

🔥 African Entertainment is getting a new, high profile investor.

🇯🇵 Japanese behemoth Sony has announced the launch of a new $10 million fund to support the growth of entertainment businesses in Africa.

🎮 More specifically, this new Sony Innovation Fund: Africa will focus on early-stage startups in gaming, music, film and content distribution.

Through its other global funds, the tech and media giant's venture arm has made more than 100 investments in sectors like entertainment, robotics, AI, mobility, fintech, healthcare, logistics and SaaS.

💴 In Africa, SIF will take a more focused approach by targeting creative businesses only, starting with South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana and ticket sizes ranging from $250,000 to $1 million.

It plans to not only invest in creative startups but also in infrastructure and even to build an animation school.

One thing that will differentiate Sony from other investors is that the Group also intends to leverage its expertise in areas such as film and music production, distribution and marketing, to facilitate the access of its future African portfolio companies to global markets.

🤝 SIF also enters the African market with the backing of IFC - International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) which will provide financing, market expertise, and the ability to fund larger or follow-on rounds.

IFC itself is a new entrant in the small club of institutional investors in the African Creative space. (Disclaimer: IFC is one of my advisory clients).

🎯 In the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, I talked about how IFC, the largest development institution focused exclusively on the private sector in emerging markets, was now throwing its weight behind the African Creative Industries. In its 2022 fiscal year, IFC invested a record $32.8 billion across all sectors in developing countries, and now, the Creative Sector is in its bullseye. 

Mid-October, IFC hosted the first Creative Industries event to ever take place during the World Bank-IMF general meetings in Morocco, an exclusive annual gathering of global world leaders.

🎤 I had the pleasure of moderating an insightful panel on private investment in the Creative Industries, during which panelists William Sonneborn (IFC), Moulaye TABOURÉ (ANKA), Antonio Avitabile (Sony Innovation Fund) and Laureen Kouassi-Olsson (Birimian Ventures) discussed the need for institutional investors to adapt their frameworks to better service this emerging sector.

💰 IFC took the opportunity of this panel to announce its ambition to invest $2 billion per year in the Creative Industries in emerging markets, both directly and through partnerships with other financial institutions and funds (such as Sony Innovation Fund). That is a substantial pile of cash.

Gone are the days where African creative entrepreneurs were shouting alone in the wilderness. Investors are now paying attention - time to step up the game.

HUSTLE & FLOW #49: Nigerian Film Finance revolution, Tongoro at Renaissance, ANKA raises $5M, and more

(c) The Black Book, Editi Effiong / Netflix

September was a winning month for African creative entrepreneurs.

In this edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, Nigerian filmmaker and entrepreneur Editi Effiong revolutionizes African film finance with The Black Book (now streaming on Netflix), Global superstar Beyonce wears Senegalese brand Tongoro on her Renaissance tour, Rema and Selena Gomes’ “Calm Down” reaches 1 billion streams on Spotify, and Ivorian ecommerce startup ANKA raises $5 million.

But there is more, a lot more. Read on!


FILM

Editi Effiong’s The Black Book, which premiered on Netflix last week and is already breaking records, is not only a showcase for star Richard Mofe-Damijo (aka RMD), it is also an important milestone in Nigerian film finance.

💻 🎥 Backed by some of Nigeria’s most prominent startup founders and VC investors, the $1M budget thriller illustrates the growing convergence between the worlds of African Tech and Entertainment.

Among the film’s financiers are Kola A. (Ventures Platform), Olumide Soyombo (Bluechip Technologies), as well as the cofounders of Flutterwave, Piggyvest, Paystack, and Eden Life.

I met Editi in 2021 and had the privilege of reading an early draft of The Black Book. Although the film would become Editi’s first feature as a director, he had already shown a lot of potential with his short film Fishbone and as a producer on Up North.

🤑 Still, it was clear that The Black Book was going to be expensive.

Most Nigerian films that make it to local cinemas have production budgets in the $150,000-350,000 range, while the most ambitious ones can reach up to $500,000-750,000.

💪🏿 In an environment where public funding is not available, Nigerian producers have become skilled at pooling resources together - proceeds from previous films, equipment, locations, sponsorships - to finance increasingly ambitious movies in cash and kind.

Despite the hype, The Black Book is not Nigeria’s most expensive film. The award goes to the 2011 adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, which was produced on a staggering $9M budget.

💸👋🏿 Financing for the film was raised by investment banker Yewande Sadiku, who was the first person to bring organized financing to a Nigerian movie. But Yewande was way ahead of her time. Sadly, the movie was not a commercial success, and Nollywood producers’ ambitions were knocked down a notch.

📈 Fast forward 10 years and new experiments in film finance have taken place, including the launch of FilmOne Studios’ $1M film fund with China’s HuaHua. Nigerian films’ production value has noticeably increased. Netflix and Amazon Prime have entered the market, providing substantial new revenue opportunities for filmmakers. And the country known for its oil billionaires has minted a new class of High Net Worth Individuals - startup founders and tech investors.

💡 To finance his $1M production budget, Editi reached out to his personal network in tech, and convinced his connections to take a bet on film - a class of assets that is, in fact, no riskier than most startups. He made sure to follow a thorough process, delivering regular updates to his investors

The acquisition of The Black Book by Netflix validated the model, prompting Volition Cap, one of the film’s investors, to launch the Volition Entertainment, Media and Art (VEMA) Fund, an investment club focused on this “new” sector.

If The Black Book was the Beta version of this new Nigerian film finance model, the next logical steps are for its KPI-focused investors to pour over the data, analyze the results, and iterate. It’s clear that we will see a lot more venture-backed Nollywood films in the near future.

MUSIC

💥 New level unlocked: Rema's version of Calm Down featuring Selena Gomez becomes the first Afrobeats song in history to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify.

In fact, it is the first track led by an African artist to ever reach this milestone.

🦄 Calm Down joins the extremely small club of songs to reach unicorn status on the platform, where more than 100 million tracks compete for the audience's attention.

🌍 Calm Down's appeal is truly global, gathering the highest number of streams from large markets such as the US, India, Mexico, Brazil and the UK.

According to Spotify's Sub-Saharan Africa MD Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Calm Down's success can be attributed to "the power of cross-cultural fusion in our ultra-interconnected world: the blend of catchy afro-fusion rhythms, [Rema]'s unique and soulful singing and - of course - the unexpected addition of youth icon Selena Gomez on an Afrobeats song."

😎 A couple months ago, the American pop star shared her gratitude for being invited to feature on the song: "This man has changed my life forever. Rema, thank you for choosing me to be a part of one of the biggest songs in the world."

😉 This is also the only time in history where a woman has responded positively to a man telling her to calm down.

Congratulations to Rema and to his labels Mavin Records and Jonzing World Record 🎉

🎧 Africa-focused music streaming platform Mdundo’s annual report is out, and it is full of interesting stats.

Established in Kenya in 2013 by Danish founder Martin Nielsen, Mdundo took an unusual path when it was listed on Denmark’s stock exchange (Nasdaq First North Growth Market exchange) in September 2020. This also explains why the company’s results are public - a very rare occurrence for an African music startup.

💡 Contrary to premium services such as Spotify, Mdundo is targeting the African mass market through localized features and partnerships with telcos such as Vodacom in Tanzania, Airtel in Nigeria, and MTN in Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa.

The streaming service is now approaching 500,000 African songs directly uploaded by more than 140,000 creators.

📈 Key highlights from Mdundo’s 2023 annual report (fiscal year ending in June 2023) include:

  • 26.6 million monthly active users, exceeding the company’s target of 25 million

  • 74% growth in revenue year-on-year from $1.02 million to $1.78 million

  • 35% of total revenue ($620,000) was generated from paying users, representing a 239% growth year-on-year 

  • Meanwhile advertising revenue grew 37% to reach $1.2 million

The company recorded an EBITDA loss of $1.08 million, a 3.5% improvement from the prior fiscal year. It aims to become EBITDA positive by 2025, with 50 million monthly active users.

“I’m confident that in the future 15%-20% of all music on the global charts will be by African artists,” said. “The music industry is going through a massive democratization.”

E-COMMERCE

Ivorian SaaS e-commerce platform ANKA has raised $5 million in equity and debt in a pre-series A extension led by IFC, alongside Proparco and BPI France.

💰  Last January, ANKA (then still called Afrikrea) raised $6.2 million. In total, the seven-year-old startup has secured $13.5 million from investors since its inception and is emerging into one of the few success stories in the African creative tech space.

👗 Until 2021, the company operated solely as Afrikrea, a marketplace for African clothing, accessories, arts, and crafts. It rebranded to ANKA in order to become a one-stop shop for merchants, consolidating their other sales channels (websites, social media), onto a single platform. Thanks to its partnership with DHL, ANKA allows its users to dispatch packages from Africa to other countries for less than $30 in under 72 hours.

🤩 According to ANKA, the company now receives one million visits per month, generating $50 million in annual transactions across 175 countries for a turnover of about $3.8 million.

Interestingly, although it is headquartered in Ivory Coast, most of ANKA’s 20,000+ vendors (80% women) are in Nigeria and Kenya. Meanwhile, its largest markets in terms of terms are the US and France, countries that boast a significant African diaspora who shop online.

FASHION

🎤 🌍 Beyoncé's highly instagrammable Renaissance World Tour was, without contest, one of the main events of the summer.

Since the tour started in May, the singer has worn dozens of striking custom bodysuits from major global brands such as Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Valentino, Balmain, Louis Vuitton and Mugler.

🔥 And then last week, Senegalese label Tongoro entered the room.

Founded in 2016 by Sarah Diouf, Tongoro's trajectory is intrinsically linked with the megastar.

😎 The brand, known for its long, fluid and graphic silhouettes, first caught the world's attention when Beyoncé appeared in one of its outfits while on vacation in Italy in 2018.

Then, in July 2020, the singer released her iconic feature-length musical 'Black Is King', in which she was seen wearing a Tongoro ensemble -- and the brand's significance was cemented in cultural history. It's since been worn by other celebrities, such as Solange and Naomi Campbell.

✂️ For the Renaissance Tour, Diouf created a series of custom looks for Beyoncé and her entire team of dancers of thirty men and women.

Styled by Shiona Turini, the custom NARI bodysuit, including the hand gloves and the thigh-high boots, were all handmade in Dakar. On Instagram, Diouf shared behind-the-scenes pictures of herself working around the clock (and in secret) alongside her master tailors to finish the outfits on time.

💰 With a media impact value estimated at $187 million so far for the brands showcased during the Tour, it's clear that there will be a before and after Renaissance for Tongoro.

💫 Tongoro - which means "star" in Sango, the language of the Central African Republic, where Diouf's mother is from.

📖 Birimian Ventures’ CEO Laureen Kouassi-Olson is sharing her hopes for African Fashion in a new book, entitled “Iconic Africa: La mode de demain sera africaine ou ne sera pas”. (The fashion of tomorrow will be African or it will not be.)

Here’s what she had to say about the book: “For decades, international fashion has been inspired by African creation. Even if this is a tremendous recognition for our continent, this inspiration does not contribute to the emergence of an African fashion industrial sector.

💡 Ensuring that African creation is at the origin of a creation of economic value “made in Africa” requires developing innovative financial mechanisms as much as bringing about a real cultural change in the minds of African creators.

This work is an activist work, a plea for the recognition of creators and for African countries to take control of the creation of value in the fashion and creative sector. At a time when the challenges of development and climate come together, the African continent is today more legitimate than ever to transform on-site the raw materials that it already produces.”

SPORTS

Investors' interest in traditional African sports is ramping up.

🥊In July, leading Dambe promoter African Warriors Fighting Championship (AWFC) signed a groundbreaking sponsorship deal with gambling service Stake.

AWFC will now have to reckon with a new competitor as the Africa Fighters League (AFL) has launched Dambe Warriors League (DWL) in Nigeria. 

🇳🇬 Similar to boxing (but using only one striking arm, called “the spear”), Dambe is a traditional martial art which originated among the Hausa people in northern Nigeria.

AFL and DWL were co-founded by businessmen Hugh Guill and Kingsley Pungong (Rainbow Sports Group), following their purchase of a majority stake in Lost Child Media, a Dambe sports promotion company started by Chidi Anyina and Anthony Okeleke.

With Circuit Fights scheduled approximately every two weeks, DWL aims to produce a variety of live and recorded content, to be distributed widely through live online streaming, social media, and eventually television.

COMING UP THIS OCTOBER

Two major events to put on your calendar (or at least on your radar) this October:

🎮 Between October 6 and 8, some 300 young creators from across Africa will take over the iconic La Gaite Lyrique venue in Paris to showcase the continent’s most cutting-edge initiatives in TVseries animation, comics, gaming, esports, AR, VR and digital entrepreneurship.

🙏🏽 I will have the privilege to serve as the MC and moderator for this first edition of the Creative Africa Forum, organized by the French Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs, at the initiative of the French Presidential office.

🎤 Among the headliners of the Business Day on October 6 are Lesley Donna Williams (Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct), Sidick Bakayoko (Paradise Games), Séraphine Angoula (Dakar Séries Festival), Sebastien Onomo (Special Touch Studios), Brian Afande (Blackrhino VR), and Joachim Landau (Federation Studios Africa).

💰 On the financing side, we will hear from investors George Gachara (HEVA Fund), Ketevan Liparteliani (IFC) and Farrukh Hussain (Sony Innovation Fund), and unveil the winners of the AFD Digital Challenge, which focused this year on the Creative Industries.

🇫🇷 France has a long and complicated history with Africa, and diplomatic relations can sometimes be tense or challenging.

🌍 But everywhere you go on the continent, from Dakar to Nairobi, from Casablanca to Cape Town, France is also recognized as the most ardent and steadfast supporter of arts and culture.

💡 The Creative Africa Forum is one more step on the journey, impulsed by President Macron, towards reinventing the relationship between France and Africa by focusing on creativity, technology, and entrepreneurship, areas in which both regions have much to share.

Although the Business Day on October 6 is fully booked, the exhibition will be open to the general public on October 7 and 8.

💪 Meanwhile, IFC (member of the World Bank Group), the largest development institution focused exclusively on the private sector in emerging markets, is throwing its weight behind the African Creative Industries.

In its 2022 fiscal year, IFC invested a record $32.8 billion in developing countries. And now, the Creative Industries are in the bullseye 🎯.

👉 As mentioned earlier, IFC announced its first investment in an African Creative sector company, leading the $5M extension round of creative ecommerce startup ANKA (owner of the Afrikrea marketplace).

👉 Back in July, IFC also extended a risk-sharing facility to support the Orange Bank x Birimian Ventures debt program, providing loans to Fashion MSMEs in Ivory Coast.

And there is more where that came from.

📆  On October 14, IFC will host a high profile event dedicated to the Creative Industries during the World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings in Marrakesh.

Endorsed by IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop, this will be the first time that the Creative Industries are showcased during this exclusive gathering, attended by thousands of global leaders from the public and private sectors.

💵 I’ll have the pleasure of moderating a panel on “Investing in the Creative Industries - What are the bankable business models” with Bill Sonneborn (IFC), Moulaye Taboure (ANKA), Laureen Kouassi-Olsson (Birimian) and Stuart Forrest (Triggerfish).

We’ll also discuss how governments can help ignite growth in the sector through smart policy and the development of an enabling environment (spoiler alert 🤫 - there's a lot African governments can do without spending actual cash).

Maiko Miyake (IFC) will lead this conversation focused on the audiovisual sector with Professor Kenneth Kim (South Korea/Hallyu expert), Jonathan Olsberg (Olsberg•SPI), Stan McCoy (Motion Picture Association) and Isioma Nnenna Alexis Idigbe (PUNUKA Attorneys & Solicitors).

🇲🇦 Finally, we'll also highlight our host Morocco, which is graciously maintaining this event despite the terrible earthquake that took place earlier this month.

Morocco is emerging as an African champion in many sectors including in the Creative Industries. On October 14, top personalities from the highest levels of government and the art world will be taking the stage.

The event will take place in the brand new UM6P - Mohammed VI Polytechnic University auditorium, and the best news is that you are all invited to attend 🙌.

Register here and join us in Marrakesh on October 14!

(Shuttles will be provided between Marrakesh and the University.)

HUSTLE & FLOW #48: Africa's $1B Gaming sector, African Animation continues to shine, traditional sports attract sponsors, and more

Rodger Bosch | Afp | Getty Images

In this new edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, we'll dig into two high-growth, big-potential African creative sectors: Gaming and Beauty. These markets are ripe for the taking, if you know where and how to look (read on for some tips).

Meanwhile, African animation continues to shine, with the back-to-back releases on 'Supa Team 4' on Netflix and 'Garbage Boy and Trash Can' on Cartoon Network, and African traditional combat sports such as Nigeria's Dambe are finally starting to attract the attention they deserve from key industry players.

And finally, are Africa's creative entrepreneurs ready to reconsider their aversion for bank loans as a source of finance? Birimian and Orange Bank may have found a way to make it work in Ivory Coast.

Scroll down for more!

GAMING

🎮 🤑 Sub-Saharan Africa’s gaming industry is expected to generate over $1 billion for the first time in 2024.

That's according to new research compiled by Newzoo for leading African gaming startup Carry1st.

🚀 Despite the current slowdown in the world's economy and in the global gaming market (partially due to a post-Covid correction), games sold in Africa generated $862.8 million in revenue in 2022, up 8.7% compared to the previous year.

According to Jackson Vaughan from VC firm Konvoy, “these initial numbers for gaming on the continent are promising, but the longer-term trends of population growth, internet penetration, and smartphone adoption paint a picture of incredible growth for gaming on the continent.”

Now, this is exciting, but these juicy numbers don't tell the whole story.

💸 Right now, 99.9% (my own guesstimate) of these hundreds of millions spent by Africans on video games are not going into African companies' or developers' pockets. Instead, they flow back into the balance sheets of global giants like Electronic Arts (FIFA, Sims), Riot Games (League of Legends), Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed), Gameloft (Disney games) or Zynga (Words with Friends, Farmville).

🤔 So how can Africa benefit from its young population's appetite for gaming?

✅ Partner with the big game publishers to adapt, distribute, and monetize their top sellers across the continent, then plough back the cash into growing the local ecosystem -- that's the Carry1st playbook.

✅ Invest seriously into video games development training programs. They don't need to be free. Connect graduates with remote game development or game design jobs to start.

✅ Game design is a hit-driven business. Gaming studios have to survive many failures on their way to success. African video games creators can increase their chances of commercial profitability by 1) focusing on casual and social mobile games, where they have an edge in terms of user experience and 2) targeting the global - not local - market from the get-go.

✅ Develop play-to-earn games to service brands, companies (such as FMCGs) or institutions (governments, NGOs) looking for hard-to-access, on-the-ground data across Africa.

✅ On the e-sports side, get global gaming companies to invest in local servers, like Electronic Arts just did in Nigeria, to reduce the latency and enable African gamers to compete in global tournaments. This will unlock new revenue streams around the organization of local gaming events, such as ticket sales, vendor services, sponsorships, and merchandising.

❓ Finally: African telcos potentially have a huge role to play, and massive upside to make, from investing in the local gaming industry. Where are they?

ANIMATION

🤩 South African studio Triggerfish has made African animation history for the second time in two months.

Just a few weeks after the release of its ground-breaking scifi anthology series 'Kizazi Moto' on Disney+ comes 'Supa Team 4', the first ever African orignal animation series to hit Netflix.

🦸Created by Zambian writer Malenga Mulendema and aimed at kids ages 6 to 11, 'Supa Team 4' follows four undercover teen superheroes on a quest to save the world after being recruited by an ex-spy, while juggling the many challenges of attending secondary school in a futuristic Lusaka, Zambia.

👩🏿 The first animated series to emerge from Zambia, the 8-part 'Supa Team 4' was written by eight African women screenwriters and voiced by five African women actors - a remarkable feat in itself. The theme song was composed by Zambian rapper/singer Sampa the Great.

The making of this show - which took 8 years - is also an example of persistence on the part of Mulendema, Triggerfish, and everyone involved. Mulendema originally pitched the concept for 'Supa Team 4' during Triggerfish's Story Lab organized with Disney in 2015. In 2017, Triggerfish and UK-based producer and distributer CAKE began developing the series under the working title 'Mama K’s Team 4'. Two years later, Netflix acquired the series and took it to the finish line.

The emerging Zambian animation community is feeling energized by the 'Supa Team 4' spotlight, writes Semafor, so we hope to see more stories coming from the Southern African nation in the years to come.

🗑️ Meanwhile, in (another!) African animation first, Cartoon Network also released the long-awaited series 'Garbage Boy and Trash Can' by Nigerian creator and director Ridwan Moshood.

Just like the teen girls of 'Supa Team 4', Garbage Boy is a super hero, except that, in this case, he does not actually have any super powers.

🍋 “The inspiration for creating the lead characters came from the derogatory name bullies used to call me in school,” explained Moshood, who said he created the characters to help children experiencing the same mistreatment. Talk about making lemonade with the proverbial lemons.

The 10-episode series was commissioned by Cartoon Network after Moshood won the Cartoon Network Creative Lab initiative 4 and a half years ago -- a sprint compared to 'Supa Team 4's marathon. It was co-produced in collaboration with Pure Garbage, a South African company which was founded specifically for this project, and Nigerian animation studio Magic Carpet.  

BEAUTY

💄 The African beauty market has the potential to become one of the most lucrative in the world.

🚀 According to Statista, the African beauty industry currently grows by 8-10% per year against a global market growth rate of 4%. It is projected to be worth $77.81 billion by 2028.

💸 Black women spend a lot more on hair care than white or Asian women. In fact, in the US Black women spend 4 times more on their hair than white women -- and that amount represents more than 25% of their monthly budget!

Although there's been much progress in the Black beauty market in the past few years, in a large part thanks to the spotlight (and FOMO) effect created by the launch in 2017 of Rihanna's Fenty line, there is still a lot of space for growth.

Here are some of the opportunities I see in the beauty space:

✅ Modern, branded chains of beauty salons that leverage tech to make the (very long) experience of getting one's hair done smoother, more enjoyable, and more affordable for both women and men.

✅ Tech and scientific innovation around natural or synthetic hair for weaves or extensions, focused on avoiding damage to the skin or scalp.

✅ Innovation around some of Africa's natural, indigenous ingredients such as shea butter and baobab, moringa, marula and argan oils and their transformation into cosmetics. There is no reason why Africa couldn't become a center for organic, sustainable cosmetics development for the world.

⚠️ For all of the above, a strong focus on branding, marketing, and distribution will be key to success. Too many young brands are thinking too small and not projecting enough cool to break through in the beauty space.

Who will be the entrepreneur who will convince Lupita to launch her own, Africa-sourced brand?

SPORTS BUSINESS

💪🏾 The African Warriors Fighting Championship (AWFC), a leading promoter of traditional African martial arts, has signed a landmark sponsorship deal with crypto betting company Stake.

🇳🇬 AWFC has been working to modernize and standardize Nigeria's traditional combat sport Dambe, which is very popular in the north of the country, and to introduce it to international audiences.

Its new agreement with Stake is a significant step towards reaching that goal.

🔥 A major online gambling company and a big sports sponsor, Stake already supports the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), one of the biggest Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) leagues in the world, as well as Nigerian middleweight world champion Israel Adesagna.

The deal - the first in Africa for Stake - will see the crypto company branding appear on African Warriors uniforms, events and digital content. It is also likely to generate a lot of visibility for Dambe internationally.

I first became aware of the world of African traditional combat sports in 2007, during my past life as a journalist. Stuck in Khartoum waiting for an elusive visa to Darfour, I decided to go film a story about traditional Nubian wrestling (which I had read about in my Lonely Planet guide!) rather than sit in my hotel room.

The circular sand pitch, the charisma of the fighters, the passion of the audience -- It felt like stepping into the movie 'Gladiator'.

Indigenous African martial art forms exist all across the Sahel. Senegalese wrestling is probably the best-known one - it's more popular locally than football. Meanwhile, Maxwell Kalu, founder of AWFC, describes Nigeria's Dambe as “ancient, intense and steeped in tradition”. AWFC's Instagram account already counts more than 212,000 followers, many from Brazil, Canada, and the US.

🥊 However, Dambe or Senegalese wrestling are not currently recognized by the MMA ecosystem, which combines fighting techniques from various combat sports such as Brazil's jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, kickboxing, Japan's karate, or Korea's taekwondo.

But the concept of MMA is quite new. It was first introduced in the United States in the 1990s by... the UFC. It was then regulated and standardized in the 2000s.

🚀 So, in 2023, as world-famous sports enthusiast Shakira once said, "tsamina mina, eh, eh, waka waka, eh, eh, tsamina mina zangalewa, this time for Africa."

FINANCING THE CREATIVE SECTOR

🤔 Can debt be an appropriate tool to finance the Creative Industries in Africa?

This debate has been going on for years.

💰 Most investors currently active in the Creative space are Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) -- essentially very large, multinational banks. They have many financial tools at their disposal, but debt is the less risky one as the lender's expected return is directly baked into the price of the loan (the interest rate).

😱 On the other side are creative entrepreneurs who, for the most part, are small business owners extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of their home market -- currency devaluations and forex risk, political instability, unpredictable taxation, rising interest rates, and value chain disturbances. They don't want to be burdened by a loan when the path ahead is so unclear.

When I was running my first business, a company in Kenya called Buni Media, my year was consumed by finding work and raising money to sustain our 80-person team. And every year, it almost felt like starting from scratch. That was pressure enough -- I would have never taken a loan I wasn't sure how to repay.

💡 But a recent partnership between Orange Bank and Birimian Ventures is showing that debt facilities geared towards the creative sector can work, if they are thoughtfully designed and managed.

🎉 In September 2022, Orange Bank and Birimian launched a $167,000 pilot debt program targeted at fashion companies in Ivory Coast. As of July 2023, 21 companies had been financed, with a repayment rate of 100%.

🚀 Last week, the two partners announced a new $836,000 fund, which will expand its reach to other sub-sectors of the creative industries. This time, the program is backed by IFC (International Finance Corporation)'s guarantee facility, which means that Orange and Birimian can take more risks.

So what did Orange and Birimian do to generate such positive results?

✅ They focused on one sub-sector in which Birimian had deep expertise.

✅ Birimian used its sector knowledge to pre-select companies and prepare them to apply for a loan. Out of 80 submissions, they selected 21 (26%).

✅ The product was packaged as a short-term loan to assist designers with the production of their next collection, so the loan had a clear and concrete purpose: to purchase raw material, lease equipment and pay for labor costs over a defined period. It would also be immediately repaid from the sales of the products. The short duration of the loan limits the impact of the interest rate on the borrower.

✅ Birimian then continued working with the selected companies throughout the period, providing coaching, access to markets and visibility.

The same model could be applied to finance the creation of other products that have a short route to market: TV series, music album, art exhibition, and more.

FOR THE CULTURE

🍦 And I'll leave you today with a cool Africa Special to dig into on these long days of summer, bought to us by none other than Teen Vogue.

The boundaries-busting youth magazine has published a juicy "Africa New Wave package" of articles that "celebrates the rich culture and impact of the globe's demographically youngest continent. Through a series of visual stories, [Teen Vogue] is unpacking the gravity of Africa's history and influence on the world and why it needs to be looked to as a source of inspiration for radical youth-focused change."

Check out in particular:

📱 "What Young People Are Wearing in Lagos" -- Using an iPhone Pro Max 14, photographer Stephen Tayo (one of my personal favorites) captured the incredible street style of Lagos. 

👗 "The Folklore Is Putting African Fashion and Beauty Brands on the Main Stage" -- Founder Amira Rasool talks about her mission to make the work of African designers and creatives available around the world. 

🎤 "Amaarae's Sophomore Album Fountain Baby is the Baddie's Manifesto" -- The Ghanaian American singer-songwriter is on her journey to self-discovery through music, fashion, and beauty.

HUSTLE & FLOW #47: African animation's watershed moment, African CreaTech, and podcasts galore

Disney+ / Kizazi Moto - Cartoon Network / Garbage Boy and Trash Can / Netflix - Supa Team 4

African culture shone bright like a diamond this past weekend.

Forty thousand people gathered in Portimão, Portugal for the Afro Nation festival, while Nollywood was celebrated at the Essence Fest in New Orleans, which devoted an entire day to Nigeria's thriving film industry.

A suitable ending to a month of June in which the impact and influence of African creativity extended way beyond its natural borders.

Read on for more 👇

ANIMATION

The biggest news of the month was the buzz created by the premiere of 🔥'Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire'🔥, which comes out this Wednesday on Disney+ 

As I told Variety, I believe that this stunning project represents a watershed moment for the African animation industry.

💫 An anthology of 10 short films created by animators from 6 different African countries, 'Kizazi Moto' offers a 'dizzying blend of mythology, science fiction and Afrofuturism, presenting 10 bold, wholly original visions of the future from a distinctly African perspective (...) Collectively, they present a portrait of the continent that’s never been seen before', according to Variety's Christopher Vourlias. 

❤️ This anthology is the result of a true labor of love from South African studio Triggerfish, who initiated the relationship with Disney and shepherded this project over many years.

💪🏾 It illustrates what African creators and animators can achieve when given the proper resources in terms of training, time and budget, and will without any doubt inspire and energize many young animators from across the continent.

Triggerfish presented a sneak peek of 'Kizazi Moto' earlier in June during the Annecy Animation Festival. With many African animators present at the screening, the buzz in the room was palpable.

Unfortunately I arrived in Annecy too late to live this moment, but I was able to see the 'Kizazi Moto' posters prominently displayed across the festival site.

🧐 'Kizazi Moto' executive producer and Oscar winner Peter Ramsey (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”), hinted at potential follow ups for the project:

“There is stuff floating out there that could very well happen. I really hope it does,” he said. “I’m hoping we can do another ‘Kizazi Moto’ anthology or two, because there’s so many talented people here … There’s a lot to explore. A lot to tell.”

⛰ Besides the teasing of 'Kizazi Moto', this year's Annecy International Animation Festival was notable for its strong African contingent.

🚡 Over the last few years, Africa has been steadily building its presence at what is globally recognized as the largest and most prestigious animation event in the world, gathering some 15,000 animation professionals from 100+ countries.

🔦 In 2021, Africa was even given the 'Spotlight' at Annecy. Unfortunately, this coincided with the pandemic and the impact of the distinction was subdued.

💪🏿 But this year, animators from the continent came out in force:

✅ La Grotte sacrée (The Sacred Cave), directed by Daniel Minlo and Cyrille Masso will be representing Cameroon in Official Selection.

✅ 'Kizazi Moto' was showcased with the screening of several of its short films: 'Enkai' by Ng'endo Mukii (Kenya), 'Moremi' by Shofela Coker (Nigeria), and 'Surf Sangoma' by Nthato Mokgata (aka star musician Spoek Mathambo!) and Catherine Green (South Africa).

✅ Nigerian and Ghanaian animation studios joined forces to represent the West African ecosystem, with 11 projects slated to pitch during the festival. Among the studios in attendance were Magic Carpet Studios, Basement Animation, Smids Animation Studios, Jolly Squid Media & Animation, Folktail Studios, AnimaxFYB Studios and Leti Arts.

✅ Also pitching were filmmaker Mbithi Masya (Kenya) with 'Papo Hapo', Gisaburo Sugii and Arthell Isom (DRC) with 'Mfinda', animation studio Diprente with 'Junk Pilots' and I'm sure many more.

This solid and diverse contingent illustrates without a doubt that Africa's animation sector is gaining in strength and credibility.

As always, the talent is there. But much work remains to be done:

❌ We are still lacking large-scale, up-to-date, affordable and sustainable training programs to build and up-skill local technical capacity. Many actors are getting their hands dirty to solve this problem, including Triggerfish, Nuno Martins, Mounia Aram, Ferdy 'Ladi Adimefe, Francis Y. Brown, Sebastien Onomo, and Africa Digital Media Institute (ADMI).

❌ Disney and Netflix have been the first to give real production budgets to African animation projects. But beyond that, the number of buyers remain scarce. The links between African animation and the international markets still need to be strengthened.

❌ The African animation space is mostly comprised of small studios of 5-15 people operating independently. This is not the most efficient set-up to develop and produce world-class IP. The winners will be the ones who will build alliances and trade some control in exchange for a more diversified skill set, wider networks, and ultimately, increased revenue.

The month of July will bring more African animation firsts, with the release of Ridwan Moshood 'Garbage Boy and Trash Can' on Cartoon Network and Triggerfish's (them again!!) 'Supa Team 4' on Netflix.

Stay tuned.

MUSIC

🏆 Get ready to see more than Afrobeats win big at the next Grammys, as the famous music awards ceremony has just announced a new, wide-ranging African Music category.

🌍 Officially titled 'Best African Music Performance award', this new category will "recognize recordings that utilize unique local expressions from across the African continent," according to the Grammys website.

🎶 "Highlighting regional melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic musical traditions, the Category includes but is not limited to the Afrobeat, Afro-fusion, Afro Pop, Afrobeats, Alte, Amapiano, Bongo Flava, Genge, Kizomba, Chimurenga, High Life, Fuji, Kwassa, Ndombolo, Mapouka, Ghanaian Drill, Afro-House, South African Hip-Hop, and Ethio Jazz genres."

👌🏽 Well, first off, looks like the Grammys have caught the drift and are well aware of the diversity of contemporary African sounds.

📦 Some critics have warned that the inclusion of an Africa-focused category may put African artists in a box.

But can we agree that it's a big step up from the dusty 'World Music' label?

🤯 Between +500% and +900% in 5 years -- that's how much Afrobeats streams have increased on Spotify in lands as far removed from Africa as Australia, The Netherlands, or Mexico.

This remarkable growth has led the music platform to launch 'Afrobeats: Journey of a Billion Streams', a dedicated website serving as a comprehensive hub for all things Afrobeats.

😵 💫 On my side, I cannot seem to get Rema's 'Calm Down', the second most streamed Afrobeats song of all time (after CKay's 'Love Nwantiti'), out of my head.

🇹🇿 Meanwhile, Tanzanian musicians are also breaking records, even though they haven't really appeared yet on the radar of Western audiences. TZ superstar Diamond Platnumz's YouTube channel has now reached 7.7M subscribers and 2.2B views. As a comparison, Burna Boy's own channel has 3.92M subscribers and 2.1B views.

🏔 But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

🚀 According to IFPI, the music industry's annual source of data, Sub-Saharan Africa became the fastest growing music market in 2022 (+34.7%), largely driven by a significant revenue boost in South Africa (+31.4%).

This means that African artists will start to see a growing portion of their revenue coming from their own continent -- despite the glaring lack of proper music venues - rather than from 'the abroad'.

CREATECH

Vivatech, one of the world's largest tech events, also took place in Paris in June, and the numbers are in:

🎫 150,000 attendees

🌍 174 countries

🚀 2,400 startups

🏄🏻 1 President Macron crowd-surfing

😎 1 Elon Musk show

🔥 And also an extremely dynamic AfricaTechLab pavilion and AfricaTechAwards 2023, recognizing the top startups in the ClimateTech, HealthTech, and Fintech sectors, both sponsored by IFC.

🧐 I was there, with a mission to meet with African Creative Tech entrepreneurs and investors.

Although the concept of CreaTech is still extremely new and confusing for many, a significant number of today's biggest tech companies operate in that space -- think of streaming platforms like Netflix or Spotify, marketplaces like Etsy, fashion e-commerce sites like Farfetch, creator funding solutions like Patreon, design tools like Canva, or publishing solutions like Substack.

If we extend the concept to tech-enabled creative companies, then it's almost endless. Technology is now powering the production of most creative endeavors, especially in film, animation, gaming, and music.

But how does this sector translate to Africa? A few take-aways:

❌ First, a reality check: too many entrepreneurs are still trying to build the 'African Netflix' or 'African Spotify'. Take it from somebody who's been there -- you can't compete against the GAFAMs. If you are building a content platform, the only edge you may have is if you a) target the mass market/bottom of the pyramid and b) are embedded with one or several telco(s) and/or phone manufacturer(s) -- they are the ones who own your customers.

✅ There are opportunities in facilitating or driving the creation of premium IP at scale.

✅ There are opportunities in getting African creative products ready for export, and in connecting African brands to global markets.

✅ There are opportunities in facilitating cross-border payments in various currencies to creators or freelancers.

✅ There are opportunities in training African creatives to global standards and connecting them with global remote jobs.

⚠️ Be aware that the VC funding model might not be the right one for your company. VCs are looking to make a 10x return on their investment over 5 years. If you cannot realistically paint such a scenario for your company, you can still be very successful, but you should be approaching other types of investors (angels, impact funds, PE or micro-PE, banks, etc).

PODCASTS

And finally, looks like June was also podcast month for me, as I was privileged to be given space to share my thoughts in not only one, but TWO leading African business podcasts.

🎙First, I spoke with Terser Adamu in his Unlocking Africa Podcast about Africa's on-going Cultural Renaissance.

👀 The world's gaze is now turned towards the continent in search of creative inspiration. How can African artists, talents and creatives take advantage of this moment?

We spoke about:

✅ How, after starting out as a journalist some 20 years ago, I came to see my role as a connector, facilitator and catalyst, serving as a link between the continent and global investors

✅ Why I believe that African music, film, fashion and sports are the continent's biggest exports

✅ How governments can harness the soft power of their creative and sports industries to propel their countries and the continent forward

✅ More specifically, what are some of the strategies that could be applied to Africa's film sector

✅ Actionable advice to aspiring filmmakers and content creators who want their work to reach a global audience

I was also invited to chat with Isaac Aboah and Daniel Merki, co-hosts of the Change Africa Podcast.

The main question I asked was: Are African artists benefiting from the arrival of global entertainment companies on the continent or are they falling into an exploitative model?

📢 I also discussed today's multi-faceted African Creative and Sports landscape - challenges, triumphs, and potential - as well as my personal journey from journalist to entrepreneur and investor:

✅️ How I co-created The XYZ Show, a groundbreaking political satire show in Kenya

✅️ How I survived launching a video streaming platform when the African tech scene was still more a concept than a reality

✅️ The exciting growth of the African Creative industries over the past 15 years

✅️ The pivotal role played by the digital platforms as catalysts for the global reach and visibility of African content

✅️ The importance of nurturing African talent and investing in developing quality IP

✅️ My widely shared UNESCO report on the African audiovisual sector

✅️ The industry 's need for more large-scale educational initiatives and physical infrastructure

Let me know what you thought about both episodes - would love to get your feedback.

HUSTLE & FLOW #46: African films shine at Cannes, African Soft Power, and an 🔥exclusive event list 🔥

Burna Boy (c) Reuters/Aude Guerrucci

This month of May has been filled with travels, talks and events, and June is shaping up to be much of the same.

In May alone, events relevant to the African creative industries have included:

📆 16-27 May

🇫🇷 Cannes, France

👉 Festival de Cannes, with The African Pavilion, Pavilion Afriques and AfroCannes, 3 separate initiatives to support African cinema

📆 18-21 May

🇲🇦 Rabat, Morocco

👉 The MOCA, Movement of Creative Africas, the forum of African cultures and Diasporas

📆 20 May

🇳🇬 Lagos, Nigeria

👉 The Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA), MultiChoice Group's annual event recognizing outstanding achievement in television and film

📆 23-27 May

🇷🇼 Kigali, Rwanda

👉 Basketball Africa League (BAL) Finale

👉 BAL Innovation Summit (May 25), bringing together leaders from business, technology, sports and entertainment

👉 Annual summit of The Africa Soft Power Project, premier event for Africa’s creative and tech industries

📆 24-26 May

🇸🇳 Dakar, Senegal

👉 FORAFRICC Summit, Forum African pour les Industries Culturelles et Creatives (Youssou Ndour Foundation)

📆 25 May

🌍 Worldwide

👉 Africa Day celebrations

📆 27-28 May

🇺🇸 Miami, USA

👉Afro Nation Miami, annual three-day music festival

🤯 There's just too much going on right now in the African creative and sports space for anyone to keep track. It was time to curate a list of the most relevant events, so I stepped up to the plate.

🔥 Here's a first draft 🔥

Hopefully this can become a collaborative project - you should be able to comment directly in the document to let me know if anything is missing. Or just sent me a DM or an email, and I'll add your event to the spreadsheet.

In other news this month:

FILM

✨ The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival turned out to be the best vintage yet for Africa.

First, a record number of African films premiered at the festival, including two titles in the main competition. Read about the full list here.

Then, a total of four African films bagged awards in the 'Un Certain Regard' category: Les Meutes by Kamal Lazraq (Morocco) won the Jury Prize, Kadib Abyad by Asmae El-Moudir (Morocco) got the Directing Prize, Belgian-Congolese musician and actor Baloji won the New Voice Prize for Augure, and Goodbye Julia by Mohamed Kordofani (Sudan) received the Freedom Prize award.

💵 But this Cannes Film Festival was a great one for Africa also because, suddenly, there is money willing to back African projects.

Key financiers for African film include the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and its $1 billion creative fund, which I had the opportunity to help design, and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Fund, which last year provided $14 million in financing to films from Africa and the Arab world.

International film financing companies, such as Creative Wealth Media and Convergent Media Capital, are also now starting to put African films on their radar.

🤔 Why now?

✅ Sata Cissokho, head of acquisitions at Memento International, attributes this shift to the emergence of a new generation of African filmmakers, "who grew up having access to what the world had to offer in terms of filmmaking and who are now using this to complement what their cultural heritage gave them.”

“It’s no longer about making the films that are expected from the continent but making the most of the richness of their cultures, combining the African art of storytelling with the Westernized codes of narration.”

🙌🏿 The creative holy grail that the industry has been chasing for years might finally be in sight.

✅ African storytelling is benefiting from the growing diversity push in Hollywood, initially spurred by the 2018 success of the first "Black Panther" movie and the Black Lives Matter movement.

✅ Finally, the arrival of Netflix and other streaming platforms on the continent has been and continues to be instrumental in offering "new horizons" to filmmakers, both literally and metaphorically.

SOFT POWER

The buzz surrounding the success of African filmmakers at Cannes showed us that African governments should prioritize having a robust soft power strategy.

🤔 Why, when there are so many other pressing problems to address, such as electricity, infrastructure, education, or health?

💰 Because having a strong national narrative based on a country's most inspirational assets - its nature, culture, artists, and athletes - can help unlock the resources needed by all these other sectors.

🌟 The more Africa will shine on the global creative scene, the more investors will line up to finance roads, schools and hospitals.

As Kelis famously said, "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard".

👉🏾 Hollywood successfully sold the American dream for decades -- it is only now starting to crumble faced with the rough reality of the country's decline.

👉🏾 Over the past 30 years, South Korea masterfully transformed itself into a beacon of global pop culture by investing strategically into its creative industries, now known as the 'K Wave' or 'Hallyu'. In 2021, Hallyu had an estimated $12.45 billion boost on the Korean economy.

👉🏾 Colombia achieved a tricky rebranding from a dangerous narcostate to "the most welcoming place on earth", and is now well on its way to becoming a significant tourism destination. The country was named one of "52 places to love in 2021" by The New York Times.

In Africa, major results could be achieved by pushing through key measures at a very low cost:

✅ Name a culture minister who actually knows about culture

✅ Pass a creative bill that sets a clear ambition and agenda for the country

✅ Partner with development organizations to gather and track data on the country's creative sector

✅ Get serious about film incentives and co-production treaties - they matter very much

✅ Instead of putting money in, just avoid taking money out - establish tax moratoriums on creative activities, make investments in the creative sector tax deductible

✅ Organize a world-class festival in an area the country is particularly strong in

✅ Sponsor artists and athletes to attend events abroad

✅ Leverage the power of the diaspora

Then sit back, and see what happens.

CONTENT PRODUCTION

🇫🇷 While African filmmakers shine in the South of France, French media companies are continuing their expansion into Francophone West Africa. And now they're getting increasingly involved in content production.

After acquiring 🇸🇳 Senegal-based Keewu Production a couple years ago, French content behemoth Mediawan has now taken a majority stake in Bernard Azria's distribution and production outfit Côte Ouest, based in 🇨🇮 Ivory Coast.

To give you an idea of how big and influential Mediawan is: last December, the French group acquired Brad Pitt's prestige production company Plan B 🤯

💃 Meanwhile, among other feats, Côte Ouest is known to industry insiders as the entity responsible for bringing Latin American telenovelas to the African market in the 1990s. Telenovelas, both foreign and locally-produced, have since become one of the most popular genres of entertainment across the continent.

French operator Canal+ International, which holds a de facto monopoly on Pay TV in Francophone Africa, will also hold a minority stake in Côte Ouest.

Back in 2019, Mediawan and Canal+ had already partnered on an African project -- launching a joint venture to develop and produce original African content in the French language.

In Francophone Africa, all content roads lead to Canal+.

SPORTS BUSINESS

🥊 The Professional Fighters League (PFL) is coming to Africa, and the league has unlisted former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou as its Africa Chairman.

Ngannou made the switch to PFL from competing league UFC, with whom he controversially parted ways last year. He will fight in PFL's nascent Super Fight division, which was created to attract fighters to sign deals with more favorable terms.

🤝 This time, Ngannou positioned himself more strategically. For PFL, he will not only be a fighter, but also a business partner. The Cameroonian champion will advise the league on its expansion to Africa, which is slated to start in 2024.

🌍 The process includes scouring the continent for fighters and for countries to host fights. According to Ngannou, Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa are early targets.

Africa has been on the radar of the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) world for some time.

🥇 Until August 2022, all 3 major UFC titles were held by African champions: Ngannou (heavyweight), Israel Adesagna (middleweight) and Kamaru Usman (welterweight).

Recently valued at $12.1 billion, UFC is considered the most valuable MMA promotion company. Its charismatic president Dana White has publicly said that expanding to Africa was a priority and that, in addition to hosting events, the league planned to bring a UFC Performance Institute to the continent.

🤜🏿🤛🏿 It seems that UFC and PFL are ready to take their rivalry to Africa.

Meanwhile, other operators such as Bellator MMA, Vivendi's ARES Fighting Championship, Singapore-based ONE Championship, as well as emerging local ones, are also gearing up to enter the ring.

This is shaping up to be a properly stacked fight card.

PODCAST

📢 Finally, I'm very glad to be featured in the new season of the Change Africa Podcast alongside 11 other inspiring and insightful thought leaders, including Ken Agyapong Jr, co-founder and CFO of AfroFuture Festival (Formerly Afrochella); Benny Bonsu, Director of Content at the International Olympic Committee; Anita Erskine, CEO of Anita Erskine Media; Ashleigh Moolman Pasio and Xylon Van Eyck, Olympian and founders of Rocacobra Collective; Paul Ninson, Founder of Dikan Centre; Daniel Damah, Film Producer; Adora Mba, Founder and director of ADA \ contemporary art gallery; Addy Awofisayo, Head of Music, Sub-Saharan Africa at YouTube; and Joshua Buatsi, 2019 British Light Heavyweight title holder and Olympian.

Listen to the first episode with Lucy Quist, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley & author of the ‘The Bold New Normal’, and watch out for the others -- mine will be out on June 22nd!

🎧 Change Africa on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eXut5A-3

🎧 Change Africa on Apple:  https://lnkd.in/dAykvMpR