HUSTLE & FLOW #66: Mo Money for film, Mo Streamers; Creator-Founders emerge, Roc Nation enters Africa, and more

🎉 July 2025 was a month of bold moves and big money in the African creative industries, especially in film.

Canal+ got the final-final approval for its takeover of Multichoice, and the tribunal included the binding condition to spend $1.4 billion in 3 years on South African content. Mzanzi filmmakers rejoice.

On top of that, the rails are being set for two new African film funds to start disbursing cash. And Nigerian filmmakers and film lovers are getting not one, but two new streaming platforms.

🤳⚽️👽 But wait, there’s more - moves in the Creator Economy, Football, and AI, plus a whole bunch of strategic investment announcements.

Get all the deets in this new edition of HUSTLE & FLOW (and don’t forget to subscribe!) 👇

FILM

💰🏃🏾South African filmmakers: $1.4 billion is sitting on your table - go grab it.

Last week, South Africa's Competition Tribunal officially approved the Canal+MultiChoice deal and the angel is in the details.

In order to validate the deal, the Tribunal added some “binding public‑interest conditions”, including $1.4 billion (R26 billion) to be deployed over three years into local content, sports, supplier development and HDP/SMME participation (South Africa's Black-owned businesses and small enterprises)

⏱ The clock started July 23, 2025. It stops mid-2028.

While everyone's debating "what this means for the industry," the money is already earmarked and the conditions are binding.

Canal+ even sweetened the pot by an additional $110 million, bringing the total commitment to $1.55 billion.

Producers, it’s time to move - strategically:

▶️ Pitch for a slate across the full 2025-2028 window, not single projects.

The regulators explicitly wanted "sustained local content".

▶️ Come with projects ready-to-go (you know, the one you’ve been trying to get made for years), not concepts.

Make sure your package is solid, with bibles, pilot scripts if possible, budgets, distribution and financing plans, and delivery schedules.

The money will move toward projects that can start shooting soon.

▶️ “Supplier development” will be a key criteria.

Make sure you design inclusion from day one by integrating HDP ownership, apprenticeships, and skills transfer directly into your budget and production process.

▶️ Now is the best time to negotiate favorable deals.

Negotiate AVOD rights, potential remakes, and international licensing while Canal+ is under regulatory pressure to stimulate the ecosystem.

Their "yes" muscle is stronger right now than it will be in 2029.

This money won’t be there forever. Post-2028, Canal+ is likely to prioritize integration savings over development spend.

🌍🎥 What about NON-South African filmmakers, you ask?

Well first, don’t forget that you could partner on a co-production with a South African outfit to tap into the Canal+ bounty.

But more funding is also on its way - and it is not tied to a specific country:

Next Narrative Africa’s $40 million Film Fund just closed its first open call. Out of this first call, it expects to provide between $20,000 and $100,000 in development grants to 6-10  “narrative-shifting” African film or TV projects.

For context, this is noticeably higher than the average development deal amount offered by Africa’s top buyers (such as Netflix, Canal+ or Showmax), which is usually around $10,000-$30,000.

NNA says that it will look in priority for commercially viable projects with budgets around $3-$7 million, in which NNA may invest up to 20% in equity. Again, this is much higher than the current average budgets for African films. Only Netflix’s South African budgets are in that range.

🤔 Can newcomer NNA identify better projects through this process than the experienced development teams at Netflix, Amazon, Canal+ and Showmax?

The NNA Fund winners are expected to be announced in December, so we’ll have the answer soon.

🤝 Meanwhile, EbonyLife, IFC and AfDB have announced their collaboration “to explore the conditions for the creation of a pan-African investment vehicle targeted at the region’s film sector”.

So, that’s prime DFI-speak. But what does this mean EXACTLY?

Basically, over the next 3--6 months the trio will run a full feasibility study, building the strategy, business plan, and legal structure for a potential pan-African film fund.

Then, if all goes well (which it normally does), the custom-designed entity will get financed by IFC, AfDB, and other investors

By this time next year, there might be yet another African film fund on the scene.

STREAMING

Either way you look at it, that’s A LOT of new funding coming up for African content.

📺 And I will sound like a broken record again but… where is all this content going to go?

In Nigeria, it looks like Netflix and Amazon retreating shocked the industry into action: the country is getting not one, but two new streaming services.

First, Mo Abudu (possibly Africa’s hardest working woman in showbusiness - at least this month) is back in the game with EbonyLifeON+. Yes, a mouthful.

This is Abudu's second attempt at building a streaming service.

💥 Her first, launched in 2015 with French tech company Summview, targeted diaspora audiences but ultimately failed. The timing wasn't right: Nigeria's internet infrastructure was shaky, data costs were prohibitive, and the market simply wasn't ready.

🪦Fast-forward to 2025, and the streaming landscape in Nigeria looks like a graveyard.

IROKOtv, once Nigeria’s pride and joy, finally threw in the towel in 2023 after burning through $100 million. Jason Njoku's brutal post-mortem was clear: "streaming wasn't the right model for Nollywood in Nigeria."

Even Netflix broke when faced with the brutal Nigerian economics: the global streamer stopped commissioning new Nigerian originals last year.

⚖️ Both IROKOtv and Netflix came to the same conclusion: the economics simply don't add up when your costs are in dollars but your customers pay in a currency that's lost 70% of its value since 2023.

But here's where it gets interesting:

The very reason others are retreating might be what makes EbonyLifeON+ viable.

When your server costs, bandwidth, and content licensing are priced in USD, and your subscribers pay with an ever-weakening Naira (now at ₦1,535 to $1), the math breaks.

🏗 But IF EbonyLife can leverage local infrastructure - Nigerian payment processors like Interswitch, local data centers like MainOne, cloud services priced in Naira - it might give the new incarnation of its streaming service a lifeline.

Also, with 5,000+ hours of original programming, including hits like "Blood Sisters" and "The Wedding Party", EbonyLife is not starting from scratch.

The platform's community-based model (which will include masterclasses, podcasts, star hangouts and live events) might also be a differentiator and create other revenue streams.

But an investor I spoke to recently pointed to a potential weakness: it doesn’t appear that EbonyLifeON+ has a proper tech and product team separate from other EbonyLife businesses.

⚠️ If that’s true, it would prevent them from executing properly on the opportunity they’ve stumbled upon. And that’s not only a shame, it’s a strategic mistake.

Two other Nollywood titans, another take on the same business:

Inkblot Studios and FilmHouse group have partnered to launch their own streamer: Kava.

Leveraging the partners’ own, proven pipeline of top Nollywood movies, the platform will debut with 30+ premium titles. New films are then set to drop every week.

👨🏾🍳 Rather than the Netflix “all-you-can-eat” buffet, Kava’s inspiration is the gourmet experience offered by European streamer MUBI through its 30-film rotating catalogue that cinephiles swear by.

Kava is banking on its niche focus to control costs and on the diaspora audience to bring in the dollars.

Theoretically, a platform focused on fewer, high quality titles prized by the diaspora would not need a huge amount of subscribers to break even.

So, Kava has a chance as well.

Aaaaand, let’s not forget Circuits, ANOTHER Nigerian platform which quietly launched late last year but on a pay-per-view model, positioning itself as a virtual cinema more than a Netflix clone.

Will either of these approaches work? The streaming landscape is littered with well-funded attempts which ultimately failed. 👻👻👻

But sometimes the best time to enter a market is when everyone else is leaving -- if you can solve the problems they couldn't.

CREATOR ECONOMY

🤳Communique’s Oritsejolomi Otomewo published a great article last week about African creators building scalable product businesses.

You should read it in full of course (and subscribe to Communique). But here’s the gist:

47 % of African creators now earn more from their own digital products (ebooks, courses, memberships…) than from brand sponsorships. This number points to a fast-growing global playbook in which creators are morphing into founders.

🍫 This transition was pioneered a few years ago by US creator MrBeast, who started his entrepreneurial endeavors with his chocolate brand Feastables and now runs a diversified billion-dollar holding company.

Now, local proof-of-concepts are emerging.

For example: Nigeria’s Aproko Doctor, who has 6 million followers across social media, launched his tele-health startup Awadoc this year. The company is already serving 50,000 patients across 13 countries and is now raising pre-seed capital.

Built-in demand and ultra-low customer acquisition costs make creator-led startups an attractive proposition for investors, despite the key-person risk.

In my opinion, one of the most interesting developments in today’s creative industries.

WHAT’S UP AI

👽 The unstoppable march of AI in entertainment continues.

While Hollywood has been treating AI like a taboo subject since the 2023 strikes, Netflix just openly declared they're using it for actual production, and that they're happy with the results.

Netflix teamed up with producers to use AI to create a scene of a building collapsing in an Argentine show called "El Eternauta" ("The Eternaut").

Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that using AI, the scene was finished 10x faster than it would have with traditional visual effect tools, and that it cost less.

In the same month, Amazon invested in Fable’s Showrunner, a platform where anyone can generate full animated episodes with a text prompt, remix existing worlds, and even earn ~40 % of downstream revenue when others build on their storylines.

The company’s hypothesis is that AI is not just a tool for cheaper special effects but represents a new entertainment medium, more akin to video games.

And to close this topic, a tidbit of news that went viral last week: according to a new report by Datareportal, Kenya ranked #1 globally in ChatGPT usage, with 42.1% of Kenyan internet users reporting having used the service in the past month.

Ranked immediately after Kenya are the UAE (42%) and Israel (41.4%), while leading economies like Japan (5.8%), China (7.3%) and Russia (10.8%) trailed far behind.

This new statistic confirms Kenya’s status as a country of early tech adopters. But the question many asked is this: consuming AI tools is one thing, but what about creating, producing, leveraging?

SPORTS BUSINESS

⚽️🌟 Jay-Z is bringing his golden touch to African football.

The “Business, Man”’s sports venture, Roc Nation Sports International (RNSI), just planted its flag firmly in African football, signing eight rising stars from six countries in one swoop.

This is the continuation and strengthening of a strategy started in 2021, when RNSI signed a consultancy deal with South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns.

⛏️ RNSI is certainly not the first foreign agency to attempt to mine Africa’s notoriously deep pool of raw football talents.

They, just like anyone else, will have to face a daunting set of challenges:

⚠️ The good ol’ Africa fragmentation that makes sourcing talent, negotiating deals, and moving people around at scale such an operational and legal nightmare.

⚠️ The inference of local politics in anything football, meaning that operating in that world involves bicycle-kicking over landmines at every step.

⚠️ The lack of professional pre-academies, which means that by the time a player is spotted in Africa, they are already 15-18 years old as opposed to 11-13 years old in Europe - and this makes a huge difference in a footballing career

⚠️ And always, the lack of general infrastructure, both physical and immaterial, which makes progress much slower and much more expensive.

But RNSI does have the brand power, marketing know-how, entertainment synergies, and cash to make a dent.

We’ll be following closely.

INVESTMENT NEWS

💼 This partnership was actually announced last year, but the news went completely unnoticed then.

It is now confirmed: IFC (World Bank Group) and Proparco have invested a joint $50M in Helios Sports and Entertainment Group (HSEG).

HSEG, which ultimately aims to raise $75M, plans to deepen its strategy to invest in media rights, sports IP, live events, and physical infrastructure.

HSEG already owns a stake in NBA Africa, which valued the league’s Africa division at $1 billion, the Professional Fighters League (PFL) Africa, The Malachite Group (owners of the AfroNation brand), and mixed-used infrastructure developer Zaria Group, co-founded with Toronto Raptors President Masai Ujiri.

This is the kind of signal, and the type of projects, that turn investing in the Creative and Sports space from a niche and risky edge-case to an attractive mainstream proposition. Now watch the FOMO spread in the ecosystem.

✍🏾 In another investment news, Afreximbank’s CANEX Creations (the same war-chest that’s touting $2 billion to bankroll Africa’s creative economy) has signed its first deal:

Afreximbank has taken an equity bite out of Afrobeat star’s D’banj’s C.R.E.A.M. talent-discovery platform.

C.R.E.A.M. is sitting on 7 million subscribers, 10,000+ content submissions and has already written cheques or given exposure to 38,000 creatives across Nigeria.

It’s secret sauce is USSD (*463#) access on MTN, another reminder (from me being a broken record again) that distribution is the real moat.

Despite being in the midst of what is probably its biggest social movement since independence, Kenya is attracting the attention of global entertainment players.

In fact, Kenya just pulled off a three-pointer that would make Steph Curry jealous. In the span of twelve months:

🏆 The Recording Academy (owner of the Grammys) has picked Nairobi for its first Pan-African hub.

🎬 During the U.S.-Kenya Creative Economy Forum held in June, Tyler Perry Studios and the NBA Africa spearheaded a $93 million investment commitment to increase Kenya’s creative sector contribution to GDP from 5% to 10%.

⛹🏾 NBA Africa is also planning to build 100 basketball courts across Kenya over the next decade.

And here’s the part that is less visible: the bankers are now joining the party.

Stanbic Bank Kenya is raising a $100 million Catalytic Fund, with the creative economy on the ticket, while Equity Bank has already written a $194,000 cheque to the Kenya Music Festival and is looking at more ways to support the creative sector.

Kenya’s next creative season is looking good.

CREATIVE SUCCESS STORIES

🌟 And to wrap up, in July I profiled 3 more companies out of the 12 success stories featured in my Proparco CREA Fund study.  If you missed them, you can find them here:

Mundo: How Africa’s First Music Streaming IPO Started with a Very Wrong Business Model

ROK Studios: How a Content Crisis Built Nigeria’s Largest Film Factory

Triggerfish: How 5 Partners transformed a Failing Studio into Disney’s Go-to Animation Company

Coming up next week: Vivo Fashion Group, East Africa’s H&M with $9 million in annual revenue (!).

HUSTLE & FLOW #65: Franco streaming wars, new Spotify data, African fashion perception, and more

Africa streaming wars: TF1+ entered the chat

This month, the streaming wars heated up again, this time over francophone Africa, with the announcement of 2 consequential deals involving 3 behemoths: Netflix, Canal+ and TF1.

We look at what this all means in this edition of HUSTLE & FLOW.

Also: new data from Spotify, why is African fashion so damn expensive, developments in AI, TECNO new deal with CAF, and more.

Read, like, share and subscribe below 👇

STREAMING

It had been quiet for a while on the streaming front since Netflix announced it would cut down on funding originals from Nigeria.

But of course, there’s always some shadow moves - and Netflix surprised us with this one by shifting the gameplay.

🌍 The global streamer announced that it would be boosting its distribution into Francophone Africa by piggy-backing on Canal+’s solid presence in the region.

The two leading players have signed a strategic distribution deal that will see Netflix bundled into Canal+ subscriptions across 24 French-speaking Sub-Saharan countries starting this July.

This is not the first deal of this kind between Netflix and Canal+, but an extension of their existing partnership active in France and Poland since 2019.

So what does this mean in practical terms?

You won’t suddenly start seeing Netflix content on Canal+’s African linear channels.

However, Canal+ subscribers will be able to access the Netflix platform via their existing subscription, without the need for a new log-in.

For customers, this means a streamlined user experience.

🚀 For Netflix, it’s a huge boon: the streamer will now be able to leverage Canal+’s 8-million footprint across Francophone Africa to get in front of potential new users with the proven ability to pay for its service.

By tapping Canal+’s established billing rails, Netflix side-steps the payment friction and data-cost anxiety that typically slow down direct-to-customer rollouts. Also, bundling its content with Canal+ is likely to substantially lower customer churn.

Of course, the deal is great for Canal+ as well.

🔥Adding Netflix to 400+ linear channels (including 28 African ones) and its own VOD catalogue positions the group as the one-stop content gateway on the continent -- just as Canal+ is getting ready to absorb Multichoice.

But that’s not all.

🥐 On the heels of the Canal+/Netflix announcement, we are learning that French commercial broadcaster TF1 has also launched its platform TF1+ in 22 Francophone African countries.

Suddenly, sleepy francophone Africa finds itself the new battleground for the African streaming wars.

What does TF1 bring to the table?

TF1 is France’s top private broadcaster with big flagship programs such as reality shows Koh-Lanta and The Voice, which are well-known by francophone African audiences.

But besides its content, in this race TF1’s biggest weapon is that its VOD service is FREE.

This means that TF1+ and Canal+/Netflix do not quite play in the same league.

👀Canal+ sells a premium universe financed by subscriptions, while TF1+ arrives free of charge with targeted advertising, chasing the mass‑market eyeballs that SVODs struggle to monetise.

TF1’s value proposition is interesting for the market: its brand is familiar, its shows are unifying, and above all, access costs nothing (or close to nothing - there’s always the issue of data costs, but this can be resolved through telco deals).

Of course, Canal+ retains the advantage of sports rights and Netflix distribution, but its proposition targets an audience that is already bankable.

If TF1+ manages to offer a smooth, data-light experience rich in local content, it can capture that large segment of prepaid households that Canal+ reaches less well.

In terms of impact on the African streaming ecosystem, I see two key aspects:

1️⃣ The launch of TF1+ will first legitimize the AVOD model, still under-exploited in the region.

Advertisers will suddenly have a mass alternative to reach a francophone audience, which should push the entire market to refine digital audience measurement.

If this experiment is successful, we could see Netflix and other SVOD streamers learning from it and pushing AVOD options.

2️⃣ On the content side, TF1 will need original films and series to feed the platform.

Looking at Netflix, if its distribution deal with Canal+ brings in a strong enough francophone audience, it could very well motivate the streamer to put more money into local content from the region as well.

This, as we say in French, is “tout benef’” (all upside) for filmmakers in francophone Africa. Time to dust off your pilot scripts and pitch decks.

MUSIC

🎵 More on streaming, but make it music.

Spotify released its latest “Loud & Clear” dashboard, and once again it is full of useful data nuggets:

✅ The money is real, even if it’s still highly concentrated.

Yes, the combined $59 million paid to Nigerian and South-African rights-holders is microscopic compared to Spotify’s $10 billion global payout.

But it represents the steepest year-on-year growth of any region, and that’s something.

✅ The middle tier is maturing.

The number of artists making over ₦10 m ($6,500) / and between R100k-500k ($5,600-$28,300) sharply increased over the past 2-3 years.

This means that sustainable, data-driven careers are emerging beyond superstar level.

✅ Discovery engines favor African genres.

Afrobeats, Amapiano and other regional styles now sit in hundreds of millions of user-generated playlists, fueling both export growth (+49 % NG, +104 % ZA) and local streaming booms (Nigeria local demand +146 %; SA domestic streams +96 %).

✅ Language diversity pays.

In South Africa, non-English tracks are booking triple-digit royalty growth, proving that algorithmic curation no longer penalizes indigenous languages.

Through all this, Spotify is increasingly positioning itself as an enabler for African artists to build sustainable careers, instead of just another DSP.

🤔The question is: how to grow African payouts from their current (and embarrassingly low) less than 1% of the global pie?

The long-term answer will involve the industry rolling up its sleeves to implement major improvements across mobile data costs, payment rails and anti-fraud measures.

FASHION

👜 Why are African goods so damn expensive?

That’s the question MoonLook Africa tried to solve this month in this insightful article.

As Moonlook pointed out, we rarely ask this question about French or Italian products. We accept their premium pricing because we understand the story behind them: craftsmanship, heritage, and excellence.

In the case of African fashion, the truth is that the lack of infrastructure pushes production costs quite high, which means that designers have no choice but to target the luxury segment.

But Moonlook focuses on the perception around African goods and the persistent narrative that they somehow should always be cheap, when the reality is that:

• African-produced pieces are the result of meticulous, patient, sustainable processes

• African artisans master ancestral know-how passed down through generations

• African designers create unique pieces, not mass-produced standardization

• Every item carries a story, a vision, and a level of excellence that can't be compared to standardized products

🧵 While China dominates through massive scale and Portugal combines tradition with optimization, Africa brings something entirely different: authenticity rooted in centuries of craftsmanship.

Moonlook’s take is that -- at least until heavy industry catches up -- Africa shouldn’t compete on cost but on story, rarity, and responsible sourcing.

WHAT’S UP AI

😮 Everyone in Hollywood is using AI.

They’re just hiding it.

This piece from Vulture explores how generative tools are already being used - to write pitches, generate mood boards, cut trailers, and patch budget gaps - all behind closed doors.

If you think that AI hasn’t dramatically impacted the film industry yet, you are fooling yourself.

This is what’s been going on:

➡️ Artists are being asked to “clean up” AI-generated concept art—so it doesn’t look like it came from AI.

➡️ Studios are generating trailers for films they haven’t even shot to secure financing.

➡️ Executives are asking AI to repurpose existing IP into new formats—like anime versions, PG-13 cuts, or entirely new formats.

➡️ Directors are using AI to storyboard multiple versions of a shot—on deadline, without a team.

➡️ Visual effects teams are using AI to simulate explosions, landscapes, and effects, at a fraction of the cost.

Meanwhile in Africa, we are mostly just gisting.

We are starting to see a few initiatives that are encouraging the concrete uptake of AI tools in the African creative and media sectors:

🎬 Obinna Okerekeocha’s Naija AI Film Festival (NAIFF), which will take place in September in Lagos

🔎 TechCabal Insights’ new TCI Market Researcher, an AI tool trained specifically on African market research data. Join the waiting list here: https://insights.techcabal.com/waitlist/

🕵🏾♀️ The Rundown’s AI copilot for reporting in Africa, a master prompt to augment journalists to generate more nuanced, ethical, and accurate stories about the continent, developed by award-winning veteran journalist Zain Verjee: https://rundownstudio.substack.com/p/an-ai-co-pilot-for-reporting-on-africa

But, as I’ve written before, I’m concerned by the lack of urgency I can feel in most conversations on the topic on the continent.

Here’s one stark and personal example of how the arrival of AI has changed the future of some creative sectors:

Once upon a time about 3 years ago, I thought Africa could be the next hotspot for animation outsourcing.

India had established itself as the factory for Hollywood’s animation and VFX busy work in the 1990s by leveraging the labor cost arbitrage. Africa’s turn seemed to be next.

🔢 My equation at the time was:

Tons of creative, hungry, digitally-savvy young people + low labor costs + remote work = the opportunity to create an entirely new industry on the continent.

I had a whole plan for an “Andela for Animation”, which got some smart people interested.

😅 And then… let’s just say that I’m glad I procrastinated for a bit.

Because last year, GenAI entered the scene - and closed that window.

Out of all the sectors being disrupted by AI, animation and VFX is one of the first and hardest hit.

Jeff Katzenberg says that AI will slash movie animation costs by 90 %.

What once required teams of animators can now be accomplished by a couple people through AI-assisted workflows.

This isn't the end of Africa's animation story, but it’s probably the end of service work.

The new playbook:

🏗 For governments and capital allocators: Invest in servers, stable energy sources, and computing power, so Africa is not left behind once again.

🎓 For educators: Launch storyteller academies, not animation bootcamps. Teach narrative design + GenAI tools together.

🎨 For creators: Skip to the part where you do the actual thing. Export finished shows, not CVs or pitch decks.

The future belongs to creators who will combine cultural storytelling with technological fluency.

SPORTS BUSINESS

⚽️ CAF has named Chinese handset maker TECNO its Official Global Partner for AFCON 2025 (Morocco) and 2027 (Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda).

This expands on a first successful partnership during AFCON 2023 in Côte d’Ivoire in which TECNO was the exclusive smartphone sponsor.

Now, the Chinese company is doubling down with field‑renovation pledges (100 pitches by 2028) and deeper digital activations.

The deal is a win-win:

For CAF, locking in a consumer‑tech brand broadens revenue beyond the usual beer‑airline‑bank trio. It also cements AFCON’s rising profile as the biggest entertainment event on the continent.

For TECNO, besides the massive reach and very valuable brand association, AFCON will also give it the opportunity to showcase its new CAMON 40 Series – its latest flagship imaging product and “most advanced AI smartphone ever” - in 54 markets. Sounds interesting.

FINANCING THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

As you know by now, in my recent study for Proparco’s CREA Fund, my team and I profiled 12 successful African creative companies.

This month I showcased 4 more of these companies through individual case studies on LInkedin. If you missed them, you can find them here:

Kana TV - How Four Bold Founders Revolutionized Ethiopian TV

Landmark Center - From “Worthless” land to $200M Empire: The Landmark Center Story

Marodi TV - How a Failing VOD Platform Became a Media Empire in Senegal

Mavin Records - The Secrets behind Mavin’s $200M Deal: The Unlikely Partnership that Cracked the Global Music Code

The vast majority of these success stories are SMEs.

And yet, SMEs often get a bad rap, while tech startups get all the hype.

Why is that? Who decided that one was cool and not the other?

Sure, tech startups are innovative and fast-growing. They’re fixing big issues like payments and logistics. They give us hope in the future.

And so they attract billions in investment - $24 billion over the past 10 years to be exact.

It seems big.

BUT.

🤯 Over the same period, Small and Medium Enterprises in Africa have received roughly $1.3 TRILLION in financing, mostly through bank loans. And, according to MIT Sloan, they would need $300 billion more every year to meet their needs.

Not so small now, are they?

🎨 More than 90% of Creative sector companies are SMEs. They are your production companies, music labels, fashion brands, event management agencies, publishing houses, gaming and animation studios.

Here’s why I find them sexy:

1. They are profitable from day one.

2. They have realistic business models.

3. They create jobs, especially for young people and women.

4. They contribute to local economies.

5. They drive culture and soft power.

So let’s make SMEs sexy again😏

💡If you are a government, a bank, an SME or a micro-PE fund interested in investing in Creative companies, there are models and best practices you can emulate. Send me a DM - I’d be happy to talk.

HUSTLE & FLOW #64: Nigeria at Cannes, advances in AI, African podcasts, PFL Africa launch, and more

The mid-year mark is upon us. How do you feel about it?

⏰ Time for a new edition of HUSTLE & FLOW.

This month, I talk about Nigeria shining at Cannes, new advances in AI, the evolution of the African podcast ecosystem, the PFL Africa launch, and more.

Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already 👇

FILM

🇳🇬  After years of a characteristically un-Nigerian muted presence, the Nigerian delegation, led by its dynamic Minister of the Creative Economy Hannatu Musawa, came out en force this year at Cannes.

The Nigerians worked the Croisette, the Palais and the Market, shaking hands and signing deals.

🔦 But they were also there to support one of their own, as for the very first time, the very elite festival’s spotlight shone bright on Nigerian cinema.

Akinola Davies Jr.'s debut feature, “My Father's Shadow”, made history as the first Nigerian film selected for the Cannes Film Festival's official lineup, screening in the Un Certain Regard section.

🏆 The film was honored with a Camera d’Or Special Mention, and a cascade of rave reviews.

Deadline called it “one of the most moving and universally relevant and emotional films of any in this year’s fest.”

The poignant, semi-autobiographical film, was co-written by Akinola and his brother Wale. It explores themes of masculinity, familial relationships, and socio-political instability, set against the backdrop of Nigeria's annulled 1993 elections.

I haven’t seen “My Father’s Shadow”, but I have watched Davies’ 2020 short film “Lizard”, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and earned a BAFTA nomination. His talent was already unquestionable then.

For years, Nigerian filmmakers have voiced concerns about their lack of representation at Cannes. But, I would argue, they were not ready.

With “My Father's Shadow”, Davies provides a clear example of the caliber and storytelling that resonate with international audiences.

💡 Nigerians are well-known for their quick grasp of a winning formula when they see one. So we can expect “My Father’s Shadow” to inspire other filmmakers to lean more into the kind of understated emotional depth that connects with audiences beyond their cultures of origin.

The film was acquired before its Cannes showing by streaming platform MUBI for North America, the UK, Ireland, and Turkey, but as of now it’s unclear where the Africa rights will end up. Hello, Netflix?

WHAT’S UP AI?

The Cannes Film Festival is well-known as a bastion of arthouse cinema and the world’s glitziest movie gathering.

🤖 But this year, the real buzz on the Croisette was less about tradition and more about cinema’s uncertain future. More specifically, what everyone was talking about was AI’s fast-expanding role in the industry.

This is, indeed, the revolution we cannot ignore. So I’m introducing a new section in this newsletter to keep an eye on how AI is impacting the creative space.

The big news last week was Google ’s unveiling of Veo 3, the latest version of its generative video model, and it’s not just generating moving images anymore.

🎞 It now includes synchronized sound - music, dialogue, ambient noise. Veo 3 can now produce entire scenes from a single text prompt, complete with camera moves, realistic characters and audio.

Yes, this used to take a whole crew, months of work, and a substantial budget. And now it can be done in seconds.

According to Google, the tech is still in the research phase. But it’s already being tested by select artists and creators, and the results are mind-blowing.

While we are sleeping, Hollywood’s most forward-thinking filmmakers are embracing AI.

Case in point: Darren Aronofsky's new AI outfit Primordial Soup is behind “Ancestra”, a short film mixing live action with Veo3 images, which is set to premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

The good news is, innovation can now come from anywhere.

Last month, Nigerian channel TVC introduced four new anchors in charge of delivering bulletins in Igbo, Pidgin, Yoruba, and Hausa. But none of them are real - they are all AI avatars.

💡With this thought-provoking move, TVC News aims to expand coverage in 5 major languages (an AI twin of real-life presenter Olamide Odekunle also handles the news in English) across Nigeria's six geopolitical zones, while maintaining editorial integrity through human oversight.

According to the network, each AI-generated segment undergoes rigorous vetting and includes digital watermarking to combat deepfakes and misinformation.

Is this the beginning of the end of language barriers in news and access to information?

😵💫 The speed at which our reality is turning into science fiction (or vice versa) is dizzying.

PODCAST

🎙 I am a massive consumer of podcasts (which makes my annual Spotify Wrapped very dull) and a regular guest on African business shows (listen to my latest interview on InsightsOut Africa’s Investment Readiness podcast).

So I was really interested to learn that Africa’s podcast space is maturing, thanks to this detailed analysis from Oritsejolomi Otomewo for Communiqué.

According to Otomewo, the ecosystem is evolving beyond independent creators into professionally structured networks.

🌐 Media brands like Pulse (with Terms and Conditions, Women Talk Sex, and Life in Naija) and OkayAfrica (with Afrobeats Intelligence, No Wahala, and To Be Clear), are now aggregating shows under a unified umbrella.

This approach enhances visibility, centralizes intellectual property, and makes larger advertising deals possible. It also ensures content continuity when hosts transition and scales impact across diverse listener demographics.

🗣️ We’re also seeing the emergence of new formats, besides the dominant conversational podcasts. Narrative-driven and documentary-style productions such as The Republic Podcast and 4th Republic are raising the bar with richer storytelling.

And as always, distribution matters as much as content. Reaching African listeners means meeting them where they already are: on social media and messaging platforms.

📱 A strategic approach to distribution means chopping up a long conversation into snackable clips and visual content optimized for socials. So it’s not a surprise that video formats drive more engagement and help spread the content virally.

There is still a lot of room for growth, but, as the title of the article says, “Maybe podcasts can scale in Africa after all?”

FASHION

Lagos-based VC firm Consonance released a welcome report prepared by Jadesola Campbell on Nigeria’s missed fashion opportunity entitled “Who is Dressing 220+ Million Nigerians?”.

The entire report is worth a read, but here’s what stood out for me:

🔍 Nigeria’s fashion market is massive but economically invisible.

Consumer spend reaches $2.5–6 billion annually, yet the sector contributes just 0.47% to GDP ($129M).

This means two things: consumers are spending massively on non-Nigerian fashion goods, and over 85% of fashion supply bypasses formal channels.

📦 Nigeria imports $6B+ in apparel and textiles (plus $1.2B in smuggled goods), while exports remain under $100M.

Local production accounts for less than 15% of the supply.

Just 5% of clothing is produced by formal Nigerian brands, and 9.9% through broader local production. Nearly 90% of “Ankara” consumed in Nigeria is imported, costing the country $3B.

This represents billions in lost value and missed industrialization potential.

🧵 The entire fashion value chain - from cotton farming to export - is fragmented.

Cotton processing is minimal and garment production is largely informal. Local brands must build infrastructure from scratch. Logistics and export support are critically underdeveloped.

💸 Self-financing dominates.

85% of the sector is informally funded and mostly made up of  micro-entrepreneurs relying on savings, co-operatives and family.

Only 15% of funding comes from formal finance (banks, DFIs, VCs).

🌍 The good news: global fashion lessons are transferable.

Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Turkey turned fashion into export engines using industrial clusters, export zones, and favorable textile policy.

Nigeria could emulate these strategies with local tailoring hubs, finishing tech, and export desks.

As the numbers show, the opportunity is enormous.

SPORTS BUSINESS

🤼 A few months ago, leading MMA operator Professional Fighters League (PFL) announced it had received the backing of Helios Sports & Entertainment Fund to expand to Africa with Cameroonian champion Francis Ngannou as its chairman.

Now, PFL Africa is ready to launch. The inaugural tournament is set for July in Cape Town, marking the first of four events planned for the year.

While the name of Ngannou is certainly bringing some credibility to the venture, I am more excited by the fact that PFL tapped media entrepreneur Elias Schulze as its Africa MD.

As co-founder of Kana TV, which revolutionized the landscape of Ethiopian television, Schulze already has a high-profile success behind him.

🔥In fact, Kana TV is one of the 12 African success stories I profiled in my recent report - keep an eye out for the case study coming out this week on my page.

Under Schulze’s leadership, PFL Africa is actively negotiating media rights deals with major pay-TV operators in East and West Africa, aiming to bring MMA into millions of homes.

These efforts complement existing partnerships with DAZN, Canal+, and MultiChoice.

PFL Africa also aims to explore mobile access and free-to-watch "people's fights" to make MMA more accessible on the continent and grow a new generation of fans.

MMA is just starting out in Africa, so another challenge will be to build a sustainable ecosystem for African fighters.

As exemplified by Ngannou’s life story, it is clear that African athletes have what it takes to compete globally. They just need someone to light that spark and show them the way.

CREATIVE SUCCESS STORIES

🤔 Have you downloaded my Proparco/CREA Fund study on African creative success stories yet?

TLDR - Prefer to get the gist in bite-size format on your phone? I got you.

I’ve been showcasing an individual case study every week with a visual (and downloadable!) carousel.

Click on the links below to read the following stories:

How Africori Conquered the African Music Scene

Chocolate City: From Campus Raves to Music Empire

Christie Brown: From Ghana to Global Fashion

How FilmHouse Transformed Nollywood

Coming up in June: Kana TV (Ethiopia), Landmark Center (Nigeria), Marodi TV (Senegal) and Mavin Records (Nigeria).

HUSTLE & FLOW #63: Success Stories; Music Touring; Fashion Tariffs; AI Panic; and more

Right off the digital press: HUSTLE & FLOW #63 is out 👋🏾

In this edition, I talk about success stories (the respectable and the taboo); the beginning of a continental music touring circuit; Morocco, the upcoming African sports capital; the challenges of exporting African fashion to Western markets; and more.

Share, subscribe, leave a note - it’s always great to read your comments and feedback 🙏

AFRICAN CREATIVE SUCCESS STORIES

You know it, and I know it: most studies commissioned by development institutions on the Creative Economy are useless.

Generating primary research data (meaning: asking questions to real people on the ground) is very long and very costly. So the vast majority of the studies produced in recent years have been based on the same basic information - just recycled, repurposed and repackaged.

The result: some vague document that gives a sense of an upward growth trajectory but no actionable insights.

But this one is different.

🧐 Over the past year, my team (Restless Global + PwC Nigeria + TFCC) spoke to the founders of 22 top creative companies in Africa and other emerging markets to identify and analyze their key drivers of success.

Conducted under Proparco’s CREA Fund initiative (part of the European CreatiFI programme), our study was designed to respond to a specific question we had received from investors:

What does success in the African Creative Industries look like?

The result:

🔥12 detailed case studies of successful creative companies in Africa, including Mavin Records, Triggerfish, AFRICORI, and Vivo Fashion Group

🔥10 detailed case studies of successful creative companies in other emerging markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam or Brazil

🔥The top 10 key drivers of success for creative companies in Africa today

🔥A practical assessment framework to help guide investors' and entrepreneurs' decision-making process

The study is available for download here, and you can watch the video of the introductory webinar here.

😴 For the lazy ones among you, over the next few months I’ll dig into each one of the Africa case studies here and in bite-size form. Stay tuned.

THE UNTOUCHABLE SECTORS OF THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

🫣 Among the success stories definitely NOT featured in the above study are those taking place in the sulfurous worlds of Betting and Adult Content.

These sub-sectors of the Creative Economy are racking up millions, and yet, no respectable investor wants to touch them.

🍑 While we’re all busy trying to turn our earnest music, film or fashion hustles into decent, bankable ventures, AllAccessFans - an African OnlyFans clone - quietly generated over $1 million in revenue in 2024, according to a recent article by Techpoint. Out of that juicy bounty, $748,000 was paid out to adult content creators.

🎰 Meanwhile, gambling sites like BetPawa, which processes over $130 million in bets annually across 12 African countries, or Bet9ja, which reportedly generates $80-100 million/year, boast margins that would make any startup founder green with envy.

Obviously, there are some very valid concerns over these industries’ potential for addiction and exploitation.

⛔️ And when I posted this on Linkedin, this is where most people stopped reading.

Then they went on to comment that these businesses were very bad indeed.

But that was not my point.

Part of thinking like an investor, but also like an entrepreneur, is being able to set moral considerations aside (for the sake of the MENTAL EXERCISE, people, calm down), to analyze why the Betting and Adult Content sectors work so well, when other similar businesses may not.

Contrary to any other creative business out there, Betting and Adult content platforms are not struggling to find customers nor to make them pay.

💡They succeed, because they tap into some of our deepest human impulses - the desire for (easy) money and the need for sex. THAT’s the real insight hiding among these piles of shameful cash.

But money and sex are not the only basic human needs that can be leveraged in business.

Others - less controversial - needs include survival and security, status, love and connection, autonomy, escape from pain, or personal growth.

🧠 This comes down to the psychological aspect of sales: by tapping into core human needs and drives, your product (or your marketing strategy) can resonate with your customers beneath the surface of logic, leading to better outcomes.

How is your product responding to these deep human needs? Asking yourself the question can only make your creative business better - try it.

MUSIC

Mavin Records, in partnership with Trace, ticketing platform HustleSasa, and WeOutside, has launched the East Side Tour, a new concert series aiming to build a viable touring circuit across the continent.

🎤 The inaugural “mini-tour”, which took place in April, included shows held in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and featured rising Mavin acts Magixx, Bayanni, and Boy Spyce.

As Semafor Africa reports, Mavin’s move is part of a broader strategy to develop infrastructure and cultivate demand for touring within Africa.

🌟 While African music superstars are just as popular at home as they are globally, the reality is that they make the majority of their money from touring in Europe and North America.

On the continent, the scene is fragmented, and the absence of a proper “touring circuit” limits live show opportunities.

Mavin wants to change that by creating a pan-African network of regional concert stops, allowing its up-and-coming artists to tour profitably and consistently without having to look abroad.

💵 Another advantage of touring is that, contrary to the slow trickle of streaming revenue, it delivers immediate income through tickets, sponsorships, and merch sales.

Infrastructure challenges are real, but the timing could work in Mavin's favor. African governments are now investing more in creative economies. and initiatives like Move Afrika are helping to test whether local audiences are ready to pay for live music experiences.

If Mavin cracks this model, everyone wins.

SPORTS BUSINESS

🇲🇦 Morocco is fast emerging as the sports business capital of Africa.

In April, from the World Football Summit to AFCON U17 and the Basketball Africa League kick off, the who’s who of African and global sports met in Rabat.

⛹🏿 The Summit and GITEX attracted the sports business crowd, while some 200 international scouts roamed the AFCON U17 locker rooms, eager to spot the next African football star. The BAL expertly delivered a powerful combo of competition, entertainment, marketing and celebrity-power, demonstrating the effectiveness of a proper fan experience.

Overall, a win for Morocco, which is starting to attract global sports investment and talent. FIFA has already chosen Rabat for their Africa headquarters, for example.

MUST READ: #AfricaScores' partnered with the World Football Summit to publish the first Africa Football Outlook report, covering the 54 football ecosystems across Africa, from key competitions to football administration, infrastructure and corporate partnerships. You can download it here.

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you might know that I have this strange fascination with the world of traditional African combat sports.

🤼 This month, leading player AWFC (African Warriors Fighting Championship) made headlines again when it announced its new partnership with sports streaming platform DAZN.

Starting this June, DAZN will broadcast the AWFC's Dambe World Series to over 200 territories worldwide.

For those unfamiliar, Dambe is a traditional boxing sport with roots in northern Nigeria.

This partnership follows the success of AWFC's King of Dambe showcase in 2024, in which AWFC brought in the first white fighter (an intrepid wrestler from Birkenhead, UK) to take on the homegrown Dambe warriors (he lost the fight but not his life, which was a win in itself). The event drew 10,000 fans in Kano and millions more online.

FASHION

👚 African fashion's global runway is potentially facing a serious tariff challenge.

Indeed, the on-going global tariffs war does not only concern the US and China: it could significantly impact African fashion's access to its biggest export market as well.

Several African countries are targeted by Trump’s colorful tariffs list. Lesotho, which produces jeans for major American brands like Levi’s and Wrangler, was hit the hardest with a 50% tariff. Others include Madagascar (47%), Mauritius (40%), Botswana (37%), South Africa (30%) and Nigeria (14%). Everyone else will be subjected to a baseline tariff of 10%. If those come to pass, of course.

📜 Another concern is the future of the AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act), which has provided duty-free US access for thousands of African products since 2000. The Act expires in September 2025, and its renewal under current terms looks increasingly unlikely.

The stakes are high: Kenya exported $352 million in apparel to the US through AGOA in 2023, for example.

Up until now, the US had been the Western market of choice for many leading African fashion brands because of the complexity and cost involved in exporting to the EU.

😖 The EU does have a "duty-free" program, but it comes with such restrictive Rules of Origin requirements that few African fashion houses are able to meet them. And it doesn’t change the fact that EU countries still impose Import VAT (averaging 20%) on foreign goods including African fashion.

Either way you look at it, what should be a natural path of global expansion for African fashion brands - selling to the diaspora in Western markets - resembles an obstacle course.

Some designers are now looking at the Middle East as a more welcoming place.

In my view, this is a topic that the African Union should take on assertively. Negotiating preferential export terms for African creative products such as fashion is key to supporting the growth of robust creative industries on the continent.

FILM AND AI

You may have read the following post when I initially posted it a few weeks ago - it clearly hit a nerve so I’m sharing it again here.

A few days after the original post, I continued the conversation on the African Tech Roundup podcast with Andile Masuku. Together we dug deeper into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly that the AI revolution is bringing to African film:

✅ Independent creators are already producing professional-quality content with minimal resources

✅ Traditional production budgets and timelines are becoming increasingly unnecessary

✅ Technical specializations like camera operation and editing are being supplanted by creative vision

Listen to the full episode on:

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/dsSb239y

Apple Music: https://lnkd.in/dj7ZBUG3

SoundCloud: https://lnkd.in/duwySSic

As for the viral post, here it is:








African filmmakers: We need to talk about AI 👽.

⏱ While you’re spending hours in the edit suite, writing grant applications, or attending festivals, AI has already rewritten the script for the entire industry.

The disruption isn't coming at some point in the vague future - it's already here.

Yet, most filmmakers I meet on the continent are still treating AI as some distant Silicon Valley fantasy.

The most common answer I get when I ask them what their AI strategy is?

“At first I was scared, but now I use ChatGPT as my therapist.”

That’s not good enough guys.

🚀 In the time that it took me to wrap my head around this post, we’ve gone from AI picturing me as a Black woman with 6 fingers to ChatGPT 4o Image Generator going viral over its perfect one-try Studio Ghibli rip-offs.

This is what is happening to the film industry globally:

📝 Development can now be done in the blink of an eye: AI can produce storyboards, generate background scenes, and even draft scripts in seconds and at a fraction of traditional costs.

➡️ Your ideas are not ambitious enough (and this doesn’t mean that everyone should do superhero or epic films dear god)

📉 Production costs are getting slashed: It doesn’t make sense anymore to raise funding for production studios in Lagos, Cape Town or Marrakech when AI is enabling creators to generate a complex historical scene from their home computer.

➡️ Your production budgets and cost structures are outdated.

🗣️Language barriers are dissolving: Seamless dubbing is now possible in minutes. The good news is, this will help your content travel across borders. But…

➡️ Businesses providing dubbing, subtitling and voice acting are dead.

🖥 Post-production has undergone a quantum shift: What used to take a team of highly skilled people weeks or even months can now be done by AI that color-grades, edits, creates sounds and even suggests scene adjustments overnight.

➡️ Editors, VFX supervisors, but also animators and game designers, your workflow is obsolete. Your job as you define it today probably is as well.

AI is transforming African cinema before it even got its footing, and there is nothing we can do to stop this.

The question is whether African filmmakers will guide this process or whether it will be driven by outside forces.

The good news is that the same tools that major studios are using are freely available.

They can be the greatest equalizers.

But for this, you have to master them.

HUSTLE & FLOW #62: Content and Funding pipes, and how to build them right

🧐 Astute readers of HUSTLE & FLOW may have noticed that I skipped a couple editions in these early months of 2025.

I’ve been out and about, while churning out content in other formats: a keynote for Dakar Music Expo, a cool podcast episode with Ventures Valley, and interviews for Semafor and Escape Magazine.

But also, I’ve been thinking about how to refresh my writing, in order to keep delivering value to the ecosystem, while keeping me motivated enough to continue to spend my free time on it 😅

With the recent proliferation of African Creative and Sports industries coverage in the media and through specialized newsletters, there is less of a need for me to highlight news or showcase achievements from key players - others are now doing this very well.

Last month, HUSTLE & FLOW turned 5 years old 🤯, and I’d like to find new ways to have impact. I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear yours:

What would you like me to write or talk about?

What would you like this content to look like?

How would you like to consume it?

Tell me. I’m taking notes ✍️

In the meantime, you’ll find my thoughts about the past couple of months’ key topics below.

And if you don’t already, don’t forget to subscribe, so that you don’t get left out of what comes next.

BROADCASTING

📆 Canal+ has extended its MultiChoice takeover deadline by six months.

The merger timeline stretching to October 2025 isn't just regulatory red tape. It's six more months of uncertainty for an industry already navigating treacherous waters.

Here's what this delay actually means for African creators:

🤷🏽 Content commissioning decisions are likely stalled until the merger's fate is clear. That's potentially six more months of "we'll get back to you" for producers pitching new shows.

For context, Canal+ (with 9.69M subscribers in Africa/Asia but 26.93M worldwide) is attempting to swallow MultiChoice (with roughly 16M subscribers) to create the continent's undisputed pay-TV behemoth.

🕸️In the long run, with Canal+ aiming to quintuple subscribers to 100M globally, the merged entity would control an unprecedented share of Africa's limited distribution channels.

Less competition has rarely meant better deals for creators. Which takes us to…

CONTENT DISTRIBUTION

We have a distribution problem on the continent.

📤 In fact, distribution - not financing, not the skills gap - is the most pressing challenge stifling the growth of the African creative sector right now.

Because no distribution = no chance at monetization.

Film might be the clearest illustration of this issue:

With Amazon Prime and Netflix retreating from the African market, and the Canal+Multichoice merger further narrowing opportunities, who is going to buy premium African films?

Instead of investing your cash, sweat and tears into content that has nowhere to go, consider this:

1️⃣ Physical exhibition spaces matter: Nigeria's cinema growth shows the impact of theatrical releases on industry development. We need strategic investments in both traditional cinemas AND innovative community cinema projects that can reach underserved areas.

2️⃣ Mobile distribution remains unsolved: Previous attempts by telcos at video distribution have failed, but the opportunity remains massive. We need to try again.

3️⃣ YouTube remains king by default: Omoni Oboli’s latest film “Love in Every Word” was viewed by 12 million people in 7 days on the free platform. When premium filmmakers retreat to YouTube, it signals a market failure. But while we develop alternatives, there are also opportunities to better monetize this channel, starting by advocating for better CPMs.

4️⃣ Other global free platforms are untapped in Africa: Roku, Pluto TV, and Tubi have revolutionized ad-supported streaming elsewhere - their expansion to Africa could be transformative with the right partnerships.

5️⃣ Short-form isn't just for dance videos: Apps like ReelShort are gaining massive traction in Africa but are not priced for the local market and don’t yet showcase African stories. There is much to learn from this model.

6️⃣ Broadcasters remain powerful but underutilized: Major private broadcasters across Africa could be incentivized to increase local content investment through support programs such as tax rebates.

7️⃣ Too many local payment solutions: Netflix, Disney+, Amazon and others cite payment integration as a major growth bottleneck. We need to build products that consolidate the myriad of African payment options. Global platforms could make more of an effort too.

Distribution should be a priority for investors and operators - not an afterthought.

CREATOR ECONOMY

📜 Nigeria is moving forward with a bill requiring social media platforms to establish physical offices within the country, and this is a good thing.

Global platforms like Meta, TikTok, and the social network formerly known as Twitter are masters at avoiding local responsibility and taxes in-country by pretending they’re not even there.

Forcing them to establish offices locally is how governments can make sure their economies and citizens benefit from the business they help create.

💰Senator Ned Nwoko, who sponsored the bill, framed it this way: "This is not an attack on platforms, but a way of increasing revenue through the digital space."

The passed its second reading in the senate. If adopted, it would also require these platforms to maintain verifiable offices and employee records - bringing structure to a largely unregulated space, but also facilitating job creation, tech transfer, tax collection, and better content moderation aligned with local contexts.

😈 Of course, the devil is in the details. If this bill (which I haven’t read) is not well written, it could also end up making things worse.

MUSIC

Warner Music completed its acquisition of Africori, the independent powerhouse representing over 7,000 African artists, including Master KG of  "Jerusalema" fame.

This follows a strategic investment journey that began in 2020, progressed to a majority stake in 2022, and now culminates in complete ownership.

🏆 Founded in 2009, Africori’s growth picked up with WM’s investment. Africori artists have dominated South African radio charts for 11 consecutive weeks and currently occupy 6 of the top 10 spots on Apple Music South Africa.

⬆️ The two companies have already aligned systems to allow for "upstreaming" of African talent into Warner's global network - essentially creating a highway for continental stars to reach worldwide audiences. However, Africori will maintain its operational independence with Yoel Kenan continuing as CEO, reporting to Temi Adeniji of Warner Music Africa.

The news lands about a year after Universal Music Group's headline-making acquisition of Nigeria's Mavin Records. Who’s next?

🎵 IFPI released its 2025 Global Music Report, based on wholesale recorded music revenues (i.e. the money paid through to labels, distributors, and artists).

The worldwide numbers contain some good news for rights holders: subscription streaming revenues are up nearly 10% YoY, for example. But there are also some worrying elements. Ad-supported streaming is not pulling its weight, and the US market is recording a slump in performance.

🌍🚀 Meanwhile, Sub-Saharan Africa saw revenues surpass $100 million for the first time, and recorded a growth of +22.6% YoY - making it the second fastest growing region after MENA.

However, it still represents less than 2% of global music revenue.

💸 Although Afrobeats has propelled African music on the global stage, African artists and music operators on the continent are struggling to capture the value of their own creations.

In fact, Africa’s top artists like Burna Boy, Tems or Tyla make most of their revenue abroad - not at home.

Africa’s music industry’s challenges are well known. Instead of debating them one more time, let’s see how we can turn them into investment opportunities.

🌐 Fragmentation: The proliferation of small players in the market make it almost impossible for these businesses to achieve scale or attract structured investment.

Opportunity: Consolidate by merging players solving the same problem in a different country or region or players targeting a different segment of the value chain - or even both!

🎓 Skills Gap: The lack of formal education and training leads to technical but also business knowledge gaps that are holding the sector back.

Opportunity to develop specialized programs tackling topics like data analytics, digital marketing, distribution and AI integration applied to the music industry.

©️ Copyright Enforcement: The informal nature of many African economies makes the enforcement of copyright laws and the collection of royalties ineffective or even non-existent, impacting revenue streams for artists, and the attractiveness of the sector for investors.

Opportunity to leverage new technologies such as blockchain to modernize or even reinvent collective management organisations (CMOs) and processes.

🏗 Lack of venues: The lack of concert venues limits the potential for large-scale tours by established African and international stars, but also for emerging artists’ discovery and development.

Opportunity to invest in large-scale developments but also in small-to-medium multipurpose venues across the continent.

🎫 Weak support ecosystem: The lack of entertainment infrastructure also means that the rest of the live performance ecosystem is severely under-developed.

Opportunity for entrepreneurs to develop ancillary services such as event management solutions, ticketing platforms, or equipment rental companies.

FUNDRAISING STRATEGY

⚠️ If you run a Creative business, VC money is probably not right for you.

Here’s what many investors themselves won’t tell you:

When we think Creative Industries, we often think emerging businesses, and, in consequence, Venture Capital.

⛔️ But that's wrong.

The VC model is based on an expectation of exponential growth and oversize returns, that can only be achieved through the kind of rapid, massive scaling made possible by new technologies.

📈 When I say “model”, it is literally a business model - an excel spreadsheet that shows expected returns and that VC firms use to raise money from investors (VCs have investors too! They’re called LPs or Limited Partners).

VCs typically look for a return of at least 10x their initial investment over a period of about 5-10 years. If they bet on the wrong companies (including companies that grow, but too slowly), they won’t make money for their own investors, and they won’t be able to raise another fund - so eventually, they’ll be out of a job.

🏭 Meanwhile, more than 90% of Creative companies are not tech-centric. Rather, they are traditional SMEs - think of a music label, a production company or a fashion brand.

At best, they can be “tech-enabled”, but even that might not be enough to achieve the kind of fast and furious growth that works for VC.

💵 However, these businesses are usually profitable from the get-go and can thrive when given access to working capital or other kinds of debt.

They can also massively benefit from the hands-on operational expertise of business angels, and many are also well suited to a Private Equity approach, which can involve restructuring, streamlining costs and processes, and improving management.

Each business and each situation is specific. The key is understanding the true nature of the company and its best case scenario for success.

When I speak to an audience of Creative entrepreneurs, I like to use this slide to guide them through the process of self-assessment.

Once we start properly matching Creative sector companies with the type of investors that is right for them, we'll start seeing a lot more success.

HUSTLE & FLOW #61: 2024, the Year of the Reality Check

Me waving goodbye to 2024, according to AI.

A year ago, I wrote “2023 was the year where the Creative Industries officially landed on the radar of institutional investors. 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.”

🧐 Well, in hindsight, 2023 may have been the year of naive optimism. Twenty-twenty-four, in contrast, was the year of the reality check.

This doesn’t mean that we haven’t witnessed great success, reach, and talent in the African Creative and Sports space this year.

But (contrary to this image 👆 of me waving goodbye to 2024 according to AI) things are getting real.

In this last HUSTLE & FLOW edition of the year, I take a look at some of the hard lessons that 2024 taught us, but also at what has inspired us over the past 12 months.

👋 Read on, share, subscribe, enjoy the Holidays, and see you in 2025!

SHOW ME THE MONEY

🤔 In 2024, the surge of new funding announcements continued, but, as concrete results remained scarce, the industry’s response morphed from excitement to skepticism.

It would be easy to blame investors for this. Yes, they may have overreached by making these bold statements too early, but they have since recalibrated, working internally to gather knowledge and develop tools. The commitment remains.

On the industry’s side, however, a similar reckoning is yet to take place. The reality is that most creative enterprises are not yet investable - either because they lack a solid business model, a well-rounded team, or the ability to scale. 

🛠 Building up business expertise in the creative sector is an area where we should collectively put our efforts in 2025.

AFRICAN FILMS: THE DISTRIBUTION DILEMMA

Another harsh reality check of 2024 is the rug pull that Amazon Prime and Netflix performed on African filmmakers’ hopes and dreams.

⏸ With both global streamers hitting pause (or even rewind in some cases) on their investments in African Originals to refocus on a much less capital intensive licensing approach, African filmmakers are reminded once again of their precarious position on the world’s content chess board.

🌍 The real issue here is that an entire region’s film output cannot, should not, be dependent on the financial decisions of one or two foreign buyers for whom the region in question is not a priority.

(The fact that Netflix’s downsizing happened within weeks of the launch of two new African Film Funds is a serious case of bad timing for these funds.)

For a heartwarming example of what happens when the right content is put in front of the right audience in the right way, check out this video of the opening night for the Nigerian film “Everybody loves Jenifa” at the Odeon Greenwich in London, where the movie sold out 5 screens on December 20. This result was delivered by distribution veteran Moses Babatope and his team at the newly minted The Nile Group. 

🏗 Let’s hope that 2025 will bring a renewed focus on building out Africa’s own content distribution infrastructure, from cinema, to mobile, digital, and to the basket case that is the African broadcasting sector.

CONSOLIDATION MOVES

📺 Talking about the broadcasting sector, one of the biggest news of the year was the acquisition of Multichoice by France’s Canal+, which, once realized, will create a pan African Pay TV monopoly, uniting the previously separate English and French-speaking broadcast markets.

On one side, this means yet one less buyer for African producers, as the new combined entity plans to pool content budgets and teams.

🔀 On the other, it gives the new and boosted Canal+Multichoice and its platform Showmax a better chance at long-term survival, as the group navigates the painful but unavoidable transition to streaming.

The fact that two behemoths like Canal+ and Multichoice decided that they would be stronger together should remind us that for many businesses, including creative ones, scale is a key determinant of success. 

✊🏾 From content production and distribution, to music, to fashion, the African Creative sector is brimming with micro-enterprises essentially doing the same thing in their own little corner. The winners will be those who are smart enough to set their ego aside and come together, combining expertise and resources towards a greater goal.

2024’S BIGGEST SUCCESSES

Despite a challenging environment, 2024 also brought us some inspirational successes:

💫 Universal Music Group acquired a majority stake in Nigeria’s Mavin Records in the biggest deal that the African Creative Industries have seen so far. The story of how Don Jazzy, Tega Oghenejobo, and the Kupanda Capital team built and grew Mavin together is a serious case study of what it takes to achieve global success (spoiler alert: it’s not ego).

🎤 Still in the music space, 2024 was also the year where 22-year-old Tyla single handedly redefined African music to the world. Mark my words: Tyla will become to South Africa what Rihana is to Barbados - her country’s first global pop icon and very possibly, its first self-made creative billionaire. 

⚽️ Finally, the triumph that was the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Ivory Coast showcased not only the exceptional talent present on the continent and the ability of African nations to host large-scale international events successfully, but also the true size of the African homegrown football audience and market. 

All eyes are on Morocco, the host of the 2025 AFCON which will kick off in December.

CAN THE CREATOR ECONOMY SAVE US ALL?

🤳🏾 A key bright spot this year was the emergence of the Creator Economy as a substantial growth sector for the continent.

With countries like Kenya (global #1!), South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt leading the world in social media usage, the African Creator Economy is expected to grow from $3.08 billion in 2023 to $17.84 billion by 2030. 

💵 Already, tens if not hundreds of thousands of young Africans are making a living creating content online. Considering that the ecosystem remains nascent with few monetization options, this gives great hope for the future.

👽 However, the arrival of AI presents both opportunities and disruptions. These new tools have the potential to enhance content creation and engagement, but also threaten to outpace creators who lack access to them. 

As AI reshapes creative processes, the challenge will be ensuring that African creators can leverage these technologies to their advantage, rather than being sidelined by them.

MY WISH FOR 2025

The same as you: less talk and more action.

💪🏾2025 should be about execution. 

Happy Holidays!


* The cover image is DALL-E’s response to the following prompt: “Create an image of me waving goodbye to 2024, surrounded by African artists, musicians, filmmakers, and fashion designers.”








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.