(c) The Black Book, Editi Effiong / Netflix

September was a winning month for African creative entrepreneurs.

In this edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, Nigerian filmmaker and entrepreneur Editi Effiong revolutionizes African film finance with The Black Book (now streaming on Netflix), Global superstar Beyonce wears Senegalese brand Tongoro on her Renaissance tour, Rema and Selena Gomes’ “Calm Down” reaches 1 billion streams on Spotify, and Ivorian ecommerce startup ANKA raises $5 million.

But there is more, a lot more. Read on!

FILM

Editi Effiong’s The Black Book, which premiered on Netflix last week and is already breaking records, is not only a showcase for star Richard Mofe-Damijo (aka RMD), it is also an important milestone in Nigerian film finance.

💻 🎥 Backed by some of Nigeria’s most prominent startup founders and VC investors, the $1M budget thriller illustrates the growing convergence between the worlds of African Tech and Entertainment.

Among the film’s financiers are Kola A. (Ventures Platform), Olumide Soyombo (Bluechip Technologies), as well as the cofounders of Flutterwave, Piggyvest, Paystack, and Eden Life.

I met Editi in 2021 and had the privilege of reading an early draft of The Black Book. Although the film would become Editi’s first feature as a director, he had already shown a lot of potential with his short film Fishbone and as a producer on Up North.

🤑 Still, it was clear that The Black Book was going to be expensive.

Most Nigerian films that make it to local cinemas have production budgets in the $150,000-350,000 range, while the most ambitious ones can reach up to $500,000-750,000.

💪🏿 In an environment where public funding is not available, Nigerian producers have become skilled at pooling resources together - proceeds from previous films, equipment, locations, sponsorships - to finance increasingly ambitious movies in cash and kind.

Despite the hype, The Black Book is not Nigeria’s most expensive film. The award goes to the 2011 adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, which was produced on a staggering $9M budget.

💸👋🏿 Financing for the film was raised by investment banker Yewande Sadiku, who was the first person to bring organized financing to a Nigerian movie. But Yewande was way ahead of her time. Sadly, the movie was not a commercial success, and Nollywood producers’ ambitions were knocked down a notch.

📈 Fast forward 10 years and new experiments in film finance have taken place, including the launch of FilmOne Studios’ $1M film fund with China’s HuaHua. Nigerian films’ production value has noticeably increased. Netflix and Amazon Prime have entered the market, providing substantial new revenue opportunities for filmmakers. And the country known for its oil billionaires has minted a new class of High Net Worth Individuals - startup founders and tech investors.

💡 To finance his $1M production budget, Editi reached out to his personal network in tech, and convinced his connections to take a bet on film - a class of assets that is, in fact, no riskier than most startups. He made sure to follow a thorough process, delivering regular updates to his investors

The acquisition of The Black Book by Netflix validated the model, prompting Volition Cap, one of the film’s investors, to launch the Volition Entertainment, Media and Art (VEMA) Fund, an investment club focused on this “new” sector.

If The Black Book was the Beta version of this new Nigerian film finance model, the next logical steps are for its KPI-focused investors to pour over the data, analyze the results, and iterate. It’s clear that we will see a lot more venture-backed Nollywood films in the near future.

MUSIC

💥 New level unlocked: Rema's version of Calm Down featuring Selena Gomez becomes the first Afrobeats song in history to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify.

In fact, it is the first track led by an African artist to ever reach this milestone.

🦄 Calm Down joins the extremely small club of songs to reach unicorn status on the platform, where more than 100 million tracks compete for the audience's attention.

🌍 Calm Down's appeal is truly global, gathering the highest number of streams from large markets such as the US, India, Mexico, Brazil and the UK.

According to Spotify's Sub-Saharan Africa MD Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Calm Down's success can be attributed to "the power of cross-cultural fusion in our ultra-interconnected world: the blend of catchy afro-fusion rhythms, [Rema]'s unique and soulful singing and - of course - the unexpected addition of youth icon Selena Gomez on an Afrobeats song."

😎 A couple months ago, the American pop star shared her gratitude for being invited to feature on the song: "This man has changed my life forever. Rema, thank you for choosing me to be a part of one of the biggest songs in the world."

😉 This is also the only time in history where a woman has responded positively to a man telling her to calm down.

Congratulations to Rema and to his labels Mavin Records and Jonzing World Record 🎉

🎧 Africa-focused music streaming platform Mdundo’s annual report is out, and it is full of interesting stats.

Established in Kenya in 2013 by Danish founder Martin Nielsen, Mdundo took an unusual path when it was listed on Denmark’s stock exchange (Nasdaq First North Growth Market exchange) in September 2020. This also explains why the company’s results are public - a very rare occurrence for an African music startup.

💡 Contrary to premium services such as Spotify, Mdundo is targeting the African mass market through localized features and partnerships with telcos such as Vodacom in Tanzania, Airtel in Nigeria, and MTN in Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa.

The streaming service is now approaching 500,000 African songs directly uploaded by more than 140,000 creators.

📈 Key highlights from Mdundo’s 2023 annual report (fiscal year ending in June 2023) include:

• 26.6 million monthly active users, exceeding the company’s target of 25 million

• 74% growth in revenue year-on-year from $1.02 million to $1.78 million

• 35% of total revenue ($620,000) was generated from paying users, representing a 239% growth year-on-year 

• Meanwhile advertising revenue grew 37% to reach $1.2 million

The company recorded an EBITDA loss of $1.08 million, a 3.5% improvement from the prior fiscal year. It aims to become EBITDA positive by 2025, with 50 million monthly active users.

“I’m confident that in the future 15%-20% of all music on the global charts will be by African artists,” said. “The music industry is going through a massive democratization.”

E-COMMERCE

Ivorian SaaS e-commerce platform ANKA has raised $5 million in equity and debt in a pre-series A extension led by IFC, alongside Proparco and BPI France.

💰  Last January, ANKA (then still called Afrikrea) raised $6.2 million. In total, the seven-year-old startup has secured $13.5 million from investors since its inception and is emerging into one of the few success stories in the African creative tech space.

👗 Until 2021, the company operated solely as Afrikrea, a marketplace for African clothing, accessories, arts, and crafts. It rebranded to ANKA in order to become a one-stop shop for merchants, consolidating their other sales channels (websites, social media), onto a single platform. Thanks to its partnership with DHL, ANKA allows its users to dispatch packages from Africa to other countries for less than $30 in under 72 hours.

🤩 According to ANKA, the company now receives one million visits per month, generating $50 million in annual transactions across 175 countries for a turnover of about $3.8 million.

Interestingly, although it is headquartered in Ivory Coast, most of ANKA’s 20,000+ vendors (80% women) are in Nigeria and Kenya. Meanwhile, its largest markets in terms of terms are the US and France, countries that boast a significant African diaspora who shop online.

FASHION

🎤 🌍 Beyoncé's highly instagrammable Renaissance World Tour was, without contest, one of the main events of the summer.

Since the tour started in May, the singer has worn dozens of striking custom bodysuits from major global brands such as Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Valentino, Balmain, Louis Vuitton and Mugler.

🔥 And then last week, Senegalese label Tongoro entered the room.

Founded in 2016 by Sarah Diouf, Tongoro's trajectory is intrinsically linked with the megastar.

😎 The brand, known for its long, fluid and graphic silhouettes, first caught the world's attention when Beyoncé appeared in one of its outfits while on vacation in Italy in 2018.

Then, in July 2020, the singer released her iconic feature-length musical 'Black Is King', in which she was seen wearing a Tongoro ensemble -- and the brand's significance was cemented in cultural history. It's since been worn by other celebrities, such as Solange and Naomi Campbell.

✂️ For the Renaissance Tour, Diouf created a series of custom looks for Beyoncé and her entire team of dancers of thirty men and women.

Styled by Shiona Turini, the custom NARI bodysuit, including the hand gloves and the thigh-high boots, were all handmade in Dakar. On Instagram, Diouf shared behind-the-scenes pictures of herself working around the clock (and in secret) alongside her master tailors to finish the outfits on time.

💰 With a media impact value estimated at $187 million so far for the brands showcased during the Tour, it's clear that there will be a before and after Renaissance for Tongoro.

💫 Tongoro - which means "star" in Sango, the language of the Central African Republic, where Diouf's mother is from.

📖 Birimian Ventures’ CEO Laureen Kouassi-Olson is sharing her hopes for African Fashion in a new book, entitled “Iconic Africa: La mode de demain sera africaine ou ne sera pas”. (The fashion of tomorrow will be African or it will not be.)

Here’s what she had to say about the book: “For decades, international fashion has been inspired by African creation. Even if this is a tremendous recognition for our continent, this inspiration does not contribute to the emergence of an African fashion industrial sector.

💡 Ensuring that African creation is at the origin of a creation of economic value “made in Africa” requires developing innovative financial mechanisms as much as bringing about a real cultural change in the minds of African creators.

This work is an activist work, a plea for the recognition of creators and for African countries to take control of the creation of value in the fashion and creative sector. At a time when the challenges of development and climate come together, the African continent is today more legitimate than ever to transform on-site the raw materials that it already produces.”

SPORTS

Investors' interest in traditional African sports is ramping up.

🥊In July, leading Dambe promoter African Warriors Fighting Championship (AWFC) signed a groundbreaking sponsorship deal with gambling service Stake.

AWFC will now have to reckon with a new competitor as the Africa Fighters League (AFL) has launched Dambe Warriors League (DWL) in Nigeria. 

🇳🇬 Similar to boxing (but using only one striking arm, called “the spear”), Dambe is a traditional martial art which originated among the Hausa people in northern Nigeria.

AFL and DWL were co-founded by businessmen Hugh Guill and Kingsley Pungong (Rainbow Sports Group), following their purchase of a majority stake in Lost Child Media, a Dambe sports promotion company started by Chidi Anyina and Anthony Okeleke.

With Circuit Fights scheduled approximately every two weeks, DWL aims to produce a variety of live and recorded content, to be distributed widely through live online streaming, social media, and eventually television.

COMING UP THIS OCTOBER

Two major events to put on your calendar (or at least on your radar) this October:

🎮 Between October 6 and 8, some 300 young creators from across Africa will take over the iconic La Gaite Lyrique venue in Paris to showcase the continent’s most cutting-edge initiatives in TVseries animation, comics, gaming, esports, AR, VR and digital entrepreneurship.

🙏🏽 I will have the privilege to serve as the MC and moderator for this first edition of the Creative Africa Forum, organized by the French Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs, at the initiative of the French Presidential office.

🎤 Among the headliners of the Business Day on October 6 are Lesley Donna Williams (Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct), Sidick Bakayoko (Paradise Games), Séraphine Angoula (Dakar Séries Festival), Sebastien Onomo (Special Touch Studios), Brian Afande (Blackrhino VR), and Joachim Landau (Federation Studios Africa).

💰 On the financing side, we will hear from investors George Gachara (HEVA Fund), Ketevan Liparteliani (IFC) and Farrukh Hussain (Sony Innovation Fund), and unveil the winners of the AFD Digital Challenge, which focused this year on the Creative Industries.

🇫🇷 France has a long and complicated history with Africa, and diplomatic relations can sometimes be tense or challenging.

🌍 But everywhere you go on the continent, from Dakar to Nairobi, from Casablanca to Cape Town, France is also recognized as the most ardent and steadfast supporter of arts and culture.

💡 The Creative Africa Forum is one more step on the journey, impulsed by President Macron, towards reinventing the relationship between France and Africa by focusing on creativity, technology, and entrepreneurship, areas in which both regions have much to share.

Although the Business Day on October 6 is fully booked, the exhibition will be open to the general public on October 7 and 8.

💪 Meanwhile, IFC (member of the World Bank Group), the largest development institution focused exclusively on the private sector in emerging markets, is throwing its weight behind the African Creative Industries.

In its 2022 fiscal year, IFC invested a record $32.8 billion in developing countries. And now, the Creative Industries are in the bullseye 🎯.

👉 As mentioned earlier, IFC announced its first investment in an African Creative sector company, leading the $5M extension round of creative ecommerce startup ANKA (owner of the Afrikrea marketplace).

👉 Back in July, IFC also extended a risk-sharing facility to support the Orange Bank x Birimian Ventures debt program, providing loans to Fashion MSMEs in Ivory Coast.

And there is more where that came from.

📆  On October 14, IFC will host a high profile event dedicated to the Creative Industries during the World Bank Group-IMF Annual Meetings in Marrakesh.

Endorsed by IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop, this will be the first time that the Creative Industries are showcased during this exclusive gathering, attended by thousands of global leaders from the public and private sectors.

💵 I’ll have the pleasure of moderating a panel on “Investing in the Creative Industries - What are the bankable business models” with Bill Sonneborn (IFC), Moulaye Taboure (ANKA), Laureen Kouassi-Olsson (Birimian) and Stuart Forrest (Triggerfish).

We’ll also discuss how governments can help ignite growth in the sector through smart policy and the development of an enabling environment (spoiler alert 🤫 - there's a lot African governments can do without spending actual cash).

Maiko Miyake (IFC) will lead this conversation focused on the audiovisual sector with Professor Kenneth Kim (South Korea/Hallyu expert), Jonathan Olsberg (Olsberg•SPI), Stan McCoy (Motion Picture Association) and Isioma Nnenna Alexis Idigbe (PUNUKA Attorneys & Solicitors).

🇲🇦 Finally, we'll also highlight our host Morocco, which is graciously maintaining this event despite the terrible earthquake that took place earlier this month.

Morocco is emerging as an African champion in many sectors including in the Creative Industries. On October 14, top personalities from the highest levels of government and the art world will be taking the stage.

The event will take place in the brand new UM6P - Mohammed VI Polytechnic University auditorium, and the best news is that you are all invited to attend 🙌.

Register here and join us in Marrakesh on October 14!

(Shuttles will be provided between Marrakesh and the University.)