HUSTLE & FLOW is back, under a new format!
In 2022, I transitioned my writing on the African creative and sports industries to Linkedin, which allowed me to be more reactive and reach a wider audience.
Every month going forward, I will gather my most popular posts in a newsletter format, published both on Linkedin and here on my website.
Subscribe below to make sure you don't miss anything!
Here we go.
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As we enter 2023, the world may be in the midst of a global downturn.
But Africa has always danced to the beat of her own drum.
Inflation, energy shortages, supply chain issues? This is just business as usual, the struggle that is fueling the hustle.
And as always, creators gonna create.
ANIMATION & COMICS
Here's some of the #animation and #comicbooks projects I'll be looking forward to this year:
🔥 Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, an animated anthology of 10 sci-fi and fantasy stories from rising talent across 6 countries, produced by Triggerfish Animation and The Walt Disney Company.
⚡️ Iwaju, the afro-futuristic animated series from Kugali Media and Disney+.
💫 Iyanu : Child of Wonder, the animated series by HBO Max and Cartoon Network based on the graphic novel created by Roye Okupe's YouNeek Studios.
💪🏿 Decolonize, a comic anthology facilitated by the Goethe Institut across Africa.
Click here to learn more about these projects, and continue reading to find out what to expect in African #digitalcontent #film #TV #music #fashion #visualarts in the coming year.
DIGITAL CONTENT
Who are Africa's top earners on YouTube?
💵 Despite the growing popularity of other platforms such as TikTok, YouTube is still king when it comes to reach and revenue for creators.
🏆 With 14.3 billion visits per month, it is the 2nd most-visited website in the world after Google (which owns YouTube).
⏳694,000 hours of video are streamed on the platform every minute compared to 452,000 for Netflix.
👉🏾 CashNetUSA looked at the top YouTubers in every country to compile a "YouTube Rich List".
So what do we learn from the data?
😣 Africa is far, far behind other continents when it comes to revenue. Africa's "richest" channel is Egypt's Creative Crafts in 5 Minutes, which generated close to $9M. It may seem like a lot, but all other continents have channels above $40M.
💰 4 out of the only 8 African channels that generated above $1M are located in North Africa. Special shout out to Nigeria's Mark Angel ($4m) and Uganda's Masaka Kids ($1.3M). Search the Kenyan top channel at your own peril.
📡 Africa's digital creators are held back by persistent issues with connectivity. The article puts internet penetration in Africa at 22% but it's actually 43% (at least). Still, it's not enough.
💸 YouTube in Africa also suffers from a lack of advertising inventory. Also, ads are cheaper in Africa than elsewhere, which means less revenue for creators.
But of course, as you all know, where there is a challenge, there is an opportunity.
👑 American kids’ channel Cocomelon is the highest-earning YouTube channel of all time, with an estimated $282.8M amassed since its creation in 2006.
👶 In fact, channels with content made for children were the most profitable in 5 of the 6 continents.
👶🏿 Africa has the youngest population in the world.
Case made.
Some African creators have recognized this opportunity. Nigerian kids channel OmoBerry by Limitless Studios has reached 53.6M views, and is clocking an additional 250,000 views every day.
There's space for a lot more.
GAMING
The world's biggest investors have their eyes set on the African gaming market 🎮.
👉🏿 When South Africa's Carry1st raised $27M last month, it did so from bluechip VC firms like BITKRAFT Ventures, a16z Games, Konvoy, Lateral Frontiers VC and Kepple Africa Ventures. This latest round came on the back of another $26M raised between 2021 and 2022.
👉🏿 South African play-to-earn startup Skrmiish recently raised a $2.5M seed round after acquiring 100,000 players across 100 jurisdictions worldwide.
👉🏿 In September 2022, Nigerian-based blockchain gaming platform Metaverse Magna (MVM), incubated by Nestcoin, raised $3.2M from Polygon Labs and others through a token sale valuing the company at some $30M.
👉🏿 Earlier last year, Egyptian fantasy football platform Eksab raised $3M from 4DX Ventures, P1 Ventures, Golden Palms Investments and Tofino Capital to scale across MENA and Africa.
So, what do these investors see in Africa? 👀
📈 Although the global gaming market is expected to stabilize in 2023 (as a correction to the post-pandemic boom), emerging markets such as Africa, Latam and the Middle East will continue to grow, according to a report by Newzoo.
😯 The number of gamers in Africa more than doubled from 77 million to 186 million between 2015 and 2021.
💵 While gaming revenue in the European and US markets declined last year, Middle East and Africa revenue grew +6.6% to $6.8 billion.
📱 95% of African gamers are mobile gamers (no surprises there).
💰 Sports betting is already a highly lucrative - if controversial - business on the continent. Play-to-earn gaming could leverage some of the same basic triggers (desire to make easy money while doing something fun) in a more wholesome way.
👊🏿 There is increased collaboration among creators, for example through the creation last year of PAGG - Pan Africa Gaming Group, which united 10 African gaming studios.
👶🏿 and then there is the famous demographic dividend again.
Let's see what 2023 will bring.
MUSIC
The growing global popularity of African music cannot be denied.
Here's some WOW numbers:
🚀 Burna Boy, Rema, Kizz Daniel, Wizkid, Bella Shmurda, and Fireboy DML have all reached and surpassed 300 million streams on music service Audiomack.
🚀 In August 2022, 8 of the 10 most streamed artists on the platform were African.
🚀 Audiomack averages 2.5 billion Afrobeats streams per month.
🚀 Apple Music saw a 500% streaming increase for African DJ mixes between August 2021 and August 2022.
🚀 Nigeria posted the biggest bump with 3,000% year on year growth.
🚀 'Peru' by Fireboy DML was one of the biggest songs of 2022, and scored an endorsement from the Peruvian government in addition to an Ed Sheeran remix.
🚀 Wizkid sold out the O2 arena in London in 12 minutes in 2021.
🚀 Videos using 'Mi Amor' by Marioo (Tanzania) and Jovial (Kenya) clocked over 7 billion views on TikTok.
FILM INDUSTRY
Under the leadership of Yaa Asantewa Asante (Juliet Asante), CEO of the National film Authority of 🇬🇭 Ghana 🇬🇭, the West African country has been making moves to establish itself as a leading film destination on the continent.
🎥 Two years ago, Ghana launched the #ShootinGhana campaign to promote the diversity of its locations and its technical capacity.
✈️ Earlier this week at Sundance, it was announced that the upcoming sequel to box office hit "Girl Trip", starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Tiffany Haddish, and produced by Will Packer, would be set in Ghana.
👂🏿I'm also hearing a rumor that Idris Elba might be considering backing a film studio project in the country.
Watch out Nigeria! After competing hard over jollof rice, football, festivals and end-of-year festivities, Ghana is about to give a hard time to Nollywood.
❓What are the big trends shaping the African film and TV industry today?
🌍 A little over a year ago, I released a comprehensive report for UNESCO that takes a deep dive into the audiovisual markets of the continent's 54 countries.
🤓 With 271 (dense!) pages for the English version, it is the only document that goes into this level of detail and analysis about an industry and a continent where reliable data is cruely lacking.
In it, I highlight several major trends, including:
💡The slow but encouraging formalization of the sector
💡The digital revolution
💡The future of cinemas
💡The beginning of a long-awaited boom in content production
💡Africa's new partners: the United-States and China
💡The education challenge
💡Intellectual property and the piracy curse
💻 It also includes information on "new" sectors such as digital content creation, OTT platforms, mobile distribution, and animation.
👀 It is a must-read for all filmmakers, private investors, government representatives and policy makers interested in Africa.
Click here to read or download the full report, in English or French.
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Filmmakers often reach out to me for help developing, pitching, distributing or selling their projects.
Sometimes, they straight up want an introduction to Netflix or Prime Video & Amazon Studios.
Unfortunately, I am unable to help them. This is not what I do 😊
However, when I do take part in workshops or conferences, I have one major piece of advice to share:
❌ DO NOT hang all your hopes on a windfall from Netflix or Amazon. Their teams are submerged with requests, and both platforms follow a specific strategy that may or may not include your genre or territory. If they want to, they will find you.
❌ DO NOT stop everything you're doing because you had a good meeting with a Hollywood studio. Unfortunately, this meeting has a 99% chance of going nowhere. In the 1% of cases where you progress to a deal, it will take months to negotiate the terms and years for your project to - perhaps - get made. In the meantime, you'll risk dying of frustration (and hunger).
✅ Instead, as producer and author Houston Howard says in this video (a must-watch), ATTACK THE MARKET WITH IP.
What does this mean?
It means that you should not wait to put your idea, story, character or concept out there -- and not through a pitch deck.
The trick is to establish your project through a faster, easier and cheaper medium than film:
✒️ Write a magazine article, a blog, or even self-publish a book.
🎧 Record a podcast episode or podcast series.
🎨 Draw your characters. Animate them if you have the skills. Publish your story as a comic book.
📷 Shoot a photo series. Film a 1 minute proof of concept with your phone.
Distribute your content online, collect feedback, improve on it, and keep shipping, all the while building a community of people interested in your art.
Once it's out, it is yours. If you can show quality of execution and traction, you will attract the buyers' attention.
And when they eventually come find you, you will be on a much stronger footing to negotiate that deal.
FASHION
Seedstars, the IMPACT FUND FOR AFRICAN CREATIVES and the African Fashion Foundation have partnered to launch The African Fashion Futures Incubator.
👗 The new program will offer training and grant funding to a first cohort of 14 fashion designers from Nigeria, Ghana and Rwanda over a 5-months period.
The African Fashion Future Incubator aims to address the lack of business and management skills in young fashion brands on the continent, as well as provide networking and fundraising support.
🎉 Congrats Roberta Annan and Onyinye Fafi Obi 🎉
VISUAL ARTS
💪🏾 Artists of African descent are crushing it on the art world's biggest stage.
🇬🇭 🇬🇧 Last week, celebrated Ghanaian-British filmmaker John Akomfrah was chosen to represent Great Britain at the next Venice Biennale, which will open in April 2024.
🇫🇷 Meanwhile, France will be represented by 36-year-old French-Caribbean artist and poet Julien Creuzet.
🏆 Akomfrah's will be one of the most anticipated national exhibitions at the 2024 Biennale, especially since the British Pavilion took the Golden Lion in 2022 thanks to another Black British artist, Afro-Caribbean Sonia Boyce.
🏆 The 2022 Biennale also crowned another Black woman, with African-American Simone Leigh receiving another Golden Lion for her work on the US Pavillion.
Last year's edition of the Biennale, which had been delayed because of the pandemic, drew more than 800,000 visitors, the most in its history.
It also welcomed the inaugural participation of Cameroon, Namibia, and Uganda, as well as returning participations from Ghana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
PLACE TO GO
🇸🇳 Dakar, Senegal 🇸🇳 has been at the top of my travel wish list for several years now.
But since I have not had any direct work-related opportunities to visit, I haven't yet made it there (Have a good reason for me to go? DM me!).
Why Dakar? Because it has become one of Africa's foremost creative and cultural hubs:
💃🏿 Last December, CHANEL held the Chanel Métiers d’Art show, the inaugural runway show for the haute couture brand on African soil, in the Senegalese capital. The glamorous event took place right on the heels of the Dakar Fashion Week and attracted 800 guests, including Pharrell Williams, Naomi Campbell and Princess Caroline of Monaco.
🎨 Dark'Art, the Biennale of Contemporary African Art, is one of the continent’s largest contemporary art event, with some 450,000 visitors in 2022. Nigerian-American visual artist Kehinde Wiley (who made Obama’s official portrait) opened his Black Rock artist residency near Dakar in 2019.
🎸The All-Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) have taken place in January Dakar for the past 8 years.
🏀 The city is host to brand new basketball facilities used by the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Basketball Africa League (BAL), and a state-of-the-art 50,000-seat football stadium. Traditional Senegalese wrestling is also an incredibly popular sport drawing huge crowds.
🎊 The Dakar carnival, which takes place in November, aims to rival the great carnival of Rio in Brazil.
🌴 And then, of course, there's the beaches.
Will 2023 be my Dakar year?
(Great article on Quartz by birdstoryagency)