Editorial

Translating creativity into sustainable economic growth: Perspectives from the African Creative Industries Symposium (London, 18 October 2025)

Yossie Olaleye, Lauren England

Copyright: © 2026. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Introduction

The African Creative Industries Symposium¹ organised on 18 October 2025 in London (UK) by the Africa Centre and British Council in collaboration with King’s College London brought together artists, cultural practitioners, policymakers, investors and academics from across Africa and the UK. The event spotlighted creative economies as engines of growth, innovation and cultural diplomacy. Through four panels addressing fashion, visual arts, music and finance, speakers acknowledged the rising global visibility and international recognition of Africa’s creativity, but also exposed challenges and struggles in translating this creative momentum into sustainable economic growth.

From film to music, fashion and gaming, Africa’s creative industries are commanding increasing global attention as cultural powerhouses (Mensah 2025). Afrobeats music is dominating streaming and social media platforms (Allen 2024), while fashion designers from Lagos to Nairobi and Accra are building a global following (Checinska & Murray 2025). Yet, this cultural visibility does not translate seamlessly into opportunities for scale or sustained economic returns. This disconnect reflects deeper structural issues that cut across sectors in the creative economy: fragmented policy environments, inadequate physical and digital infrastructure, and financing models disconnected from the realities of creative business (Comunian, Hracs & England 2021). The discussions throughout the event combined practitioner insight with academic research and sector data to examine and contextualise barriers to realising the potential of Africa’s creative industries.

(Dis)connections in Africa’s fashion value chain

The event opened with the fashion panel focused on value chains, presenting insights and challenges for the sector. For example, Dr Lauren England (King’s College London) noted that despite an abundance of raw natural material, many African markets lack the industrial capacity and infrastructure needed across the value chain (from farm to fashion), limiting opportunities for local value retention and creating a reliance on imported materials (UNESCO 2023). Valerie Lawson (CVL Beauty and My Runway Group) also highlighted that strategic value chain connections between fashion and beauty industries were being overlooked across the continent, limiting opportunities for integrated value capture across both sectors.

The panel discussed how the absence of production infrastructure impacts designers’ ability to progress from small-scale artisanal production. Yoanna Okwesa (The Assembly Hub) shared that designers in her network face impossible choices – they could either stay small, producing expensive bespoke pieces for a small group of customers or attempt to meet minimum order quantities required by large factories, which means producing thousands of units without the assurance of sales. Dr England described this as the ‘missing middle’, drawing on her research into how African fashion businesses struggle to access medium-scale manufacturing infrastructure (England 2025).

High energy costs and logistical inefficiencies across Africa were noted as further challenges to capacity building, and Lofti Aoulad (Das Relais) identified the need for policies to support manufacturing hubs. The panel also discussed the need for finance tailored to small and medium enterprises that make up the majority of Africa’s fashion sector; without access to capital, designers cannot meet the demands required for retail partnerships or exports. Toyin Lawani (King of Fashion) highlighted the importance of business skills training to support brands to grow sustainably. The panel then questioned what ‘sustainability’ means in African contexts. Okwesa challenged the idea that designers should simply adopt European certification frameworks, arguing instead for regenerative practices – production systems that sustain both people and planet, built on indigenous African knowledge and heritage.

While the potential of Africa’s fashion industry is substantial, it requires coordinated policy efforts to address infrastructure gaps, strengthen regional value chains, develop appropriate finance mechanisms and support businesses to move beyond bespoke markets.

Visual arts and the African imagination: Who controls the narrative?

The visual arts panel shifted to questions of power, access and visibility. Moderator Barbra Okafor (LSE) asked: ‘Who controls the platforms, and who gets to be seen?’, echoing the structural barriers identified in fashion. Just as designers struggle to access manufacturing infrastructure and retail partnerships, visual artists and galleries face institutional gatekeeping that determines whose work enters international markets and gains legitimacy. Recent evidence from the British Council (2023) confirms this dynamic; while commercial representation of contemporary African art is growing, it remains concentrated in one or two major galleries per country rather than system-wide development, leaving local ecosystems fragile and dependent on distinct hubs.

Touria El Glaoui (1–54 Contemporary African Art Fair) reflected on 13 years of building platforms for African galleries with the mission of supporting artists’ global visibility. While African galleries have seen increased recognition at international art fairs, this attention works in cycles that feel precarious rather than sustainable: a gallery is noticed one day, experiences a surge in interest, and then struggles when attention shifts elsewhere. El Glaoui emphasised the need to build domestic collector ecosystems rather than depending solely on international markets, echoing others’ arguments in favour of localising value retention. Other panellists noted that like most industries, art has entry rules and barriers, yet workshops and education on the continent about how to become international-art-fair-ready remain limited. Emerging artists need supportive infrastructure that builds gallery relationships before they reach platforms like 1–54, which works with ‘bankable’ artists – those who have completed up to three shows.

For artist Anastasia Pather (Spier Arts Trust), the challenge is in the language of ‘support’, arguing that creatives do not need support but rather platforms, agency and recognition of their work’s inherent value. This reframing matters because talking about ‘supporting’ African artists positions them as beneficiaries of external assistance rather than as economic actors building viable businesses. Pather noted that partnerships with stakeholders linked to the global marketplace provide consistency for independent artists. This includes the international restaurant chain, Nando’s, which has built one of the largest collections of Southern African art. Additionally, social media platforms such as Instagram offer an instant marketplace that empowers artists to bypass traditional gatekeeping structures.

Music and soft power: Translating visibility into returns

The music panel continued with the theme of global visibility without corresponding domestic value capture. Moderator Dr Olawale Ismail (King’s College London) framed youth demographics and rapid technology adoption as dual forces that accelerate growth while exposing gaps in sustainable monetisation. In 2025, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reported that recorded music revenues in sub-Saharan Africa grew by 22.6% in 2024, surpassing $110 million for the first time, with South Africa accounting for 74.6% of the region’s revenues (IFPI 2025). Gracey Mae (MAE PR) noted that the sector’s extraordinary visibility often masks the uneven distribution of revenue across the continent. Laverne Thomas (Warner Africa) explained that streaming economics drive this disparity. For example, in Nigeria, the music industry operates as an export-led market with high consumption but low earnings, because payouts per stream remain comparatively low. This means that artists often rely on alternative revenue sources, including brand endorsements, live performances, private gigs and advertising (Ahmed 2025).

The speakers agreed that more effective legal and regulatory infrastructure, including stronger intellectual property laws and functioning royalty collection systems, will be central to converting visibility into sustainable income. The Nigerian case study in the IFPI report reflects these concerns, with industry executives emphasising that government enforcement against illegal services offering free music remains essential for long-term sector growth. Despite these structural barriers, speakers noted shifting perceptions of creative work as a viable career path. Thomas observed that universities now teach music business and young people demonstrate entrepreneurial resilience, while Adesegun Adeosun Jr, also known as King SMADE (Afro Nation) described how Afrobeats has become a source of cultural identity that creates opportunities across creative sectors.

Financing Africa’s creative industries

Closing the symposium, the financing panel addressed the persistent mismatch between available capital and the needs of Africa’s creative industries. Wakiuru Njuguna (Heva Fund) argued that current financing models often replicate templates unsuited to the creative sector, emphasising the need for patient capital aligned with production cycles, touring seasons and uneven cash flows. She also highlighted the growing importance of grant funding, especially for research, heritage and early-stage development, where commercial returns are not immediate (Njuguna et al. 2021). This point was reinforced by Professor Roberta Comunian (King’s College London), who echoed the call for an ecosystem approach (De Bernard, Comunian & Gross 2022) that acknowledges the diversity of business models and revenue structures in the creative industries, where finance supports different stages of creative production rather than concentrating narrowly on high-return segments. Over-investment in only the most commercially visible subsectors risks undermining the system that supports talent development, experimentation and sector resilience.

Building on this, Bayo Omoboriowo (Tikera Africa) identified low trust and weak data as barriers to investment, arguing that improving the collection, quality and accessibility of industry data is essential to closing the gap between perceived and actual risk. Citing examples such as purpose-built creative incubators and hubs, he highlighted the importance of visibility in attracting investors and gaining policy attention. Professor Eka Ikpe (King’s College London) also proposed social infrastructure as an important part of creative industry investment, because existing financial instruments rarely account for the uneven and informal arrangements that characterise much of the sector. She highlighted the importance of mobilising domestic private capital, arguing that local investment both signals confidence and provides greater stability than reliance on foreign capital.

Across the discussion, speakers linked financing constraints to wider structural challenges, including mobility barriers, currency fluctuation and trade facilitation issues. The panel agreed that sustainable creative sector financing requires a combination of patient capital, robust public policy, improved data and transparent market infrastructure to ensure that Africa’s creative industries can translate their cultural influence into long-term economic value.

Conclusion

The symposium revealed a consistent pattern across Africa’s creative sectors: global visibility and cultural influence have outpaced the development of infrastructure, policy frameworks and financing mechanisms needed to translate attention into sustainable economic returns. Whether in fashion’s missing middle, visual arts’ cyclical international attention, music’s streaming revenue disparities or creative sector financing gaps, the structural barriers remain strikingly similar. Speakers emphasised that African creative economies do not require external validation, but rather recognition of existing innovation as a foundation for building ecosystems with appropriate infrastructure, establishing responsive policy frameworks and mobilising capital aligned to creative business realities.

Acknowledgement

We thank Professor Roberta Comunian for firstly, suggesting the idea to report on the conference and secondly, reviewing the initial drafts of this article. This article is based on discussions during the UK/Kenya Season 2025: African Creative Industries Symposium, held in Bush House, King’s College London, London, WC2B 4BG, on 18 October 2025. The article summarises the talking points from all speakers and is written with permission from the conference organisers.

References

Footnote

1. The event was part of the broader British Council UK/Kenya Season of Culture celebrating cultural exchange and innovation. The symposium was supported by the British Council, the Africa Centre, King’s College London, NATAAL Media, the Programme for African Leadership (PfAL) at LSE, 1–54 Contemporary African Art Fair and the Kenya Tourism Board. More information: https://www.africacentre.org.uk/Event/a-ukkenya-2025-african-creative-industries-symposium.