Senior partner of Avaara Partners and former country manager of Tech4Dev, Micheal John, has unveiled fresh insights into Nigeria’s creative sector.
John spoke on Thursday at the Nigeria Creative Ecosystem Report Dissemination and Creative Tracker Launch, held at Radisson Hotel, Ikeja GRA.
The event, described as a milestone, spotlighted opportunities and insights on how Nigeria’s creative economy can grow, scale and thrive globally. It followed extensive research carried out across seven states; Lagos, Kano, Cross River, Anambra, Kwara, Plateau and Adamawa, representing Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
Addressing creatives and stakeholders, John said, “Whether it’s film, music or fashion, you find out that the need for discovery is snippet across this platforms. In music a lot of us have discovered that even though japa is happening, japa is also spending a lot of money to consume entertain-yea, so when people leave the country, they miss home and when Nigerian artiste go to those location to tour, people who have left the country find out that they have more money that they can spend on concert. So it’s a thing.
“We’ve seen the emergence of gospel artist going mainstream, for us this finding was unique because there was a time gospel artist didn’t have affinity for record label. They probably didn’t know how to commercialise or approach the secular field. But with the fact that they now have the ability to be stand-alone artist, some of them are embracing more this platforms to go main stream. There’s is still a gap when it comes to the business of doing music.
“The first thing we noticed is there’s a lack of transparency when it comes to royalties. We found out that on the artist side, the artist are like I don’t really know how much I’m earning and I think they are cheating me, on the label side, they are like we are spending so much and we think we are being cheated.
“When we started the research for the film industry, we were of the assumption that a lot of nice things have happened, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount…which was true but by the time we were ending the research, it was no longer true because while the entities came in, mid way they pulled out so we saw fluctuation with respect to investment that came into commissioning work for the film industry. Producers today have leaned towards YouTube and Advert Video on Demand Platforms (AVOD) as their go to.
“There’s a lot of activity in the celebration period, dirty December was a hit back to back for Nigeria but when you zoom out and look beyond dirty December, it’s mostly the fact that even the screen, the viewership is dropping, so we see a lot move to launching contents on a platform like YouTube.
“YouTube has taken over from streaming platforms when it comes to entertainment, people will rather watch YouTube today than local TV or streaming platforms.
“We’ve also seen regulations tighten up. In 2022 and 2023 there was regulation limit in respect to how you showed the use of tobacco, money rituals, etc and we know this has affected a number of creators who have written stories but their productions don’t see the light of day because a number of these things are flagged.”
Others who spoke included co-founder of Tech4Dev, Oladiwura Oladepo, who delivered a welcome address highlighting the vision and impact of the Nigeria creative ecosystem report; and director of the UK–Nigeria Tech Hub at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Oyinkansola Akintola-Bello, who reaffirmed her organisation’s commitment to supporting the sector.
The launch of the Nigeria Creative Economy Growth, Innovation and Impact (NCEGII) tracker was performed by Oyinkansola Akintola-Bello and Micheal John.
Speaking to journalists after his presentation, John said, “Okay, so the presentation in there is for the NCEGII project, the Nigeria Creative Economy Innovation and Growth projects. The project is in partnership with the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, particularly the UK tech hub and the idea behind the project was to ensure that we were able to do a thorough investigation of Nigeria’s creative economy and mapping it from a value chain stand point.
“A lot of research had been done in the past, but none has actually taken the standpoint of the value chain, which means understanding how value is created, from creation/conceptualization to production…to distribution, getting it into the hands of consumers and exhibition.
“This was done across seven states and across four key industries-the music, fashion, film and last but not least, content creation, which we have rightly named micro video. These industries are very fundamental to the creative economy.
“Afrobeats across the world is top five of music genre consumed. So we wanted to understand what it was like for the average creator…Where do you get the skill from? How do you come up with the idea? How easy is it for you to turn this thing into an actual product? And even after you’ve turned it to a product, are you able to distribute it? How do you collect money? What kind of technology do you use? What is missing? Do you need staff? And if you need staff, are you getting skilled staff?”
On how the initiative would help the industry, John explained: “Nobody invests in anything that they don’t understand…Bringing to light how the eco system works to create value, it sheds that light, it gives you an understanding of what you’re investing in as a first step.
“At a macro level, If I understand that there’s a lot of infrastructure that is needed, can I co-invest with let’s say the Bank of Industry? Or CBN. To put in a PPP agreement and say, I will create a hub. Right, I would put my money to create a hub. This is how I would collect my money from the creators working in that hub over a period of, I don’t know, five years, three years, right? And so with this understanding comes with the appetite for risk, and with the appetite for risk comes investment, and with investment comes a track record and then comes skill.”
He also cited infrastructure issues and inconsistent data across states as some of the challenges encountered during the research.
Founder and president of Tech4Dev, Joel Ogunsola, gave the vote of thanks. He said, “We are super excited about the support we’ve received over the last one year from the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office and as well as the support we’ve gotten from the States, from Lagos to Kwara to Plateau. Super excited, we think that this is only just the beginning of the work we will do.
“Based on feedback and some of the suggestions that we’ve received, look out and watch out for some next steps in terms of what we’re going to be doing around this. Ultimately, I say a very big thank you to the team, Micheal and the rest of the team that also worked extensively on this. Super excited about what this will lead to in terms of starting a journey of really tracking where we are, what are the gaps and how far do we still need to go and ultimately what the future state will look like.”
The event ended with group photographs and networking among participants.
