Rabat – At GITEX Africa, conversations among founders, investors, and policymakers about the continent’s tech ecosystem often orbit familiar sectors: fintech, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and logistics.
Yet, beneath the surface of the continent’s innovation economy lies another sector quietly building momentum: the creative economy.
From music and film to fashion, live experiences, and creator-led businesses, Africa’s cultural industries are increasingly reaching global audiences. But visibility alone does not translate into economic power.
For Chukwuyemisi Isichei, a venture capital researcher and creative economy strategist, the real transformation lies not in viral moments or global trends, but in the systems being built behind them.
Her work sits at the intersection of venture capital, technology, and the creative industries, a space she entered through an unusual career path that began with finance and entrepreneurship.
“I got into VC after my Post Graduate Diploma in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Design,” Isichei told MWN.
“The program introduced me to the world of startups and VC as we were all mandated to run startups of our own in groups. With my first degree in accounting and this new found knowledge, I wanted to chase a career in funding underserved startups.”
For Isichei, venture capital research became the logical entry point into the industry.
“I believed that the best way to become the best investor possible was to learn as much as I possibly could about the industries I wanted to invest in, so starting my VC career in Investment Research was a no brainer,” she highlighted.
A personal connection to the creative industries
Her interest in the creative economy was not purely academic. Long before she began studying the sector from an investment perspective, Isichei had already been deeply immersed in it as a consumer.
“I have always been an avid consumer of creative output – from books to movies to music,” she said.
“I am that person that watches BTS footage of my favourite shows, business interviews from artist managers and authors.”
The turning point came during her early career in venture capital when she noticed a pattern in how investors approached creative businesses.
“At my first fund, I saw creative businesses consistently rejected as ‘Out of Scope’ for our venture thesis and slowly started building my conviction on how to develop funding models that could work for this industry I was so very interested in,” she explained.
That realization pushed her to begin researching how venture capital structures could better support creative businesses across Africa.
A sector proving its economic value
For years, the conversation around African creativity has focused heavily on cultural influence, from the global rise of African music to the international success of fashion designers and filmmakers.
But Isichei believes the real turning point for the sector is economic legitimacy.
“The ability of the industry to contribute to the continent’s GDP,” she mentioned when asked what first drew her to researching the creative economy.
“Whilst exporting our culture and content is important, the economics of production, growth and value is equally if not more important,” she emphasized.
“I always think about economic viability as the ultimate measure of a sector’s seriousness. Not sentiment, not cultural pride, not soft power, but whether it genuinely moves the needle on an economy.”
The numbers increasingly support that argument.
“Kenya’s creative and cultural industries contributed 5.32% of its GDP as far back as 2013, Nigeria’s entertainment sector is projected to reach $13.6 billion by 2028, and Sub-Saharan Africa’s music revenue grew by 22.6% in 2024, surpassing $100 million for the first time,” she continued. “These are hard economic data points.”
“They are the same language we use to justify investment in financial services, agriculture, and manufacturing. The creative economy is now earning the right to be in those conversations.”
Understanding the ‘creative economy’
Despite its growing visibility, the term “creative economy” is often used loosely. For Isichei, the definition must capture both cultural expression and economic output.
“I’m going to defer to the definition given by one of Africa’s top creative voices, Marie Lora-Mungai,” she stressed.
“‘The African Cultural and Creative Industries are the sectors that harness and showcase the continent’s cultures, creativity, and intellectual property to produce goods and services that generate economic growth, create employment, and project Africa’s soft power globally.’”
According to that framework, the sector spans multiple industries including audio-visual media and entertainment, fashion and design, lifestyle and beauty, culinary arts, sports and entertainment, as well as creative business services.
Where the biggest opportunities lie
Through her research and conversations with industry leaders, Isichei has identified several areas within the creative economy that hold strong potential for investment.
“The infrastructure around music (rights management, publishing, distribution, and catalogue investment) is where the most immediate investment opportunity sits in Music and Audio content, because the demand is already proven and the monetisation gap is still wide,” she said.
Film and content production follow closely behind.
“Film and content production is a close second, with Nollywood, Kenya’s rebate-driven production hub, and a growing francophone film market all demonstrating that African storytelling has genuine global commercial appetite behind it,” she highlighted.
Yet the sector that she finds most compelling may surprise some observers.
“But the sector I find most personally compelling is one that is easy to overlook because it is so physical, and it is the infrastructure that makes live experiences possible,” she shared.
“This spans the full range, from large-scale concert venues to intimate community spaces, professional audio and visual production, ticketing platforms, and everything else that makes an event actually work.”
The shift, she explained, is being driven by younger creators and audiences.
“What makes this moment particularly interesting is that it is no longer just established artists filling arenas. Younger, smaller creators are increasingly hosting their own events and gatherings, because a younger generation is actively seeking out third spaces.”
The challenge of monetization
While African creators are increasingly building global audiences, turning that attention into sustainable income remains difficult.
Research into the creator economy reveals stark realities.
“From the research we carried out for the Africa Creator Economy Report 2.0, only 5.8% of creators list ad revenue as a meaningful source of income, and more than 60% of creators earn less than $100 a month from their creative work,” Isichei underlined.
Instead, creators are building revenue streams through alternative models.
“What is sustaining creators instead is the informal market for brand partnerships, digital products, consulting, training, and direct-to-consumer sales.”
Platforms that allow creators to sell directly to their communities are playing an increasingly important role.
“The business models gaining traction are the ones that bypass platform dependency entirely and have creators selling knowledge and access directly to their communities through digital products and paid memberships,” she added.
The creator-to-founder evolution
Beyond monetization, Isichei believes the most significant transformation underway is the evolution of creators into entrepreneurs.
“A creator building an audience is building distribution, brand equity, and market trust simultaneously,” she clarified.
“The most commercially sophisticated creators eventually morph into founder-led businesses: launching products, commanding licensing deals, building companies around their cultural influence.”
Investors who fail to understand that evolution risk overlooking massive opportunities.
“Investors consistently underestimate the addressable market for creator-focused businesses in Africa, particularly because they look at formal revenue figures rather than at reach,” she highlighted.
“There are over 272 million verified ad reachable accounts on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram alone in Africa. This is an audience on par with the entire population of Western Europe’s three largest countries.”
Why transparency will determine investment
Despite this potential, venture capital investment in Africa has historically concentrated in sectors such as fintech and logistics.
For the creative economy to attract similar attention, Isichei believes transparency and data will be essential.
“Fintech attracts serious capital in Africa because it can demonstrate metrics investors already understand such as transaction volumes, user growth, and revenue per user,” she said.
“The creative economy has not yet been able to do the same. Valuations are inconsistent, royalty flows are opaque, and most creative businesses are not structured in ways that make due diligence straightforward.”
But the deeper issue, she explained, is also cultural.
“Players across the ecosystem, artists, labels, distributors, studios, have historically been reluctant to open their books, often out of distrust or a lack of secure infrastructure to do so safely,” she said.
“Data transparency is the foundation on which investor confidence is built.”
The role of global tech gatherings
This is where expos like GITEX Africa become important.
For Isichei, the value of such gatherings lies less in the panels themselves and more in the interactions they enable.
“Events like GITEX Africa matter most not because of what happens on the stage but because of what happens in the margins,” she added.
“The creative economy has a visibility problem with the technology and investment community, and gatherings that put both in the same room are one of the few mechanisms that close that gap organically.”
Ultimately, she believes the real impact of these events will be measured after the conference ends.
“The measure of their value is not how many panels discuss the creative economy, but how many deals, partnerships, and investments they produce in the months after,” she emphasized.
This year at GITEX, The Founders’ Room will spotlight the 10X Stage, Africa’s premier scale-up platform.
It’s a dynamic space where founders, investors, and industry operators come together to exchange ideas, showcase innovation, and explore opportunities to grow their ventures.
From startups with big visions to established companies aiming to expand, the 10X Stage is designed to help bold ideas reach new heights across the continent.
Attendees can expect engaging talks, practical insights, and networking with some of Africa’s most ambitious entrepreneurs and investors.
A vision for the next decade
Looking ahead ten years, Isichei envisions a far more mature creative ecosystem across Africa, one supported by professional infrastructure, legal frameworks, and reliable financial systems.
“One where a production studio on the continent can build entire livelihoods from IP, earning from box office, streaming rights, international distribution, merchandise, soundtrack licensing, theme parks and events, sequels, because the systems exist to capture every point of the value chain,” she said.
“It is an economy where rights are registered, royalties are tracked, and the data is clean enough that a global investor can read a report and deploy capital with confidence.”
More importantly, creativity itself would no longer be seen as a risky career path sustained by side jobs.
“It is one where creativity is not a gamble sustained by side hustles, but a profession supported by an entire ecosystem,” she highlighted.
That ecosystem, she explained, would include lawyers specializing in entertainment intellectual property, accountants who understand royalty structures, agents negotiating global deals, and financiers capable of valuing creative catalogs.