The Director of Intra-African Trade and Export Development (Creatives and Diaspora) at the African Export-Import Bank, Temwa Gondwe, speaks with ARINZE NWAFOR on how Africa’s creative economy is rapidly evolving into a key driver of economic transformation, capable of matching, or even surpassing, the contribution of oil and gas. He also outlines how Afreximbank addresses the sector’s core challenges, from financing and IP protection to market access and diaspora engagement.
How well-positioned is the creative industry to grow Nigeria and Africa’s GDP?
The creative sector is essential to Africa’s next phase of economic growth. At Afreximbank, we recognise this through the Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX), our flagship programme supporting the growth of Africa and the Caribbean’s (or what we call “Global Africa’s”) creative industries. We’ve seen the economic impact of sectors like music, fashion, film, digital content, and sports. They’re youth-driven, labour-intensive and innovation-led, exactly the kind of industries needed to drive inclusive, sustainable development.
Take Nigeria, for example: Nollywood is the second-largest film industry globally by volume and employs over a million people. Afrobeats is now a global sound, generating revenue through streaming, live events, brand deals, and licensing. Lagos-based designers are gaining visibility on the runways of Paris and New York. These are not outliers; they’re evidence of a broader systemic shift.
To fully unlock this potential, we need investment, infrastructure, intellectual property (IP) protection, and strong distribution channels. That’s why Afreximbank launched CANEX, to provide financing, build capacity, and facilitate market access. With the right support, we believe Africa’s creative economy can rival oil and gas in both GDP contribution and global influence.
How do you describe the creative sector in Africa?
It is one of Africa’s most dynamic and future-facing sectors, with far-reaching economic implications. Projections suggest that by 2040, Africa’s creative and cultural industries could generate over $20bn annually and create more than 20 million jobs. Many of these jobs are digital, informal, and youth-led—offering a real solution to Africa’s unemployment and demographic challenges.
But beyond economics, the sector helps define Africa’s identity globally. It shapes perceptions and enhances our soft power key assets for attracting investment and trade.
How so?
Absolutely. Consider how the world came to know Levi’s jeans or cowboy boots through Hollywood. Culture shapes global tastes, aspirations, and demand, paving the way for trade. In that sense, creative content sells the story, and the real-sector goods and services follow. At CANEX, we describe the creative economy as Africa’s “invisible gold”, a rich but underleveraged resource that’s now on the rise.
Africa’s creative sector is vibrant, resilient, and becoming increasingly formalised, especially with the right policies and the growing participation of financial players in the ecosystem. What makes a market is not just financing. There must be players who facilitate the marketplace to build that ecosystem support. At Afreximbank, we think Africa’s creative industries will not just entertain the world but will also help transform Africa and the whole world.
Afreximbank recently launched the $1bn Africa Film Fund. What’s the latest on this fund, and have there been other investments in Nigeria and beyond?
Afreximbank has long recognised the creative sector as a powerful economic driver. We champion this through our CANEX programme, which is built on six key pillars: financing, capacity building, applications and partnerships, digitisation, policy advocacy, and export development and investment promotion.
In terms of financing, we’ve established a $2bn facility to provide credit and also launched CANEX Creations Incorporated, an intellectual property investment vehicle that helps creatives commercialise their work through licensing, royalty structures, and more; and we are on the way to operationalizing the Africa Film Fund. Our goal is to drive collaboration between Africa and the diaspora, what we call ‘Global Africa’. This helps us take greater ownership of our content, address distribution challenges, and ultimately grow the sector by owning our stories and narratives.
Why does royalty structure appear to be a major concern for creators in Africa’s creative industry?
Many global platforms operating in Africa, such as TikTok, YouTube, and others, offer significantly lower payouts to African artists than they do in Western markets. This discrepancy is a major concern across the creative sector, especially when considering the commercial potential of African intellectual property.
Why is there a disparity in pay?
Several factors contribute to the gap. For one, platform algorithms are not optimised to favour African content, and advertising revenues generated from the continent tend to be much lower than in the US or Europe. These structural issues limit how much artists can earn, even when their content is widely consumed.
Ultimately, we need an Africa-first approach to commercialising talent. As long as we depend on external platforms, our creators will remain underpaid. We may need to build new distribution systems, from scratch, tailored to local realities and scalable to a population of over one billion.
We also need to rethink consumption models. Western-style subscriptions, monthly or annual, do not always align with Africa’s economic realities, where many people operate on a daily income. Any sustainable platform must reflect this reality. While it’s important to push for fairer terms on global platforms, the long-term solution lies in building systems that work for us by us.
What role does the African diaspora play in building this economy?
At Afreximbank, intra-African trade is defined not just as commerce between African countries but also among Africans in the diaspora, wherever they may be. Much of what is exported from Africa is driven by demand from Africans abroad, whether in the US, the UK, Brazil, or the Caribbean. So, intra-African trade must go beyond geography and include the broader African identity. We must also pay close attention to the mindset of Global Africa. In today’s increasingly multipolar world, communities are reconnecting with their cultural heritage as a pathway to economic opportunity. Africans, wherever we live, must similarly look to our roots for trade and investment potential.
There is no reason Africa shouldn’t be trading extensively with the Caribbean, for example. We share a common history, similar cultural practices, cuisines, music, and even fashion. Brazil is another prime example; it is, demographically speaking, the second-largest African country after Nigeria. These cultural and historical ties should form the basis of structured economic relationships.
How do we structure the African diaspora?
What we currently see is a significant flow of funds from the diaspora into Africa, largely in the form of remittances used for essential needs like school fees or home repairs. However, this financial flow lacks a structured framework that channels it into Africa’s broader industrialisation and development agenda.
Afreximbank is addressing this gap by working closely with diaspora communities and partner countries to explore instruments such as diaspora bonds. We are also facilitating both cultural and professional exchange, while directing diaspora investment into high-potential African portfolio companies—ensuring that these flows contribute meaningfully to sustainable economic transformation.
Has the African diaspora reached out to partner with Afreximbank’s creative efforts?
Absolutely. We have established the Global Africa Gateway at the Africa Centre in New York, which is our dedicated outpost to engage directly with the diaspora in the United States. Additionally, we now have 13 Caribbean countries that have joined Afreximbank as participating member states and are actively accessing our facilities. Beyond financing, we are focused on building lasting bridges, culturally, economically, and professionally, between Africa and its diaspora, especially across the Caribbean.
What challenges have you faced in breaking through in the creative sector in Nigeria and across Africa?
Building a robust ecosystem for Africa’s creative economy is not without its challenges. One of the most pressing is the perception of risk. Traditional financial institutions often struggle to assess the value of creative assets, be it intellectual property, screenplays, music catalogues, or fashion collections, making it difficult for creatives to access working capital or scale their businesses. Of course, financial institutions will rightly say, “The business also needs structure.” That is precisely why we launched the CANEX programme, to bridge this gap with financial solutions specifically tailored for the unique dynamics of the creative sector. We are working to de-risk investment in the space and crowd in other financial partners.
Another major hurdle is the informal nature of the creative economy. A significant number of creatives operate outside formal structures, limiting their ability to grow, protect their work, or engage in cross-border trade. To address this, we have placed strong emphasis on capacity building, offering masterclasses, workshops, incubation programmes, and SME accelerators aimed at formalising and professionalising the industry.
Intellectual property protection also remains a critical concern. Many African creatives are unable to fully monetise their work due to weak IP frameworks and limited access to IP financing. Through CANEX Creations Incorporated, our dedicated subsidiary under the Fund for Export Development in Africa, we are investing in IP-based businesses and initiatives.
Our goal is to support the development of investment-grade creative assets, whether by licensing, scaling brands, or building globally competitive creative enterprises.
Can you emphasise the perception challenge?
By perception, I’m referring to the urgent need for policymakers and investors to view the creative sector not merely as entertainment but as a serious business with immense economic potential. Encouragingly, some African governments, Nigeria being a notable example, are beginning to acknowledge this. They recognise the transformative power of creative industries to drive inclusive growth and structural economic change. That’s why advocacy is a core part of our mandate. We are actively engaging with institutions such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and the African Union Commission to push for critical reforms in areas like services trade, labour mobility, and intellectual property rights.
Our goal is clear. We want governments across Africa and Global Africa to elevate the creative economy as a strategic engine for industrialisation and transformation.
This commitment also underpins the creation of what I call the Global African Platform, anchored through our Creative Africa Nexus at the Intra-African Trade Fair 2025. From 4 to 10 September in Algiers, Algeria, we expect to host over 5,000 creatives from across the continent and the diaspora. The platform will feature more than 200 exhibitors spanning fashion, film, music, visual arts, and digital content. It’s a powerful opportunity to connect creatives with investors, buyers, and collaborators and we anticipate millions of dollars in deal flow to emerge from this engagement. So, to every creative professional looking to plug into Africa’s dynamic creative economy: get your ticket and join us in Algiers this September. The future of the creative industry is being shaped there.
