00:00Hello and a warm welcome to Business Africa.
00:14I'm your host Afolake, Oilo Ye The Top Stories This Week.
00:18Making Africa's creative sector bankable, we explore how Africa's booming creative industry
00:23is transforming cultural influence into hard bankable collateral.
00:30Traffic gridlock is tight in its grip on Tanzania's commercial capital as the city edges toward
00:36mega-city status with profound economic consequences.
00:42Sub-Saharan Africa crosses the one billion mobile money account MAC as telecom companies
00:48cement their role as the continent's dominant financial force.
00:51As African artists dominate global charts, fashion runways and streaming platforms,
01:00a new push is underway to turn cultural influence into tangible economic value.
01:06From fresh G20 declarations to landmark legal reforms in Nigeria, the foundations of Africa's
01:12creative economy are being rebuilt.
01:14Let's find out how these structural changes are finally allowing creators to use their
01:19arts as collateral.
01:22For decades, Africa's creative sector has been celebrated for its vibrancy, yet it has remained
01:28one of the continent's most undervalued assets.
01:31But 2025 has marked a historic turning point.
01:34The defining breakthrough came this November at the G20 summit in Johannesburg, where for the
01:41first time, global leaders officially recognized the creative economy as a central pillar of global
01:46industrial strategy.
01:48Historically, African talent has been trapped in a fragmented legal ecosystem, a web of 54
01:54different national frameworks that often lack harmonization.
01:57This fragmentation has left creators vulnerable to international copyright acquisition, with over
02:0322 billion dollars spent globally on acquiring catalogues in recent years, often leaving original
02:08African authors without ownership or long-term royalties.
02:13But local solutions are now scaling to close this 42 billion dollars financing gap.
02:19Nigeria's landmark approval of its national intellectual property policy last month is a game-changer.
02:25It establishes a framework where intellectual property can finally be used as bank collateral,
02:31turning intangible songs and films into hard capital.
02:35Further evidence of this potential comes from a recent UNESCO report revealing that Africa's
02:40publishing sector alone could be worth 18.5 billion dollars annually if structural barriers are removed.
02:48To unpack this shift, we're joined by our due Mike Currie, creative industry expert.
02:53Thank you for joining us on the show.
02:57Now, should we be looking at regional solutions to better protect our creators?
03:01When we look at ECOWAS, which is, you know, the West African states, for example, they could have
03:05a copyright regime that they all kind of subscribe to that gives you a baseline that says, okay,
03:12these are our aspirations.
03:14And the idea is empowerment for the creators.
03:17It is about ensuring that they have ownership of what they create as well.
03:22Because I think one of the things that we must be very careful about is that in the marketplace
03:27where there's a lot of money floating around, there is a wiper report.
03:30In the world of copyrights, catalog acquisitions around the world, there have been over 22 billion US dollars
03:36over the past five to 10 years dedicated to just acquiring copyrights and being able to invest in it.
03:44Because now you can see a retired investment with copyrights.
03:49You've made blockbuster movies.
03:51You've sold millions of records.
03:52You've sold 10 million clothes.
03:55There's a track record.
03:56That means I can actually raise money from my sales and I can even assign these rights.
04:02So the issue really is that there is not one model that fits all the African countries.
04:08And Africa needs to evolve its own regional system at first, maybe, and then have something
04:13that's a bit more, you know, and the AFCT agreement, I think, is a great vehicle to be able to socialize
04:18that, to ensure that that is driven by all countries, at least to the extent possible through the treaty.
04:25What are the most dangerous pitfalls creators face when signing international contracts?
04:30Number one is that you are contracting with parties and jurisdictions that you don't understand.
04:36So you'll find that there are quite a few contracts that come from the US or the UK and they'll
04:40be like, oh, we'll use the US law.
04:42But what is the US law?
04:43And is the law in New York the same thing as the law in California?
04:46It's not the same.
04:47So you're going into a place that's going to be expensive for you.
04:50It's going to be time consuming because just even the flight stuff is going to be an issue
04:54if you're flying in to defend yourself.
04:57And third, because you do not even understand the structure.
05:01You are batting blind, literally.
05:03So what happens?
05:04If there is a dispute, you cannot defend it adequately.
05:08And if you bring it back to Nigeria or Ghana or South Africa, you don't have jurisdiction.
05:13So you have lost value.
05:15That's the first thing you need to understand about this.
05:17The second thing is around even enforcement.
05:19Like how do you enforce a copyright when you're not even registered in certain jurisdictions
05:22that you can enforce it in?
05:25The third is around just basic education.
05:29We need to be able to evolve better ways to fund the protection of copyrights.
05:34And then I think the other thing about just contracting is that you need to find lawyers.
05:38You need to find lawyers who are actually specialists in that area.
05:42We're seeing a shift towards treating creativity as a bankable asset.
05:47Aside from this policy, what are the critical solutions to ensure creators monetize their work in the long term?
05:53I think education is a real important thing.
05:56Do we understand the rights that we have?
05:58Do we understand, for example, that it's possible to create a movie for Netflix or Amazon or whatever platform it is,
06:06and you can simply license it to them and you have a reversionary right after three or four years?
06:10That means that you cannot take back your product and you can exploit it and syndicate across different platforms.
06:17That way, you are making money in perpetuity.
06:20Do we understand those things?
06:21And we talked about practical steps in getting that.
06:24There's the each one teach one syndrome, but I think more importantly,
06:28there needs to be very, very clear platforms where we're teaching in schools.
06:33In fact, intellectual property rights should be part of the curriculum when kids are younger.
06:37There shouldn't be when you're in university per se.
06:40From the age of 11 to 12, you're in secondary school, you should understand what ownership means.
06:46Mr. Mike Corey, thank you so much for those insights.
06:53The Aisalam home to around 6 million people is expanding at breakneck speed, but the city is struggling to move.
07:00Despite the relocation of most government offices to Tanzania's political capital,
07:06traffic congestion continued to choke productivity.
07:09Isaac Lukando reports for Afrika News.
07:14Traffic congestion is a daily reality in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.
07:19Experts estimate it is draining nearly $1 billion from the city's economy every year.
07:24A trip that should take five minutes can stretch to an hour, and a half-hour journey can last too.
07:33Traffic congestion has become a serious problem, and the government needs to address it urgently.
07:39To ease congestion, the government says it is investing in road upgrades, flyovers,
07:44and the expansion of the city's modern bus system that features dedicated lanes.
07:48Apart from buses and taxis, it's also exploring the idea of a railway to transport the city's residents.
07:55A passenger railway would really show that Dar es Salaam is more than just a city.
08:01It is growing fast and building modern, solid infrastructure.
08:06However, at a cost of more than $148 million for the third phase of Dar es Salaam's bus rapid transit system,
08:13these initiatives do not come cheap, and funding is not always readily available.
08:17The government cannot have all the capital that is required.
08:21Rather, the capital is sitting without the private people, right?
08:25So the PPP is one of the best ways of ensuring that whatsoever that the government is looking at doing in a long time is accomplished in a very, very...
08:35As African cities continue to urbanize, development experts warn the continent faces a looming mobility crisis.
08:43Poor road networks, limited public transport, and informal urban planning are driving lost economic growth, higher emissions, and widening inequality.
08:55MTN's latest performance sends a clear signal.
08:58Mobile money is no longer just a convenience.
09:01It's a financial powerhouse.
09:02In 2024, sub-Saharan Africa crossed the historic milestone, with more than 1.1 billion registered mobile money accounts, representing over half of global total.
09:14Here is more to that story.
09:15In low-income African countries, 32% of adults now have a mobile money account, surpassing the 26% who hold traditional bank accounts.
09:28This dominance is fuelled by a network of agents that now has 20 times the reach of bank branches across the continent.
09:36I think banks must hold the three key things.
09:39One, the customer link.
09:41Customers must not only see the telco layer, customers must also see the banks.
09:45And this can happen if banks give a clean and simple mobile onboarding journey and transactional journey that gives the same type of ease that the telcos do.
09:54MTN's fintech revenue jumped 28.5% in constant currency last year, processing more than $342 billion in transactions.
10:05As telcos expand into advanced services like merchant payments and microloans, banks are scrambling to stay relevant.
10:13A single sort of rules where everyone knows what roles they play.
10:19When the telcos understand that what they bring to the table is the scale and the reach, and banks hold the deposits and issue the credits.
10:26When there's no overlap in the functions that each player is expected to perform, I think that there will be a lot more collaboration and there will be a lot more success in the partnership efforts.
10:38As open banking gains traction, the divide between telco and bank is blurring, creating a digital economy that contributed $220 billion to Africa's GDP in 2024 alone.
10:49And that brings us to the end of this edition of Business Africa.
10:59For more business stories and the latest updates, stay tuned to African News or visit us online at AfricanNews.com.
11:06See you soon.
11:14Business Africa was presented by Turkish Airlines.
11:17Business Africa.
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