Henley’s Dunning Africa Centre and the Idea of Entrepreneurship in Entertainment

On the first Thursday of every month, Henley’s Dunning Africa Centre holds a webinar on entrepreneurship education in Africa. The idea of the series is to help build the people who build the businesses that build Africa and this month, they returned with another instalment on Africa’s creative industries.

Biola Alabi, who is the co-founder and general partner at Atika Venture Capitals was one of the hosts, together with Barry van Zyl, chair of the Henley Africa Alumni community. Other panellists on the team were Craig McGahey, Obi Asika and Femi Odugbemi, all pioneers in the music and film industry.

The webinar kicked off with a short introduction from each of the hosts before the actual debate. Broadly, the subject matter of the day was about the creative economies across the continent, and it focused on discussing how Africa’s creative industries can become a powerful engine for economic growth.

Africa’s creative industries (film, music, art, NFTs) have seen a massive boom in the past year which is why it is surprising that these industries are not fully exploiting the new opportunities offered by a technology-driven global village. Femi Odugbemi shared that for the continent’s creativity to translate into commerce, new infrastructures must be set up.

He stated that the African creative sector is not investment friendly for a plethora of reasons; the biggest one being our copyright laws. This was a very fascinating take on the matter, and it was interesting to watch the hosts discuss this together.

The webinar was informative and entertaining, and TNR got the opportunity to ask the hosts and panellists questions. We got to learn differing opinions and it was interesting to discuss a topic that has very little coverage in the academic community.

The next instalment of the webinar is happening on September 1, 2022. It’s free and accessible and the DAC would be happy to have you.