African creators have the talent and the audience. What holds them back is the infrastructure that turns attention into income. That was the thread through \u201cCan African players build the infrastructure creators need?\u201d, a panel at Moonshot by TechCabal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The session featured Richard Oyome, co-founder and COO of Raenest; Kene Okwuosa, founder and group CEO of Filmhouse Group; Darey Art Alade, co-founder and chief creative officer of Livespot360; and Kopano Cowen, CEO of Connect Channel. Kehinde Odusote-Fagbule of TechCabal Insights moderated.<\/p>\n
The Nigerian Creator Economy Report 2025, found that 56.45% of Nigerian creators earn less than $100 a month<\/a> from their work, while 3.23% earn more than $5,000. Money does reach some creators: Nigerian artists received more than \u20a658 billion from Spotify in 2024, up 146% on 2023, according to the same report.<\/p>\n Platform payouts are part of the problem<\/a>, as brand deals were often creators\u2019 only route to income, because major platforms did not pay Nigerian creators directly until Meta switched on ads <\/a>on Reels for creators in Nigeria and Ghana in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to make the market bigger,\u201d Oyome said, adding that the fix starts with growth. \u201cWe could penetrate foreign markets, especially in film, through collaboration, to produce better quality and attract international audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting paid from abroad is another barrier. Raenest, which offers dollar, pound and euro accounts to freelancers and creators, raised an $11 million Series A in February 2025 and said it had processed more than $1 billion in payments for over 700,000 individual customers.<\/p>\n Okwuosa rejected the idea that Nigeria\u2019s market is small. \u201cI don\u2019t subscribe to the notion that the Nigerian market is small,\u201d he said. \u201cIt only feels that way because we haven\u2019t activated its size.\u201d The real brake, he said, is piracy: \u201cIt limits the rewards and reach for creators.\u201d<\/p>\n Estimates of what piracy costs Nollywood vary widely, which itself shows how little is measured. MultiChoice has put Nollywood\u2019s annual losses at \u20a610 billion to \u20a615 billion, based on audience data<\/a>, while other industry figures run far higher. TechCabal\u2019s 2026 outlook <\/a>adds that Netflix and Amazon Prime have cut African content spending, pushing more Nollywood filmmakers onto YouTube.<\/p>\n \u201cPublic-private partnerships can help expand the market,\u201d Alade said. \u201cWe need policy and legislation that make it easier for these collaborations to happen.\u201d The government has begun to move: its Creative Economy Development Fund is backed by a $200 million seed commitment from Afreximbank, according to the ministry.<\/p>\n The panellists agreed that the next wave of investment in the creator economy need not be a new standalone product. It could be a partnership or an acquisition that links players already working on payments, production, distribution and policy. For African builders, the opportunity lies in connecting what already exists.<\/p>\n Source: <\/p>\n African creators have the talent and the audience. What holds them back is the infrastructure that turns attention into income. That was the thread through \u201cCan African players build the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}