The Federal Government of Nigeria has shared its exciting new plans to earn at least $100 billion and create over two million jobs every year from Nigeria’s creative industry.
The Minister of Art, Culture, and the Creative Economy, Hannatu Musa Musawa, explained these plans on Wednesday at a meeting for both local and international investors. She showed everyone the ministry’s Plan and Roadmap.
During the event hosted by the Ministry, the Minister said, if we follow the plan completely, we can reach these big goals.
The current state of the industry
She said it’s sad that even though Nigeria has a lot of creative talent, right now, the industry only adds $5 billion to the economy. Different areas in the creative industry are growing at different speeds.
- These areas include music (like sound recording, live shows, and music videos), visual media (like movies, TV shows, comedy, podcasts, and online content), visual arts & crafts (such as painting, design, sculpting, woodworking, and other crafts), heritage & museums, culinary arts, fashion, publishing (like books, literary arts, poetry, and magazines), and video gaming.
Strategic plans
To reach these goals, Musawa said the ministry has 14 important projects that will help the industry grow and make more money for the government.
She split these projects into four main groups: Technology, Infrastructure and Funding, International Culture Promotion, and Intellectual Property Monetization.
- For the Technology group, the Minister said the Ministry will start a program to give Nigerian creatives better and cheaper digital tools for making content.
- Other plans include starting the Nigeria content distribution program to help more people in Nigeria use digital tools to share their work, studying the creative industry’s size in Nigeria, and expanding internet access in places that don’t have much access yet.
- For Infrastructure and Funding, the Ministry will check what buildings and facilities for the creative industry currently exist and how they are doing, build new facilities where needed, partner with private companies to fund development, offer incentives to boost investment, and start a creative accelerator program to give money and training to creative businesses.
“Under International Culture Promotion, the Ministry will set up a culture promotion office working with Nigerian embassies in other countries to promote Nigerian arts, culture, and creative economy, and use the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCTA) to help Nigerian creatives sell their work regionally and globally,” Musawa said.
“For Intellectual Property Monetization, the Ministry will work to create global standard Collection Management Organisations (CMOs) for most sectors, start a Copyright Oversight Initiative with the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) to improve tracking, monitoring, and enforcement of copyright standards, and ensure CMOs follow international standards.”
“They will also make and use new intellectual property rules and make Nigeria’s IP licensing system work better.”
- Musawa said Nigeria’s Creative Economy could grow by 400% by 2027, which will make the industry very strong in the long run.
- To help the government create jobs in the creative industry, the Ministry will partner with BigWin Philanthropy, a big international development organization, to create a strong plan for training people and creating jobs.
What you should know
The National Bureau of Statistics says that right now, Nigeria’s creative economy isn’t adding much to the country’s overall income. In 2022, it only added 1.2% to Nigeria’s GDP. Other African countries are doing better, like Morocco (2.7%), South Africa (3.0%), and Egypt (4.3%).
It also doesn’t make much revenue for the government compared to South Africa, where the sector contributes 12.5% to government earnings.