Nigeria’s Minister of Art, Culture and the Creative Economy, Ms. Hannatu Musawa, has said that the Federal Government of Nigeria is planning to generate $100 billion and create over two million jobs from its creative economy yearly.
Speaking at a roundtable for local and international investors where she presented her ministry’s eight-point plan and roadmap in Lagos, Musawa lamented that despite its huge potential, Nigeria’s creative industry currently contributes just $5 billion to the economy, with its different sub-sectors at various stages of development.
According to the minister, the National Bureau of Statistics scored the Nigerian creative economy low in its contribution to overall GDP in comparison with benchmark countries, with the industry contributing just 1.2 per cent to Nigeria’s GDP in 2022, the least when compared to other African countries like Morocco (2.7 per cent), South Africa (3.0 per cent), and Egypt (4.3 per cent).
She noted that Nigeria ranked low (1.0 per cent) in its ability to earn government revenue from the sector, compared to South Africa’s 12.5 per cent.
And to achieve its goal, Musawa said: “The ministry has identified 14 pivotal initiatives that will drive the sector’s growth and significantly boost government revenue to between $10bn and $20bn.”
She grouped these initiatives under four unique pillars, which include technology, infrastructure and funding, international culture promotion, and intellectual property monetisation.
Outlining the plans to provide Nigerian creatives with improved and discounted digital tools, launch the Nigeria Content Distribution Initiative, conduct a study to size the creative industry and expand internet access in underserved regions to support these initiatives.
For infrastructure and funding, she said this entails cataloguing existing infrastructure for the Arts, Culture and Creative Economy and its current state, developing the appropriate infrastructure needed for the industry and leveraging public-private partnerships to fund development, providing incentives to stakeholders in the creative economy to boost investment and adoption of strategic initiatives, and launching a creative accelerator program to provide capital, and capacity building to creative companies.
The report by Punch newspaper on Friday quoted Musawa as saying that “the ministry will establish a culture promotion office collaborating with Nigerian embassies abroad, to promote Nigerian arts, culture and creative economy, and leverage AFCTA to boost Nigerian creative output export regionally and globally.”
For intellectual property monetisation, Musawa said the ministry would seek to establish globally standardised collection management organisations for most of the sectors, launch a copyright oversight initiative in partnership with the Nigeria Communications Commission to enhance tracking, monitoring, and enforcement of copyright standards.
GIK/APA