Nigeria’s creative economy—encompassing film, fashion, music, design, tech, writing, and animation—has emerged as one of the country’s most dynamic and globally resonant sectors. Yet for many talented Nigerians, one question persists: how do I make a living from my creativity?

Lagos Creative Enterprise Week (LCEW) 2025 offers a compelling answer. Now in its fifth edition and holding online November 4–7, this year’s event embraces the realities of a digital-first world—where creativity, collaboration, and commerce increasingly thrive in the cloud.

Bringing together leading voices across creative industries, LCEW 2025 features four days of virtual masterclasses, panel discussions, and networking sessions designed to help creatives sharpen their craft, build sustainable careers, and connect with global opportunities.

The opening day begins with a keynote by Obi Aika, Director-General of the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC), outlining how Nigeria’s soft power can drive economic transformation. Later sessions on the day include a fiction-writing workshop with Kome Otobo, Managing Editor of Malthouse Press, and a discussion on artificial intelligence and the creative sector led by Obinna Okerekeocha, Founder of the Naija AI Film Festival.

Day two shifts focus to the business and wellness of creativity. Ayodeji Razaq (CEO, RED for Africa Group) explores strategies for avoiding burnout; Emmanuel Adediran (Business Director, mediaReach OMD) discusses monetising media trends; and Ifeanyi Chris Oputa (Founder, Studio24 Nigeria) delves into the business of photography.

On the third day, Kraks TV leads a workshop on content curation, followed by a star-studded film and television panel featuring Joan Mbanefo-Ologeh, Tosin Otudeko, Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe MBE, Teco Benson, Clare Anyiam-Osigwe BEM, and Uloachukwu Anyiam-Osigwe.

The final day turns the spotlight on fashion innovation and emerging talent. Ejiro Amos Tafiri will lead a masterclass on the business of fashion, culminating in the GRID Fashion Road Show, which showcases fresh designs from community-based creatives across Nigeria.

Nigeria’s creative industry already contributes over $5 billion annually to GDP, with global demand for African storytelling, design, and music steadily rising. LCEW 2025 stands as both a launchpad and a reflection of how far Nigerian creatives have come—and the global stage they’re poised to command next.

Whether you’re a designer in Kaduna, a filmmaker in Port Harcourt, or a writer in Ibadan, this year’s LCEW offers an opportunity to learn, earn, and connect.

Your creative journey begins with your first login. Visit https://lagoscreativeenterpriseweek.org for details.

MR Olusegun Awolowo, former Executive Director, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) on Friday said exhibition of Nigerian arts and crafts would enhance job creation.

Awolowo also said it could help in poverty reduction as well as solve many of the nation’s economic problems.

He said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of the 15th International Arts and Crafts (INAC) Exposition taking place in Abuja.

He said he was at the event to see what the country had been showcasing and promoting to the world.

“I’m here to see what Nigeria has been showcasing and promoting to the world. I used to run exportation in NEPC and I am very aware of the work the NCAC is doing.

“This is a very brilliant development, because we can solve many of our economic problems, and provide jobs through culture and arts.

“Most importantly, we can export many of our things,” he said.

He noted that going round the exhibitions, one could see all products the other countries brought to showcase and promote.

“Nigeria does not have only oil and that is the mistake we keep making. It is very good to see what can be promoted in what we have and to see more joy in culture and arts,” Awolowo said.

Meanwhile, training facilitators at the event have commended the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) for showcasing and promoting Nigerian arts and crafts in the country.

Mrs Wumi Adekunle, Managing Director, Wumi African Textile, appreciated the NCAC for giving her the opportunity to train some youths on indigenous weaving known as Aso Oke production.

Adekunle, who explained that she had been in the business in the last 20 years, said the training would go a long way in creating jobs and reducing poverty in the country.

“As you can see, every tribe or ethnic group uses Aso Oke. For instance, we do different design and colour for Idoma and Tiv in Benue.

“Even, during Independence Day Anniversary, Nigerians buy it to make Nigeria’s flags, caps, gele and wrapper. In fact, the business is lucrative to earn a living,” she said.

Similarly, Mrs Gloria Oduebo, Director, Glorious Crafts, said she was in the NCAC exposition to train students in bead making, facial makeup and general household services such as cooking local foods.

According to her, there are skills in every child. I’m here to help these students to discover the type of skills or talents in them.

“I started this training in 2012 and have so far trained more than 1,000 students. An idle mind is a devil workshop. There is need to keep our youths busy.

“With this skills acquisition, our youths can earn their living and feed themselves, even their families.

She, however, said government needed to empower them with take-off grants after the training and create market for their products through networking,” she said. (NAN)

The Pride Lagos Creative Enterprise Week (PLCEW) which seeks to chart pathways to make  creativity pay has assembled a stellar lineup of facilitators for its 2021 edition “Creativity Is Big  Business”. The event is scheduled to hold November 8–13, 2021 at Alumni Hall, Yaba College  of Technology, Lagos.

“As youths of Nigeria, we are currently faced with unprecedented unemployment and  underemployment – these are hampering our pursuit of rewarding and fulfilling lives”, said  Chukwuemeka Anyiam-Osigwe, Coordinator PLCEW. “The Pride Lagos Creative Enterprise  Week is targeted at turning creative talents into lasting businesses to uplift the youths of the  country.”

PLCEW is a weeklong event of seminars, master classes, workshops and other activities to  empower young creatives and help them to unleash their potential.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2021 

Digital Marketing: An Overview 

Featuring:

Muyiwa Aleshinloye, Group Head, Digital at Insight Redefini

Ose Osundeko, Group Head, Digital Marketing at Fidelity Bank PLC

Brand Building: The Way to Make It 

Featuring:

Abiodun Ajiborode, Director of Brand and Trade Marketing at Monument Distillers  Nnenna Onyewuchi, Executive Director of Strategy and Innovation at Yellow Brick Road

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2021 

Intellectual Property Literacy and Respecting Copyrights 

Featuring: Busola Bakinson, Team Lead Intellectual Property at Olaniwun Ajayi LP

Building Your Music Career 

Featuring: Lucklyn Okeimiebi Audu, Legal and Corporate Affairs Executive at Aristokrat Group

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2021 

Succeeding in the Creative Space 

Featuring: J. Martins, Popular Musician

A Guide to Professional Photography 

Featuring:

Richard Bamidele Eko, Visual Business Consultant

Jokotade Shonowo, Founder Poshclick Portraiture

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2021 

Instagram Influencer: The New Way of Influencing 

Featuring:

Nonye Udeogu of This Thing Called Fashion

Valerie Egbuniwe, Lifestyle Content Creator

The Future of TV in Nigeria and Its Relevance for Content Creators

Featuring:

Abiola Matesun, Founder and CEO of MalekFoto Films and MalekFoto Weddings Anita Adesiyan, Country Manager for MTV Shuga Nigeria

Bola Atta, Group Director for Corporate Communications at UBA; Executive Producer at REDTV Moses Babatope, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Filmhouse Group; Managing Director of  FilmOne Entertainment

Rosemary Egabor Afolahan, Head Business Development, Market Strategy and Sales at News  Central TV

Tolulope Olamide Ajayi, Director, Producer and Creative Professional

Victor Okhai, President Directors’ Guild of Nigeria

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2021 

How to Create a Successful Podcast

Featuring:

Dami Aros, Host of the podcast So Nigerian

Dolly Akintoye, Co-host of the podcast Road to 30

Rafiat Akinwande, Host of Queen Raffy’s Space podcast and Community Manager at  NaijaPodHub

Soft Skills Needed by Creatives

Featuring: Daniel Emenahor, Senior Learning and Development Associate at Jobberman

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2021 

Comedy Workshop 

Featuring: Taaooma, Popular Comedian and Influencer

There will also be a display of artworks by up-and-coming artists throughout the week. Visit www.lagoscreativeenterpriseweek.org for more details.

Aretha Phiri, Rhodes University and Rocío Cobo-Piñero, Universidad de Sevilla

Queering the Black Atlantic: Transgender Spaces in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater is a paper by Rocío Cobo-Piñero. It considers Emezi’s award-winning semi-autobiographical novel about Ada, who is an ogbanje, a spirit born in a human body. It uses the novel to suggest ways in which emerging African queer literature could disrupt traditional, heterosexist readings of the world. The paper specifically addresses Paul Gilroy’s
1993 text The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Aretha Phiri interviewed the author.

---

Aretha Phiri: Where queer bodies in Africa continue to be violently oppressed, what are the implications of a book like Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater?

Rocío Cobo-Piñero: African literature has witnessed a growth of memoir and fiction that deals with queer sexualities. For example, Chris Abani’s GraceLand in 2004, Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees in 2015, and Freshwater in 2018.

The three are coming-of-age novels with queer protagonists: Abani chronicles the life of Elvis Oke in a slum of Lagos during the 1970s. Okparanta narrates the story of a young lesbian girl during the Nigerian civil war. And Emezi explores the separate selves of a transgender adolescent in contemporary Nigeria and as a migrant abroad.

It is interesting and contradictory that these authors come from Nigeria, the country with some of the most draconian laws against homosexuality on the continent, as well as some of its most noted literary voices. When the anti-gay bill was passed in Nigeria in 2014, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie used her fame to speak out, calling it unjust and undemocratic.

This sheds light on how members of the Nigerian and the African literary community in the diaspora speak back to homophobia. And how they explore the everyday fears, desires, pleasures, and anxieties of those who experience same-sex attraction or do not identify with a specific gender.

Aretha Phiri: You argued that Freshwater advances a ‘different centre’ which generates new African ways of knowing. But some of the Nigerian academics at the colloquium took angst at your queer reading of tribal spiritual cultures and cosmologies.

Rocío Cobo-Piñero: To begin with, it is rare that trans Africans get to write their own story. Emezi not only tells the story of their transition in the novel and an autobiographical essay, but also forces readers to consider that there is another dimension to the contemporary understanding of gender. African spirituality and gender identities were perceived to be more fluid before colonialism.

To some extent, I understood the negative reaction to Emezi’s bold reflections on pre-colonial spiritual beliefs. Take the ogbanje, found in the Yoruba, Igbo and Urhobo pre-colonial cultures. Emezi uses anthropologist Misty Bastian’s idea that to be ogbanje is to be categorised as ‘other’ in terms of gender. This idea transcends Western binary categories. Ogbanje children could fall under a third gender category, of ‘human-looking spirit’. Emezi embraces this ‘otherness’, neither male nor female, through the ogbanje protagonist of the novel. The poetic account of Ada’s gender transition, through the voices of spirits, offers a new vision of transgender spirituality through an African lens.

Aretha Phiri: Could you explain the significance of queer literature within (contemporary) African scholarship?

Rocío Cobo-Piñero: The recent presence of queer desires and bodies – lesbian, gay, intersex, transgender, or indeterminate – has gained new visibility in the political discourse of African democracies. There are numerous publications attesting to the growth of these studies. Queer African studies can be seen as a space in which, as activist and professor Jacqui Alexander puts it

The contours of cultural and sexual identities become questioned and blurred

Queer representations in African film also comprise a kind of restorative project for long-silenced realities, like Under the Rainbow, Rafiki, The Wound, The Pearl of Africa and Difficult Love.

Aretha Phiri: You make a rather bold claim, based on critical scholarship, that the Black Atlantic ‘was always queer’. And you reference Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, the academic and author of, among other books, Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism, to support your argument. Could you elaborate?

Rocío Cobo-Piñero: Tinsley’s provocative assertion is that the Black Atlantic has always been ‘the queer Atlantic’. She contends that Gilroy never told us in his ground-breaking The Black Atlantic how queer relationships were forged within the sex-segregated holds of slave ships. Or how captured people formed affective bonds.

These bonds, she argues, were queer, not only in the sense of same-sex loving identity. They asserted humanity by challenging the slave trade’s logic of human bodies as capital accumulation. Queerness is instrumental and becomes politicised, a practice of resistance.

Archives are limiting and there are very few colonial chronicles or anthropological studies that account for same-sex erotic bonds among captive men and women. Which is why creative writers have turned to what academic Saidiya Hartman calls ’critical fabulation’. It’s a creative method to help imagine relationships between female captives in the Middle Passage – a sort of counter-history of slavery. A history of an unrecoverable past.

Aretha Phiri: As a scholar located in the global south – Spain – how do you see the future of queer studies developing?

Rocío Cobo-Piñero: This is a difficult question. I predict that queer studies within global Black Atlantic and diaspora scholarship will become more diverse and situated, in line with new challenges. An example is the young South African scholar B Camminga’s 2019 study Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa. It documents the journeys of people fleeing persecution, violence, and discrimination based on their gender identity. If we take into account the dangerous rise of far right and extremist political thinking, the need to promote tolerance is more acute than ever.

This article is part of a series called Decolonising the Black Atlantic in which black and queer women literary academics rethink and disrupt traditional Black Atlantic studies. The series is based on papers delivered at the Revising the Black Atlantic: African Diaspora Perspectives colloquium at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

Aretha Phiri, Associate Professor, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University and Rocío Cobo-Piñero, Associate professor, Universidad de Sevilla

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A mural by famed Cape Town artist Faith47.
<span class=”attribution”><span class=”source”>Frédéric Soltan/Corbis/Getty Images</span></span>
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<span><a href=”https://theconversation.com/profiles/jen-snowball-210502″>Jen Snowball</a>, <em><a href=”https://theconversation.com/institutions/rhodes-university-1843″>Rhodes University</a></em></span>

<p>In 1941 Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actress, and George Antheil, an experimental composer, patented “frequency hopping”. The technique is still used today for secure radio communications, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. </p>

<p><a href=”https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F0-306-46999-5_11″>Frequency hopping</a> employs a spectrum of frequency for radio communications that’s repeatedly changed according to an agreed sequence between sender and receiver. This secures a message against interception. Lamarr hoped the <a href=”https://www.businessinsider.com/hedy-lamarr-george-antheil-frequency-hopping-2014-7?IR=T”>idea</a> would help in the <a href=”https://www.britannica.com/topic/electronic-warfare”>defence</a> of her adopted country, the US, in the second world war. </p>

<p>Antheil’s experience helped. He composed for multiple players, up to 16 pianos at a time, and had developed a mechanism to help keep them in sync. This also worked to enable frequency hopping technology. It’s one startling example of how combining the creative imagination with the world of technology can lead to new discoveries. </p>

<p>We wanted to find out more about South African firms that are fusing creative skills with digital technologies to produce new products and services. </p>

<p>In November 2019, the <a href=”https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za”>South African Cultural Observatory</a> partnered with a group of UK academics to <a href=”https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/the-overlaps-between-the-digital-and-creative-sectors-innovation-and-technology-in-the-creative-economy”>track</a> how these firms – graphic designers, film makers, music producers and the like – are using this fusion to drive growth.</p>

<p>There’s increasing interest in the <a href=”https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/creative-industries-can-drive-economic-growth-job-creation-report”>contribution</a> of the creative economy to growth and job creation in South Africa. But innovation research is still mostly focused on STEM sectors – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. </p>

<p>Our research examined the links and connections between digital technologies, innovation, intellectual property, and diversity in the cultural and creative industries. Our findings showed that there is an agile group of mostly small, highly innovative, firms that combine cultural and digital skills to meet market demand. </p>

<h2>Our study</h2>

<p>Cape Town was chosen for a pilot <a href=”https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/the-overlaps-between-the-digital-and-creative-sectors-innovation-and-technology-in-the-creative-economy”>study</a> because of its reputation as a creative city. The <a href=”https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/cape-town”>concept</a> refers to clusters of creative firms, but also includes events and skills. </p>

<p>A cluster of 349 cultural and creative firms operating in the Cape Town metro area were located and mapped. Through telephone interviews and an online survey 74 responses were received. The research design was partly based on a similar <a href=”http://www.brightonfuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/The-Brighton-Fuse-Final-Report.pdf”>study</a> in the UK’s Brighton cluster, which allowed for interesting international comparisons. </p>

<p>South Africa does not have an officially recognised definition of the cultural and creative industries, but much research and policy makes use of UNESCO’s <a href=”https://en.unesco.org/creativity/files/cultural-economy-unescos-framework-cultural-statistics”>Framework for Cultural Statistics</a>. This includes more ‘traditional’ cultural sectors – like fine art, heritage, performing arts, music, film and book publishing – and also more commercial ones – like fashion, architecture, video games and advertising. </p>

<p>Forming the largest group responding to our survey were firms related to design (fashion design 19%; graphic design 14%; architecture 1%). This was followed by film, television, video and radio (12%); crafts (12%); music and performing arts (7%); and photography (7%). The sample also had representatives from advertising and marketing (12%); IT, software and computer services (4%); museums, galleries and libraries (3%). </p>

<figure class=”align-center zoomable”>
<a href=”https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip”><img alt=”” src=”https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip” srcset=”https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335760/original/file-20200518-83397-ranl0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w” sizes=”(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px”></a>
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<span class=”caption”>The main hall of the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in the cultural city of Cape Town.</span>
<span class=”attribution”><span class=”source”>Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>We found an agile business community</h2>

<p>There is strong evidence of a cluster of firms in Cape Town that are “fused” to combine digital technology with creative inputs to produce goods and services. </p>

<p>They exhibit high levels of innovation in business processes, goods and services, with 82% reporting involvement in some form of innovation over the last three years. Most common was process innovation (the way of running the business), which included things like digitisation (82%), big data usage (21%), and artificial intelligence (18%). Next most frequent were development of new products or services and/or the significant improvement of existing ones (72%), and marketing innovations (50%). Some form of formal research and development was engaged in by 45% of firms. </p>

<p>They’re an interdisciplinary cluster. An average of 51% of employees had a qualification in design; 42% in arts or humanities; 32% in commerce; and 20% had a STEM qualification. </p>

<p>More than a third of firms are start-ups, founded in the past five years. Most are small. The median number of employees was four, and 23% were owner operated with no employees. But they have the ability to draw on a wide range of external skills. A median of five freelancers were employed per firm in the previous financial year. The most commonly sourced skills were graphic, multimedia and web design and software development. Similar to what was found in Brighton, this business model allows them to be agile and productive in the volatile, project-based world of the creative economy.</p>

<p>Our results showed that, for at least some of these small firms, combining a range of skills crossing between the creative or cultural and digital sectors has resulted in faster growth rates than their bigger, older counterparts. </p>

<h2>But it’s a vulnerable time</h2>

<p>Yet it is this project-based way of working that makes many of these firms especially vulnerable during tough economic times. An <a href=”https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/download/460/98b297950041a42470269d56260243a1/The+Employment+of+Youth+and+Women+in+Cultural+Occupations+in+South+Africa”>analysis</a> of the Statistics South Africa Labour Force Survey, using the UNESCO definitions, showed that 50% of people in cultural occupations are employed informally, compared to 32% in other occupations. Freelancers make up 35% of cultural workers, compared to 10% of non-cultural workers. </p>

<p>The cultural and creative sector has also always had a vital, but seldom acknowledged, role to play in innovation. Despite this, only a minority of firms in our study used formal intellectual property protection, or earned revenue from intellectual property.</p>

<p>The exclusion of the cultural and creative sector from South Africa’s Draft White <a href=”https://www.gov.za/documents/white-paper-science-technology-and-innovation-draft-14-sep-2018-0000″>Paper</a> on Science, Technology and Innovation (2018) may be a mistake. Similar papers by other countries, like the <a href=”https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/culture-white-paper”>UK</a>, do acknowledge the link between culture, technology and innovation. </p>

<p>Similarly, cultural <a href=”http://www.dac.gov.za/white-papers”>policy</a> could profitably include support for various kinds of innovations taking place in the cultural and creative industries, such as by these firms. </p>

<p>Especially in times of change and upheaval, the next marvellous idea may just come from those working at the interface between the creative and the technological.<!– Below is The Conversation’s page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. –><img src=”https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135970/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic” alt=”The Conversation” width=”1″ height=”1″ style=”border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important” /><!– End of code. If you don’t see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines –></p>

<p><span><a href=”https://theconversation.com/profiles/jen-snowball-210502″>Jen Snowball</a>, Professor of Economics and Researcher at the South African Cultural Observatory, <em><a href=”https://theconversation.com/institutions/rhodes-university-1843″>Rhodes University</a></em></span></p>

<p>This article is republished from <a href=”https://theconversation.com”>The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href=”https://theconversation.com/cape-towns-creative-firms-are-business-innovators-but-theyre-vulnerable-135970″>original article</a>.</p>