Stakeholders Seek Growth Of Africa’s $1bn Creative Art Industry

Stakeholders in Nigeria’s creative industry under the aegis of Naija Graphic Design (NGD), have advocated for a rapid growth of Africa’s $1 billion creative art industry over the next few years.

The NGD is Africa’s largest community of practice for creative design artists.

The stakeholders, at the just concluded second NGDX Creative Conference in Lagos themed Liftoff, which saw various speakers in the creative space unpack various topics aimed at creating an awareness that allows creatives take full advantage of their craft and grow the design practice further, unveiled an ingenious marketplace designed to enable graphic designers to monetise their created assets by reselling them to a global audience.

The chief executive officer of the group, Laolu Obende, who described the Liftoff as an awareness that empowers creatives with tools needed to rewrite our collective reality one creative endeavour at a time.

He said the Marketplace offers creatives the opportunity to generate further value by reselling these assets rather than leaving them on storage devices. Laolu Obende further made a case for residual creative assets during his speech emphasising the need for creatives to take advantage of building an Africa focused creative stock depository.

“Creatives instead of leaving assets on storage devices can now generate further value by utilising the marketplace as a selling point for created assets. This will help fellow designers save time by easily purchasing existing assets and boost their productivity instead of creating everything from scratch.”

The Marketplace, he said, will function like a stock library of assets created by African graphic designers and offer easier access to assets relevant for African projects thus ending the rarity of seeking assets like stock imagery portraying situations unique to Africa.

Counselling young artists at the NGDX2023 and reinforcing the opportunities offered by NGD, Kelechi Amadi, a renowned photographer narrated his story, an inspirational journey borne out of his passion for creating works of art that can stand the test of time. This ability to create timeless pieces as stated by the prominent photographer was an outstanding factor capable of differentiating creatives in an already saturated environment and making a positive impact on their surroundings.

In another light, filmmaker and popular AI artist Malik Afegbua described the purpose of African creatives as adding uniqueness to the world through creativity and utilisation of emerging technology like Artificial intelligence. The creator of the Elder Scroll series, an AI-imagined work depicting affluent elderly Africans, took viewers on a compelling historical journey of the use of visual storytelling to depict Africans in repressive light and how utilising Artificial intelligence helped to redefine this cultural bias.

According to the filmmaker and avid AI user, utilising AI had helped him create unique works for top brands like Marvel Studios IBM, and Cadbury, and embracing this technology would improve the output of the creative society. ‘‘We have to understand it as a tool and know how to use it,” he said.

Since NGD thrives on an ecosystem of trust and collaboration, an engaging session on trust building was held by Daniel Emeka, co-founder of NGD. According to him, “trust enables a better valuation of creative output and this remains a critical skill to build”.

Daniel took the audience on his systems for building trust and urged creatives to take ownership of their client problems and solve it passionately. He added by encouraging creatives to visualise their thinking processes.

In his words, “When the thinking process is shown it’s easy for people to value work more.’’

Other sessions in regards to building trust and improving the quality of work done on the platform included a session by Kunle Ademosun on understanding the needs of clients as a catalyst for creating solution-driven work for clients; the process of arriving at appealing colours for marketing purposes by Mary Afolabi, collaboration by Ismail Abubakar; the trend of infusing technology into creative products by Chuma Anagbado; Tejiri Agborodoba gave insights into pursuing perfection, Fola Folagbe gave practical skills beyond the design talent that can ensure better results for creatives and Leslie Williams shared his steps for designing for gamification and how designers can create engaging experiences using game principles.