Podcast transcript: Episode 10 - Investing in the Creative Economy
Transcript
Host: Hello and welcome to the experience pod. My name is Dr. Damola Oladosu. The experience pod is a one-on-one interviewer-led podcast that discusses the adoption and utilisation of relevant emerging technologies and trends for impact-oriented professionals, researchers, developers, and students who demand realistic and thought-provoking perspectives on the opportunities and challenges presented by these phenomena in our unique environment.
We often talk about Nigerian culture, specifically music, fashion, and film as one of the country's most successful international exports. And although it's difficult to quantify its economic impact, The Guardian estimates that the Nigerian creative industry, which accounted for 2.3% of the nation's GDP in 2016, would have more than doubled in the last four years. In both private and public sector conversations, the creative sector has been highlighted as a key sector to driving innovation, digital economic development, and global influence.
In this episode, we're joined by Ojoma Ochai, who's the original director of arts and creative economy programs at the British Council, Nigeria to understand more about how Nigeria's creative economy has been financed or shaped for the future. Welcome Ojoma and thanks for joining us.
Ojoma Ochai: Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here.
Host: Great. So we'll get right into it. For those who might not be familiar with the term, what is the creative economy? And how does your work with the British Council drive investment in Nigeria's creative economy?
Ojoma Ochai: Thank you for that question. So the creative economy has lots of definitions. But fundamentally, it's about the economy that's built on goods and services that are based on intellectual property. And so it's typically Referring to sectors like fashion, music, film, performing arts, and visual arts, where a person creates. And that creation is then put to some kind of commercial value. When I say a person creates, I smile, because when we start to talk about digital, there is a sense of sometimes increasingly, it's not a person that creates but what that means is a different discussion. But the creative economy fundamentally is about this idea of creativity, leading to goods and services that are based on that creativity, or that art that then gets converted to commercial use. So different countries would have different sectors that they consider creative industries. And so you would have, say, in Lebanon, they consider culinary arts to be part of their creative industries. And the sectors can be quite different. But fundamentally, it's about everything.
Host: Okay, so you've already touched on this right now. But can you speak a bit more specifically about the Nigerian creative industries and their peculiar characteristics or key challenges?
Ojoma Ochai: Okay, sure. So I think the starting point for talking about Nigerian creative industries and the Nigerian creative economy is to make the point that these industries and this economy exist in a Nigerian context. So everything to do with this concept is applicable, it’s a really funny point.
I often have to make this point, and I'll tell you why in a second. But the thing to notice, one, it exists in the context of Nigeria. But to the original thing about the definition, we think that the creative economy in Nigeria is one area where Nigeria has a very strong competitive advantage. caveat.
Host: Even with its problems?
Ojoma Ochai: Yeah. And the reason for this is back to the definition of the creative economy, remember that I talked about the fact that it's based on individual creativity, so a person creates something. And if you look at the sort of issues in quotes with Nigeria, a lot of the issues are at an institutional, systemic, or societal level. Whereas the creative industries, fundamentally by nature, are based on the creativity of an individual. And so you find that that individual creativity, regardless of the macro challenges, or the institutional challenges, in a way, are beyond the challenges and so that creativity thrives that ability to create, whether it's music, fashion, and so on. So I think that the fundamental thing is that we have a lot of raw talent, not even raw. I would go as far as saying that talent is often very developed. And that's probably linked to another characteristic of the Nigerian individual, which is resilience, right?
Host: That we're resilient does not mean we don't deserve ease, but that's a different issue.
Ojoma Ochai: So that thing about resilience, what you find happens okay, so I don't know, if you look at the film, say, with back to that resilience factor, you find that, okay, there's no animation training, then people will just go on YouTube and learn it. That talent is not raw, people go to great lengths to develop that talent. So I think from that perspective, that's a strength that the sector has. I think another strength that the sector has that we often don't talk about is the digital capability of Nigerians for whatever reason.
Host: The digital capability, like on balance compared to when you look at the stats of our economic growth, or education levels.
Ojoma Ochai: I think that on balance, the digital capability is very strong. And so with the shift in technologies, we're not even talking about emerging technologies now, it has meant that there's a lot of self-development or lots of capitalization of that technology. So I think that's another strength. In terms of the weaknesses, I mentioned before that we need to take it in the context of the country. And one of the fundamental things in the creative economy is intellectual property. And so if you're operating in a context where intellectual property is not protected, it means that your exploitation, your capitalization, on that intellectual property, is very limited. And so the strands or revenue that you would otherwise have earned from that intellectual property becomes quite limited. Intellectual property is governed by the legal, justice, the policing systems in a country. So in a country where we know all the issues that we have with those systems, you can't single out intellectual property and say, that's one area of that system that will work, you know, so fundamentally, that's an issue with the creative industries. Now, having said that, a lot of people talk about piracy and illegal copying. And I've always thought that we maybe don't know the extent of the piracy problem that we have. And I would argue that in fact, we don’t have a big piracy problem as we think we have. I think what we have is a market failure in distribution, and that piracy is only a symptom of that market failure. What do I mean? It means that if I want to consume creative products. If you think about it, digital is changing all of this. But if you think about it, what's the ease for me as a consumer, getting access to this creative product that I want to consume often is challenging. And so people buying illegal versions is more to overcome an inconvenience than anything, I argue. And so I think that until we fix the distribution problem, we don't know the scale of the piracy problem.
Host: The extent of the piracy problem.
Ojoma Ochai: And I feel like, you know, it is when you have malaria, you take paracetamol, but you will also take whatever it is that kills malaria.
Host: You might even take antibiotics because you are not sure.
Ojoma Ochai: Do you see what I mean? So I feel like when we are talking about piracy, we're talking about a symptom, or the real problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that we have a distribution problem. And so that's what we should be trying to fix.
Host: That's a really interesting perspective. I don't think I've ever heard anyone break it down like that. That's interesting. So maybe talk a bit about how your work at the British Council Nigeria, and drives investment in Nigeria's creative economy, but also helps these individual creatives to overcome some of the systemic challenges that Nigeria just presents. Yeah.
Ojoma Ochai: So first of all, a bit of background about the British Council. So we work in several sectors, including the creative economy. We work in education, basic education, and higher education, and we work in other kinds of entrepreneurship like social entrepreneurship. And fundamentally the work that we do is about supporting outcomes for people in the countries that we work in, from the perspective of cultural relations, what we like to call cultural relations, which is this thing around mutual understanding, interconnectivity, this idea of us all living in this globally connected world. And so there are experiences and knowledge to be gained both ways. So all of our work is around mutual benefit between the UK and the countries in which we work. And what’s that thing about the creative economy being an area of competitive advantage? We find that in our work, in this creative economy, the people we work with in the UK, are learning as much from Nigeria.
Host: Really?
Ojoma Ochai: Indeed, this is a sector where we feel truly mutual, it's not a one-way transfer of knowledge. So even something as simple as business models in film, there's a lot of interest in this DIY, Nollywood, quick turnaround, that's of great interest in the UK because that's not how that industry functions. And so in that context, there's this assumption of a lot of public funding and subsidies, which increasingly are drying up. This means that this, do-it-yourself, fund-it-yourself, find the money, it’s the new model. And so there's a lot of interest in working in that way. So our work is primarily about creating connections that spark learning both ways. And so what we're doing in several areas in the creative economy is one around the policy. We're very interested in supporting governments with the networks and the knowledge that they need to have about the creative industries to support them more effectively.
So in the past few years, we did a lot of work around funding models for the creative industry. So we've worked in this area in Nigeria for over 10 years. And if you think that far back, 10 years ago, a lot of what we take for granted now and complain about now didn’t exist, like your Bank of Industry funds, and your commercial banks participating in the group of industries, or grant schemes, or any kind of funding for creative economies didn't exist. So we've done a lot of work with many of the people I've already mentioned, the banks of industries, the nexus of the world, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Culture, around broadening the thinking, linked to funding models for the industry, we've done a lot of work around mixed model funding. So we've had a time where, at the very beginning of funding, it was very much around debt financing, and it still is actually, which we consider a bit problematic. But there was a lot of debt financing for the creative industries. And debt finance, i.e. loans are only appropriate for certain kinds of transactions in the creative industries.
And so a lot of the work that we've done over time, is to push this idea of a mixed model of funding that allows for equity, that allows for angel investing that allows for grants funding at different stages of developments for different types of entities. And so we worked a lot with the government on this front when the Ministry of Finance did Project Act, maybe six years ago, we were on the advisory committee to set that up. Because we've been in long discussions about mixed models, it was a grand scheme for Nollywood. So we've done a lot of work on the policy side, on the practice side, we do a lot of skills and capacity building. And our focus on skills and capacity building is on two levels. It's on the individual level, and it's on the institutional level. So on the individual level, we focus a lot on entrepreneurship. Because again, creative talent is one thing, but if it's an economy and an industry, there's a lot of entrepreneurship that goes into making money.
So we do a lot of entrepreneurship training, we also do artistic skills training, digital skills training, and increasingly, but we're also mindful that that's not sustainable, right? We need local institutions that have the capability to do that, so we do a lot of institutional strengthening work. We support creative hubs, we support sector organisations around developing their capacity to be a more sustainable skills provider for the industry. We've also tried to do some work around TVET technical and vocational education in trying to set up a sector skills council for creative industries to set standards, vocational skill standards for the creative industries, again, linked to that thing of more sustainable training models.
Because, imagine if there was a sector skills council for all of the creative disciplines, and you have a set of vocational skill standards, it suddenly means that the ecosystem for that skills provision becomes a lot more robust. Because you can start to look at your polytechnics and your IEIs I think they call them innovation institutions and so on, that are developing skills training to a specific standard that's comparable across whatever institution you go to in the country. So we also do a lot of work around institutional capacity development, I should probably stop here. But there's a lot more I can talk about looking at different elements to try and support at different levels.
Host: It's cool, really cool stuff. I think, again, it's interesting that as you're responding, your answers are related to my subsequent questions, because the next question is around your experience with navigating the dynamics of working for a non-Nigerian development institution, and really, in driving a Nigerian sector, right? And if you think about it, the historical criticism of the role of these cultural development initiatives has just been used to strategically extend the donor country's cultural influence. Have you had a lot of pushback on that? Or what has your experience been like?
Ojoma Ochai: So in terms of trying to expand the cultural influence of the UK, one of the things I'm proudest of with the British Council is that one of our principles and values is mutuality. So it's not about extending the UK’s influence only.
Host: But it is to a certain extent,
Ojoma Ochai: That's why I said only. It's about mutuality, which goes both ways. And so what we're saying is that the work that we do will have mutual benefits. So it's beneficial to the country, in that through our skills work, through influencing policy work through raising awareness work. So when we do our M&E, we're seeing shifts of, this person was earning this much, a year later, they're earning this much. So there's real tangible economic value for the work that we do. At the same time, where we see a mutual benefit, it’s from several areas, a whole range of areas, but because we're talking about the economy.
The more local trade there is in the creative economy, the more international trade there can be in the creative economy. And that's a benefit to the UK, as well. So we're not going to pretend that there isn't some sort of value back to the UK, but the value is not extractive in that we're supporting the sector to grow. So that the creative expression of Nigeria, the values, and the heritage of Nigeria can be expressed, which is valuable in itself. But there's also that economic value, which means that the more it grows, the more opportunities there are for collaboration with the UK. So I would say that approach has meant that we are working a lot with the government and with institutions.
Host: A lot of local players too.
Ojoma Ochai: Exactly. And it's back to that thing I was saying about institutional capacity building,
Host: Right.
Ojoma Ochai: We could very well not do that almost. And make it such that if you want to be trained, you must come and meet us. But we don't want that, we want to be able to exit this space. Actually, I'll give you an example, in 2013, the British Council set up the Lagos Theatre Festival.
Host: Okay.
Ojoma Ochai: The history is long, but the long story, cut short, was that we were trying to work in a theatre. There was very little infrastructure around the theatre sectors, I don't mean hard infrastructure. So even though that was an issue, we didn't have theatres and all that hard infrastructure, that was an issue. But what we had was lots of independent theatre companies making work one play here, one play there. But this sense of industry meant that as a lobbying tool, as a critical mass, it just wasn't strong enough. And we knew that that was an impediment to that sector working internationally, including with the UK, but not exclusively.
And so when we started Lagos Theatre Festival in 2013, we started it as a British Council project. So the first one in 2013, the British council set up this thing. It presented work from four companies over a weekend at Eko hotel, and we managed the whole thing. We produced it, we did everything. By the way, we picked Eko Hotel very strategically, we had said that there are no theatres at scale, and since that time things have moved on a little bit. We now have Terra Kulture obviously, and we have the theatres at Lagos states available. But we still haven’t got that physical theatre infrastructure. But we know that legitimately there's a type of theatre called Site Specific Theatre. It is a legitimate form of theatre where you make work for the space that you have. Right? So if you want to do a play set in a bar, you will do the play in a bar and we won't pretend that we're in a theatre, we all know we're in a bar, that this play is in a bar.
Lagos Theatre is a festival of site-specific theatre. So when we did it in Eko Hotel, there was one on a lawn tennis court, one was in a car park, and one was in the presidential suite because it was set in a house. And so to your point about mutuality and partnership, we've gone from the 2013, British Council project, four plays over one weekend to 2020. It's something like 35 companies over a week with over 100 shows. It's no longer a British Council project. Lagos Theatre Festival is now an independent entity, registered in Nigeria as a company limited by guarantee. The British Council is not on the board. The board is a Nigerian board of Nigerian individuals. So it's not about appropriation, it's about where we can meaningfully make high value. Lagos Theatre Festival now has people coming from Ghana, the UK, the US, from across Europe. At the last Lagos Theater Festival, there was somebody from, I can't remember it might have been Finland or somewhere slightly random.
Host: Why?
Ojoma Ochai: That’s my point, it’s not about the UK specifically, it's about mutual value. The mutual value comes from obviously, these 35 companies, all the food sellers in freedom park, and all the added value that that has. But it also means that if a UK producer or a UK theatre maker wanted to show work in Nigeria, they can come to the Lagos Theatre Festival. So that's that thing of it being a win-win. It's not just about, you know, we can bring a show and put it in Eko Hotel. And people will buy tickets, they'll come and they'll see British culture. Do you see what I mean, But for us, it's not about that. It's about how we truly support an ecosystem that then creates lasting change. That means value both for the country and for the UK.
Host: Interesting. That's a really good example. So again, we talked about the system of Nigeria, is it inevitable that the creative industries will reflect the social inequalities of Nigeria? And how can we then ensure more inclusive access for Nigerians from rural areas or with little to no prior training with limited access to the internet or to YouTube, as we talked about earlier? How do we do that?
Ojoma Ochai: I think that’s a really good question. And it's a question that almost all creative economies are grappling with. Because what you find is that, okay, let's bring it back to Nigeria, let me not go too far and two bodies. But the thing with a mixed model, as I was talking about, means that you're not excluded at the beginning if you can't afford certain things, right? So in the Nigerian creative economy, because it's the funding is so commercial, you're either making money off your shows that you're doing, or whatever products you're producing, whether it's music, or film or whatever, if you're not making money, you have to take a loan, or you have wealthy relatives and friends and family that support your lifestyle until you start making money. So fundamentally, it means that it's very unequal. Now, this is not unique to Nigeria. In the UK, at the moment, we're having lots of discussions about unpaid internships, and how unpaid internships which are heavily used in the creative industries mean that if you cannot do an unpaid internship, because you have no money, you're not going to do an internship.
And if you don't do an internship, it means you can't get into any of the cultural institutions. So it's not a uniquely Nigerian problem. But I think that it's made worse in Nigeria because we don't have that social safety net, and we don't have public subsidies for arts and culture. And so it becomes really difficult to get a leg in. Now, having said that, I do think it doesn't 100% solve the problem. But the reality is YouTube, the internet means that, even though there's still a problem of a digital divide, and arguably, maybe a widening digital divide, the access that the internet provides, means that more people, I think, than would have got opportunities in the past, can now get opportunities through social media, through the internet. So for example, if you did a demo, and put it on, I don't know, Facebook or YouTube or whatever, where 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, you would have to go and pay payola to a DJ in a radio station. If you don't have the money. Yeah, that's it. Whereas now, it's still difficult, don't get me wrong, it's still very difficult,
Host: But the barriers are significantly lower.
Ojoma Ochai: The barriers are significantly lower. Exactly. So it's an issue that we think about all the time. In fact, at the moment one of our Main preoccupations is around digital inclusion. Because when you think about it, as you mentioned with YouTube, if you don't have access to YouTube, what do you do? And so we're thinking about two things. One is about broadening access. Because in terms of exclusion, who's excluded one, you don't have a device. Two, you have a device, but you don't have money to buy data. Three, you have a device, and you can buy data, but you don't even know that, if you go on this website, you can learn this skill that will allow you to do this thing. So, we are thinking very hard about those audiences and thinking about what might our offer do to support people in these categories to bridge that digital divide.
Host: Yeah, cool, interesting. So we’re back to this Nigerian problem again, with the realities of the economic downturn and unemployment rates in Nigeria, especially among young people, is increased exposure for artists or, you know, improving their knowledge gaps equally as important if it doesn't directly translate to profits or access to new markets. And, you know, related to how we should determine the success or the impact of investments in the creative industry. So I can improve your knowledge, but if that doesn't directly improve your profits, then how do we measure impact in this case?
Ojoma Ochai: Very interesting question. I was on a panel at the online IQ festival a few weeks ago, and we were talking about youth unemployment. And one of the things I was saying on that panel is that we need to change the metrics that we use to measure success, in that a lot of organisations talk about, we trained 50 people. And increasingly, we're seeing that that's a nonsense metric, it doesn't mean anything. You trained them and then what happened?
Host: And then what? Exactly.
Ojoma Ochai: If we don't change the metrics that we use to measure success, we'll keep doing the wrong things. Because if success is how many people you trained, then we're only ever going to stop the argument there. And we say this from a place of, we've been there, we've done it, where the British Council maybe five years ago, maybe even three years ago, that was our metric. But increasingly, you're asking yourself, so what? So the model that we're using now is to say, in each market where we're working, including in Nigeria, what are the factors that constitute obstacles to a young person going from point A to B? And point A is x Naira a month, and point B is x Naira plus, a month. And so our starting point is often to map all the obstacles and do one or two things. One is to create a program that addresses all of the obstacles, and then do a robust monitoring and evaluation process that allows us to demonstrate how addressing all these obstacles leads to this change, and use those results to influence other people to do the same. Because, in the scheme of things, our money is not that plenty, right? It's the scale of the problem.
Host: Like how much can you do it right?
Ojoma Ochai: You've supported 100 people, that drop-in would not stand. That demonstration model is saying, if you solve for x, y, z, this is what you get. And so what you're then saying to governments. to other people interested in addressing that space is, do these five things that we did, and this is what you'll get. So that's one model. Another model, which we often do on a sort of very hyper-local scale. So if you took Lagos for example, you can look at Lagos and say, These are the five issues. So let's say access to finance, access to workspace, access to certain types of skills, and distribution. So let's say those are the four problems. There are some markets where you can say, access to finance is provided by XYZ, maybe the access to finance is not for creative industries, but the parameters for accessing that finance are such that creative industries can access that finance. And then you say actually, these other three things are the things that are missing. So what you then do is say how might we develop a program that addresses these three things and cycles the people in our program to the fourth thing?
Host: Okay.
Ojoma Ochai: Again, you can measure the metrics. All of our work is often about demonstrating because we don't have that scale that you need, it cannot be done by anyone, it cannot even be done by the Nigerian government alone. So what we want to be able to do increasingly through our work is to demonstrate the effectiveness of models, and use that evidence to say this model works or this model doesn't work. So that when you're doing your own thing, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And so that's, that's the way that we're working.
Host: That's interesting. So earlier, we touched on funding models, so across other sectors, we're seeing newer funding models like crowdfunding, you know, it's a big thing around the sharing economy. Are you seeing the creative impact investment community embracing these trends? And if not, how do you think that these trends or these models can be used to drive investments in the creative sector?
Ojoma Ochai: I think, certainly pre-COVID, we were seeing a lot more interest in several areas. So angel investing was one area, maybe 18 months ago, we did a session where we worked with Lagos Angel Network. And we brought the founder of one of the biggest angel investor networks in the world, Angels Den to come and talk to Lagos Angel Network because they were interested in deploying angel investing and Angel financing towards creative industries. So we've done that kind of stuff. Lagos state as well, with Lagos Employment Trust Fund, we've also worked with them a lot around again, we brought some specialists from sort of, not social financing, but more government-led financing, to help them think through their models for investing and intervening in the creative industries.
And following that we’re in a current partnership with Lagos state where we’re, that’s that thing I was saying, when you look at all of the things that affect the sector, you can then design an intervention. So our intervention with Lagos is looking specifically at a film. So Lagos State Employment trust fund has money. So the access to finance question is sort of resolved. And then we looked at the film, and we looked across the inputs in the film industry, and one of the areas that were weak in terms of skills is the story, story development, and scripts. And so we're doing a project with Lagos state where we're narrowing down into a very, very specific thing and saying because we've done the analysis, we're saying these areas, the production, and the post-production. They're not perfect, but in the scheme of inputs, it’s particularly fundamental and foundational. So we've narrowed it down on that specific thing and partnered with the Lagos States Employment Trust Fund and Biola Alabi Media to support teams of filmmakers, to get massive inputs into their story development and script development. And then Biola Alabi media will fund the production of several feature films from that process.
Again it’s that thing of demonstration, we want to say that if you invest this much more in developing a story, then the financial reward of the story is this much more. And with this project, what we're trying to influence in this case, it's not the government so much, it's the markets. Because if you're making a commercial investment, we're saying to you, if you're investing for the sake of argument 100k More in developing the story, and your return on investment is $1 million more then it will make financial sense. So that's what we're trying to do.
Host: Yeah, I think Ebonylife has done that, well. I think it seems like she invests heavily, at least in the production and the stories to some extent, and you know, her movies are typically very profitable on the market. So I think that's a really interesting point as well. So it seems like it's a strong focus on building ecosystems and partnerships. And like, different parties solving different problems is sort of the way forward here versus one party trying to solve all the problems by themselves.
Ojoma Ochai: Absolutely.
Host: So what are the unlikely places or sub-sectors that you're seeing emerging technologies have an impact these days?
Ojoma Ochai: If you look internationally, what are the emerging technologies, right? For Creative Industries, there are maybe five, or six, I'll see if I can name them all emerging technologies that look like they will disrupt the creative economy value chain. One is around artificial intelligence, and everything related to that. Obviously, within that, there is machine learning, I'm not a technologist, so I may get one of these technologies wrong. But this idea of using artificial intelligence to make systems more efficient, right? So it seems like if you, I don't want to name brands and give them free naming on your podcast. But if you feel like the recommender systems, right, if you're watching a certain type of content on a platform for film or movie content, right, the recommender systems will use AI to predict what you're most likely to enjoy based on what you've watched before. And the implication for that is that because we now know how people are behaving on these platforms, we know what kind of content to invest our money in to get the most out of their time. So we think that AI will have an outsized impact. Another thing that we think is around augmented reality and virtual reality in the sense that, certainly with COVID, and this idea of if we're socially distancing for a long time, or we've socially distance, and we've tested it, and we now know that it can work, we think that the way in which we're consuming content will probably change with these technologies in that what was considered a life, in quote, the experience will change.
Host: Would change fundamentally.
Ojoma Ochai: Exactly. So when you're thinking about performing arts, visual arts, I don't need to go to, I didn't know the taste to enjoy an exhibition. What does that mean for galleries and physical spaces? So we think that's another technology. I think an interesting one for Nigeria with intellectual property, as we've talked about, is blockchain technology. Obviously, I don't fully understand the technology behind it. But the possibilities are because content online will have some kind of digital signature, which means that you can track where things are going, and so where they originated from. So in attributing revenue and attributing value, it can become a really powerful thing for Nigerian content makers. And even within that, there is the sort of micro IP. So it's one thing to steal a whole song, it's another thing to steal 10 seconds of a song. Even within that, there's still a really powerful possibility to do that. But what else is the role of hardware? So all of these things that we’re talking about are software implications. But the role of hardware, which I think is an area where Nigeria potentially can be really exciting, is the fact that if you think about it, what's maybe the most ubiquitous thing in Nigeria that everybody has, and it's such a cliche? It's a phone, right? Like whether you would have a version.
Host: If you have a Tecno, an iPhone, or you have something, some mobile device.
Ojoma Ochai: So I think that an area of emerging disruptive technology is so obvious. It’s in the role that hardware can play in distribution, back to that thing I was saying about people who copy because they can't get access. If we find a way and I don't know the answer if we find a way. And if I knew I won't even tell you, why would I tell you? If we find a way to translate that ubiquity into means of distribution, then it would be really exciting. Some telcos have tried it. I remember maybe two or three years ago, artists were earning up to 600,000 USD on Callback Tunes. So that was one innovation that was a very specifically Nigerian, maybe African thing. So I feel like that's an area where we're seeing innovation. And there's, again, I don't want to call brands, but there are various innovations that different handset manufacturers and so on are testing that I think will potentially lead to quite interesting things.
Host: You already touched on my question, which was about how mobile collaboration could actually support creators to interact with the international ecosystem and international markets. I think there's so much to be done, especially even as phone manufacturers start to innovate with some of the emerging technologies that you talked about, like AR or VR, for example, I think that there could be disruptive things happening in the creative sector going forward. At the British Council, are you making any targeted investments in technology-driven initiatives specifically? Or?
Ojoma Ochai: Yes, Actually, at the moment, we've got a grand scheme that's open until I want to say 18th of November when we're giving up to 50,000 pounds to organisations to develop digital innovation in the creative industries. It’s called the digital fund.
Host: Has PwC applied?
Ojoma Ochai: If you’re eligible. The thing with these things is that we like to prioritise arts organisations, because PwC, I'm sure you can find money in different places. Whereas Arts organisations have pretty limited options. So this is a global fund. It’s a global fund that we’re running across the world but we’re keen to get applications from across Africa for digital innovation. So increasingly, we do lots of grants. And increasingly, we're saying, either the grants have strong digital components running in them, or they're focused on digital like this one that's purely around digital innovation. And we expect that we will only see more of those in the future. And back to that thing, about, you know, cultural influence. The grant is open to Nigerian or any other institution eligible countries in the world to apply for.
Host: Okay, that's cool. So how quickly do you think we'll start to see emerging tech adoption in the creative sector in Nigeria? Like if you could estimate a timeline?
Ojoma Ochai: I don't think there's one timeline, to be honest, I think that there are so many factors. One, it depends on the technology, it depends on the sector. Like the thing we're saying about blockchain, I think music will be much quicker because music in terms of the appeal, the global appeal, and the markets are international. I feel like in the next couple of years, we'll probably start seeing a lot more innovation and adoption around that area. Also because I know there are a lot of people starting to think about that space where technology companies are partnering with artists and musicians to think through. So I think that's one area where we will see quite a rapid shift. For the other areas, maybe not Nigeria, I think that things like VR, AR, there's a lot of interesting things happening like in Kenya or South Africa. In fact, last week, there was an AR VR Festival that was focused on the African content. So I feel like that thing about Nigeria, not wanting to be left out will mean that because other people are doing it, we will probably follow them. So yeah, I think it's a different thing for different sectors and different technologies.
Host: Great. Thank you. That's interesting. We're going to switch to the fun part. What was the last prediction that you got wrong?
Ojoma Ochai: Everything 2020, I feel like after 2020, we all just need to learn to be humble and just stop.
Host: Yeah, okay, cool. What's one view you seem to find very few people agree with you on?
Ojoma Ochai: So the views I have about solving the problems of Nigeria? Like we all know what the problem is, but our approach to solving it is so radically different. And I have quite particular views which I'm not sure are collating. Let's just leave it at that. We could take it off the podcast.
Host: Okay, so our previous interviewees, Olamidun of Nexford University and Desiree of U-Lesson have questions for you. Desiree wants to know, what is one African industry that you think is ripe for disruption that no one is paying attention to yet? And Olamide wants to know if money can truly save the world and make it a better place.
Ojoma Ochai: So for industries ripe for disruption, Creative industries. I think it's for me, I would say that, in fact, a couple of weeks ago, it's still on my Instagram bio, I wrote an essay article about how digital will disrupt the African creative economies. And it's kind of linked to some of what we've been saying. So I think it's very ripe for disruption. I don't think more money can save the world or make it better, please, because I feel like all the money that we need to save the world and make it a better place is already in the world. It's the distribution of the money. That's the issue, I think. So I think for me, the solution is redistribution of the money.
Host: All right, so final question, disruption is interrelated. So in that respect, what's one perspective you'd like to get from our next interviewee? In this case, it will be Tolu of Chef Eros and Reni from Noc.
Ojoma Ochai: So I'd be interested to know what they think about how narratives like perceptions of Nigeria shape the international appeal of Nigerian foods, and therefore what that means for the potential global appeal that Nigerian food can have.
Host: Okay, that's a great question. Thank you so much Ojoma for spending this time with us. I appreciate it. I've learned a lot from talking to you, and we hope to see you some other time.
Ojoma Ochai: Thank you very much for having me. It was a really enjoyable conversation.
