Presentation on Artists, Intellectual Property and Developing Africa\'s Creative Economy. Delivered in Kigali, 2006.

1. THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
CREATIVE ECONOMY FOR DEVELOPMENT
“Developing the Creative Economy: Technology,
Intellectual Property and Contracts and the African
Artist”
Presentation
Kigali, Rwanda
7 August, 2006
Dayo Ogunyemi
Attorney and Consultant
CAG/EMC Matrix
dayo@counseladvisory.com

2. Is there African IP? Is it worth anything?
 Ask Richard Branson (Virgin Records), Clive
Calder (Jive Records). They built billion
dollar empires based in large part on
African music
 Music: Solomon Linda (“Mbube” aka “The
Lion sleeps tonight”), Miriam Makeba, ET
Mensah, Franco, Fela Kuti, Youssou N’Dour
 Literature: Ngugi wa Thiongo, Wole
Soyinka, Bessie Head, Nurudinn Farah,
Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer
 Film: Ousmane Sembene, Abdourahman
Sissoko

3. Is there African IP? Is it worth anything?
 Just these few examples show that Africans
have been creating world-class content for
more than four decades.
 Yet, African companies account for less
than 1% of global music and publishing
industries revenues.
 Africa may have world-class musicians and
writers but the knowledge industries that
should nurture and sustain them leave
much to be desired.

4. Why the focus on the Creative Economy?
 In Africa, longstanding skepticism on the
part of business and government about
artistic & cultural expression constituting
an important economic activity
 Artists and communities also often
skeptical or conflicted about utilizing their
artistic or cultural assets for economic
gain
 Historically, the businesses that have
sought to extract value from African art &
culture have often done so in an
exploitative and inequitable manner

5. Why the focus on the Creative Economy?
 Globally, the knowledge industries
have driven much of recent
economic growth
 Information and knowledge industries
offer major opportunities for African
economic development
 Africa remains poor, at least partly,
because it has not been able to
leverage information and knowledge
for its development

6. What has changed?
 The value chain of a music or film:
 Capturing the talent or creativity into some
reproducible form
 Marketing, Distributing and Selling that product
 Technology has worked in two ways to change the
value change:
 Democratizing production - lower cost of
producing technically competent music,
movies, etc.
 Democratizing access to global markets -
anyone with compelling content can access
vast numbers of consumers worldwide in
unprecedented ways

7. Not Yet Utopia
 Difficulties ensuring affordable and
equitable access to technology &
communication tools (e.g. internet),
particularly between urban and rural areas
 Access to markets isn’t the same thing as
sales and revenue from those markets -
still a lot of hard work necessary to
promote and market effectively
 Still, the ease of producing creative goods
and accessing new markets is unparalleled
 But there is a business and legal context
that artists must understand

8. Copyrights and Contracts
 Intellectual property laws, especially
copyright, protect the creative output
that makes up the product
 Contracts stipulate the terms and
conditions under which these products are
financed, distributed and sold
 Copyrights and contracts are the lifeblood
of the creative industry
 Historical disadvantage that artists
worldwide have had negotiating contracts
is infinitely multiplied when it comes to
African artists

9. The rise of the creative entrepreneur
 Artists need to be proactive in pursuing
their careers, understand and participate
in the ways in which technology, IP, and
contracts are resulting in evolving norms
 Only in this way can they play the prime
role they ought to in the creative economy
 Support needs to be provided in these
critical areas by the legal profession,
governments, international public
organizations, NGOs and civil society