In 2021, UNESCO asserted that the creative industry generates annual revenue of $2,250 billion and global exports of over $250 billion.
First of all, talent, which is evenly distributed throughout the country, is the main source of value in a creative economy. Additionally, creativity can play a crucial role in the value chains of other goods and services to produce significant added value and a competitive edge.
There are no geographical boundaries to participate in Nigeria’s creative economy. Several regions can benefit by taking straightforward actions like investing in human development, lowering restrictions on creative expression, and implementing commercialization methods.
Nigeria was expected to make $15 billion in sales and earnings over the next five years, with $7.7 billion coming in 2021, $9 billion in 2022, $10.7 billion in 2023, $12.6 billion by 2024, and $14.8 billion by 2025. Statista data, however, demonstrates that Nigeria’s creative industry did better than the foregoing estimates.
Because they are knowledge-based and may therefore boost competitiveness and create jobs and income, the creative industries can be positioned as key economic contributors. The industry’s unique characteristics further allow other industries to engage with and partner with its services.
Creating Productivity
To improve productivity in the southern region of Nigeria, creativity alone won’t cut it. The creators—typically micro-enterprises—need constant access to working capital and distribution channels.
To engineer acts and make them emerge from the region, creatives in the fields of media and entertainment, beauty and lifestyle, visual arts, tourism, and hospitality must first grow with this mentality and thrive with it. Only then can they look further to understand how they can fix the effective talent incubation and development systems required.
Investors, brands, and companies can find their way through the window to reside, thrive, and access the region’s resources with consistency in developing another Lagos, Nigeria structure in Warri, Port Harcourt, Aba, Uyo, and Onitsha, and by executing the right plan.
To overcome challenges and achieve growth, creatives in the region should be able to collaborate and implement changes using existing regional infrastructure and resources in cooperation with related industries. Thus, benefits would be created for related industries in terms of skills, knowledge space, capabilities, and a supportive local environment.
Top-notch social media influencers, coupled with the growing content creators in the southern region of Nigeria, must take the lead by making noble collaborations with brands within and outside their cities to benefit themselves as well as considering taking deals that could affect the city’s growth in the entertainment sector.
This can multiply the brand’s trust in the city and then quickly begin to open the doors for prime investors and already established entertainment firms to comfortably bank on the creative industry and help nurse its talents.
While moving to get its share of the $15 billion revenue pie, creatives in the region must learn to do PR like other powerhouses in Lagos. The probability of getting investors would become higher because good PR builds immediate trust over time, and the ability to be consistent with it would take the creative industry in Port-Harcourt to another level.
While Lagos has been a center that incubates talents that even come from the South, notable Southern-Nigeria creatives must now help to develop the region’s creative industry and become instruments of growth.
Feature image credit
Business telorin Business