The money is changing. So is what it asks of African creatives.

Governments, development banks, commercial lenders and investors are building new ways to finance African creativity, from guarantees and working capital to equity and project finance. The more interesting question now is what kind of money is arriving, who can access it, and what it asks in return.

In 2006, the African Union's Nairobi Plan of Action asked governments to widen creative-sector finance through guarantee funds, joint ventures and tax incentives. It also asked African development banks to take some of the risk out of lending to culture. Twenty years on, parts of that plan are taking shape.

Afreximbank's Creative Africa Nexus programme began with US$500 million in 2020. In October 2024, the bank raised its creative-industry window to US$2 billion for the next three years. National funds and specialist lenders are following, from Lagos to Nairobi.

Taken together, these developments suggest that something important is changing.

The capital stack around African creativity is getting bigger

For much of the sector, funding has meant grants. Grants still matter, especially for emerging artists, cultural organisations and work whose value cannot be measured in financial returns. They now sit alongside other instruments, and each suits a different job:

The point is that African creative businesses are increasingly being treated as businesses with different financing needs at different stages.

A worked example, in Nairobi

What counts as an asset is changing

Many creative businesses own no factory, property or stock. What they do hold is a signed commission, an unpaid invoice, a purchase order, a catalogue or a royalty stream. Banks have struggled to value these. NCBA's managing director put it plainly when the HEVA partnership launched: "most creatives operate independently, which leaves them unseen by financial institutions."

Some lenders are now designing around those assets. HEVA and NCBA split lending risk 50:50 and plan five products, including event financing, invoice discounting and purchase-order financing. The first to launch is a KES 20 million start-up facility that asks for no security, charges 9% and allows up to six months to repay. Nigeria's fund goes further by accepting intellectual property as collateral. Afreximbank has also pointed to factoring and supply-chain finance as tools for creative businesses.

This changes what counts as an asset. A production company with a signed contract has something of value even if it does not own property. A record label with a functioning catalogue has an income-generating asset even if it has little conventional collateral. A designer with confirmed purchase orders has evidence of future revenue.

The challenge is making those forms of value visible, and making financial products capable of recognising them. The Kenyan example also exposes an important distinction. The partnership targets up to KES 1 billion. Its first live product is KES 20 million.

Starting small is sensible for an untested product. But a creative reading the headline figure should know which pool is actually available today.

There is a growing gap between capital that exists on paper and capital that is accessible in practice.

That distinction will matter more as the sector attracts larger commitments.

The burden does not sit only with creatives

It would be easy to read all this as a message to creatives: get organised and the money will follow. The reality is harder. Income arrives in bursts, and clients often pay late. A single contract can make up much of a year's revenue. An estimated 80% of Nollywood workers have no formal employment contract, and as much as 80% of Kenya's cultural industries sit in the informal economy.

These are features of how the sector works, and financial products have to account for them. If a lender sets monthly repayments for a filmmaker who is paid at the end of a production cycle, the fault may lie with the product. Afreximbank's creative lead has acknowledged as much, noting that most creative businesses are small and informal, so traditional forms of industry support may not fit them.

Records do not create the value. They make existing value legible to capital. That distinction matters because the burden cannot sit entirely with creatives. If financial institutions want to serve a sector, they also have to learn how that sector actually works.

Debt won't solve everything

Debt works when there is a clear path to repayment: a confirmed contract, steady revenue, predictable cash flow or an asset that can support the borrowing.

It fits less well elsewhere. A filmmaker developing a first feature with no distributor, a label building a catalogue over a decade, or a gaming studio spending years before launch may need capital that is willing to wait.

That is where equity, revenue-sharing, patient capital and blended finance can play a different role. The pan-African film fund is one test of this. It will invest through equity, quasi-equity and structured finance, prioritising export-oriented projects with strong global distribution potential.

That approach recognises something debt cannot: some creative assets need time to build their value. But it also raises a question for the sector. How will patient capital reach first-time filmmakers and smaller producers alongside businesses with established track records, distribution relationships and proven revenue?

The answer will not be the same in every market. A Nigerian film producer, a Malawi fashion manufacturer and a young music entrepreneur in Senegal work under different laws, financial systems and market conditions.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, Proparco's CREA Fund is testing another approach: a €5 million guarantee expected to mobilise more than €20 million in investment, alongside training for banks and fund managers.

Guarantees, debt, equity and grants all solve different problems. The challenge is building enough of them, and connecting them to the businesses that need them.

For creatives

The practical lesson is not simply to "become bankable." It is to understand what kind of capital the business actually needs.

• A short-term contract may call for working capital.
• A growing catalogue may be better suited to investment.
• An experimental cultural project may need a grant.
• A production with a confirmed distributor may support project finance.

Choosing the wrong kind of capital can be almost as problematic as having no capital at all.

That last question matters. A US$2 billion commitment is not the same thing as US$2 billion deployed. Creatives, policymakers and co-investors need to know how much capital has actually been disbursed, to how many businesses, in which countries and sectors, and on what terms.

Without those figures, it is difficult to know whether new finance is genuinely widening access or circulating among the same established players.

The next phase

A young photographer in Dakar, a fashion manufacturer in Nairobi, a record label in Lagos and a film producer in Johannesburg are all creative businesses. Each needs a different kind of capital, and each works under different laws, banks and languages. No single fund will suit them all.

The 2006 plan recognised that the sector needed financial systems built for its realities. Some of those systems now exist.

The test ahead is whether they reach small but viable businesses outside the largest markets. It is also whether financiers can earn a fair return while creators keep a meaningful stake in what they build.

That question of ownership is where we go next.