Poor performance in creative industry, SMEs dampens Africa’s GDP growth

By Chinwendu Obienyi 

With the slouch performance in the creative sector and small businesses of countries across the African continent, its growth prospects remain positive but could be hindered as the continent’s GDP is still behind as compared with other continents.

Senior Manager, Afreximbank, Temwa Gondwe, stated this during the 5th edition of the Lagos Leather Fair which held in Lagos at the weekend. Speaking on the spotlight journey ahead for intra-African trade with regard to creatives and SMEs, Gondwe noted that the two sectors are a multi-trillion dollar industry across the world, adding that Africa was yet to leverage the sectors effectively. While revealing that the continent’s GDP is growing, albeit slowly, he pointed out that the creative industry and small businesses sectors are not contributing enough to Africa’s GDP.

“These sectors present an opportunity for any economy to tap into because they are a multi-trillion dollar industry across the world but Africa only has 1 per cent share and so we are starting to grow at a very slow pace. All we need to do is develop the ecosystem of these sectors and that is what the bank is supporting under the creative African Nexus programme which is aimed at looking at financing, providing, capacity building and development of digital platforms”, Gondwe said.

 According to him, Africa’s growth prospects are good but it depends on how these sectors are regulated in terms of intellectual property, developing capacity, protection and collection of rights and for SMEs to take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), business owners need to understand the market, get market and trade information and work together. “Business owners take small trucks to cross the border with few things and then we call that intra-African trade? We can no longer survive like that because we need to come together to aggregate and take serious opportunities together. This is how we can build big businesses under the AfCFTA”, he said.

Corroborating Gondwe, the Regional strategy coordinator, Leadway Assurance, Akinyemi Alebiosu, said creatives need to start building for the world and not just for Africa because the free trade zone is not ready just yet.