Date: Friday, 12 June 2026
Time: 3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (EAT)
Venue: Room CR2, UN Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Africa’s cultural output has moved from the margins to the mainstream. Over the past two decades, African sounds, especially Afrobeats and amapiano have become globally prominent, powered by digital distribution, social platforms, and a growing touring circuit. Yet a central development question remains how much of the value created by Africa’s cultural exports is retained on the continent, and how this can translate into large-scale, decent job creation.
Digitalization has transformed creative value chains. Streaming and platform-based distribution expand reach but can also entrench bargaining asymmetries, including where platforms, data, and rights are controlled outside Africa. In parallel, the revenue model of music has shifted: as documented by Alan B. Krueger, live performance and touring have become central income streams in the streaming era, underscoring the importance of venues, promoters, technical crews, logistics, ticketing, and merchandising as job-rich segments.
For fashion, Africa’s global visibility is rising, but constraints persist around access to finance, manufacturing capacity, standards, branding, and routes to market. Across both music and fashion, cross-border frictions, the movement of people, instruments, and equipment, payments, and uneven IP systems continue to limit regional scaling and job creation.
The session will connect these structural shifts to solutions. It will also draw on current global evidence and African initiatives such as UNCTAD’s work on the creative economy and Afreximbank’s CANEX programme, while keeping an Afro-centric focus on practical pathways to increase value-added retained in Africa and expand decent employment.
Registration: https://lnkd.in/eBZJHPK9