Efforts to establish a continental institution to coordinate Africa’s film and audiovisual industry are facing delays as no African Union (AU) member state has ratified the statute establishing the African Audiovisual and Cinema Commission.
Amma Twum-Amoah, Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development of the African Union Commission, represented by Sabelo Lyndon Mbokazi, Officer-in-Charge of Social Development, Culture and Sport, disclosed this at the ministerial roundtable of the Afreximbank’s Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) 2026 in Lagos.
He said the statute requires ratification by 15 member states to enter into force, but no country had completed the process, although Kenya and Ghana had signed the instrument.
He urged AU member states to sign, ratify and deposit the statute without delay to enable the commission to become operational.
The proposed commission is expected to provide a strong continental institution for coordinating policies and supporting filmmakers, while helping Africa harness the economic potential of its film and audiovisual industry.
According to the AU representative, the industry has enormous potential to create jobs, promote African stories and generate export revenue.
The delay in establishing the commission comes as African countries seek to strengthen their cultural and creative industries as drivers of economic development, employment and international trade.
Hannatu Musawa, Nigeria’s Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, also called for accelerated implementation of the African Union’s revised plan of action on cultural and creative industries.
Speaking at the same roundtable, Musawa said African countries must move beyond policy commitments to practical investments and partnerships that would enable their creative industries to innovate, compete and capture greater economic value.
She noted that digital transformation, artificial intelligence and emerging business models were reshaping the creative economy, making intellectual property protection and commercialisation increasingly important.
The minister said African countries must develop shared principles on artificial intelligence, intellectual property and the rights of creators, particularly as digital technologies create new questions around ownership and compensation for creative works.
She also called for stronger intra-African and Africa-Caribbean trade in creative goods and services, noting that the African Continental Free Trade Area and stronger links with the Caribbean could expand markets, encourage co-productions and strengthen creative value chains.
Musawa stressed that Africa’s creative economy must deliver measurable outcomes through job creation, investment and improved opportunities for creators, rather than relying on declarations and policy meetings.
The AU representative also urged member states to domesticate the revised continental plan of action, strengthen their policy frameworks, improve the use of data in decision-making and work with the African Union Commission and development partners to monitor implementation.
He further acknowledged the partnership with Afreximbank and other institutions, noting that collaboration between policymakers, financiers, trade institutions and industry stakeholders was essential to connecting African creators with investment, markets and skills.
African creators risk losing control of their intellectual property, cultural data and potential earnings as global artificial intelligence platforms increasingly use African creative works without adequate consent, recognition or compensation, Malik Afegbua, a filmmaker and creative technology entrepreneur, has warned. He said African cultural content was being harvested to train AI systems, with products subsequently sold back to African users, leaving the continent with little economic value from its own cultural resources. He called for African-owned AI platforms, stronger data protection, and systems that ensure creators and communities are properly credited and compensated.
Afegbua also warned that the growing use of AI could weaken traditional creative skills, undermine apprenticeship opportunities and deepen the underrepresentation of African languages and cultures in global technology systems. He urged African governments, cultural institutions and creators to work together to build language models using African voices, digitise cultural archives and establish clear rules around consent, licensing and compensation. He said AI should strengthen the capabilities of creative professionals rather than simply replace them, stressing the need for Africans to participate in developing the technology and controlling the data used to train it.
In a separate presentation, one of the speakers said Nigeria’s cultural, creative and tourism sectors had significant potential to generate jobs, attract investment and support economic growth. She said the ministry’s sector-wide mapping exercise identified about 4.1 million jobs across 10 creative subsectors, with the potential to generate an additional 2.58 million jobs by 2030 under an ideal growth scenario. Fashion, film and music are expected to account for about 88 percent of the projected new creative jobs.
The speaker said Nigeria’s tourism sector supported approximately 2.7 million jobs in 2024, with domestic travel accounting for more than 80 percent of tourism revenue. She identified inadequate infrastructure, limited access to finance, skills gaps and intellectual property challenges as major constraints to the sector’s growth. She urged stronger coordination among government, investors and industry stakeholders to translate the opportunities identified by the mapping exercise into jobs, investment and sustainable growth.
Hope Moses-Ashike is an Associate Editor, Banking and Finance, with more than a decade of experience reporting on Nigeria’s financial system and broader economy. She closely tracks market movements, monetary policy decisions, company disclosures, regulatory actions, economic indicators, and global developments, and interprets what they mean for businesses, investors, policymakers, and households. Her reporting helps readers understand complex issues such as inflation trends, foreign exchange market dynamics, interest rate decisions, bank performance, and investment risks. She also covers major international events and periodically travels to Washington, D.C., to report on the World Bank/IMF Spring and Annual Meetings. Her dedication to financial journalism has earned her multiple recognitions and invitations to high-level professional development programmes. She is an alumna of the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) in the United States and holds an Advanced Financial Journalism Certificate from the Press Association Training in London, UK. Her other notable achievements include completing the Lagos Business School CMC Programme, the Bloomberg Media Africa Initiative Programme, and a Master Class in Journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa.
