Africa Development Impact Forum (Event 9, ADIF 2026)

Ladies and gentlemen, can you please take your seat? We'll be starting shortly. Kindly note that apart from a few reserved seats, you can sit anywhere you'd like. Up front will be perfect. Thank you. Distinguished guests, welcome back. We hope you had a good lunch and engaging conversations. We will now move to the simulation roundtable, after which we will have our creative session. I think a lot of us have been waiting for that particular session. But without further ado, we will have this particular session, which will be moderated by Ms. Karima Bonemra Ben Sultan, Director of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Joining her for this simulation are Mr. Eric Amel Doumba, advisor to the Minister of Post, Telecommunications, and the Digital Economy of the Congo and coordinator of the African Center for Research in Artificial Intelligence. Mr. Tshema Triki, co-founder of Growth Teams. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you. I think that the interpretation in French is not available yet.

OK.

Are we good to go now? Hello, hello. Oui, c'est bon.

C'est bon.

OK, merci beaucoup. Alors, shall I start from the beginning? This is the simulation session. It will be moderated by Miss Karima Bounemra Ben Sultan, Director of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Joining her for this simulation are Mr. Eric Amel Doumba, advisor to the Minister of Post, Telecommunications, and the Digital Economy of the Congo and coordinator of the African Center for Research in Artificial Intelligence. Mr. Chema Triki, co-founder of Growth Teams. Miss Aida Azmi, joint managing director and partner, Pemandu Associates. Professor Banji Oyelaran Oyeyinka, former Senior Special Advisor on Industrialization to the President of the African Development Bank, and the very— our very own winner of the 2026 Adif Hackathon, Luke Nebuma. The session will run for 40 minutes. Director Karima, you have the floor.

Thank you, MC, and Thank you all of you for being with us this afternoon. We have had a long day and we try to end the day with some guidance to our hackathon members. Few words before just to say that We all agree that Africa development ecosystem is still facing a persistent implementation gap with distance between applied research, policy design, and actual delivery, and it is the nexus among all those aspects, actually, that we are looking at. While evidence diagnosis and best practice models exist and are known, they do not systematically translate into scalable, context-tested implementation pathways. And this leads to fragmented initiatives that maybe do not create the synergy that we are looking for, and a number of missed opportunities when it comes to job creation, productivity increase, and inclusive transformation. Through ADIF, through this forum, and through this process, ECA wants to respond directly to this challenge and create the nexus, fill the gap. Actually, ADIF is positioned as an ECA flagship, a flagship action platform that is integrated in our delivery system and complements other events that the ECA organizes. Adi focuses on implementation pathways, offering a structured, multi-stage process that converts evidence into action that is measurable, and we will explain what we mean by measurable when we will talk about the implementation clock. As you have heard our Executive Secretary say yesterday, ADIF is not just a forum. Actually, it started something like 6 months ago with a series of preparatory seminars, and we have heard through the various sessions during this forum the result of the thinking that has taken place during the preparatory seminars. We have also launched what we called the Call to Action to seek ideas and solutions for job creation. And this was a very intense partnership effort, and I would like really here to recognize Asset Our main partner in this work, actually, ASSET, has provided us with valuable guidance and facilitated several activities relating to the call to action, the hackathon, and today's roundtable. So the call to action has received 114 proposals. After which 9 were selected and were presented yesterday to knowledgeable judges. And I would like really to reiterate our congratulations to the 9 applicants whose proposals have attracted the interest of the selection committee and have made it actually to this point. All the 9 projects were exciting, very much interesting. So maybe we should congratulate them again. Among the 9, only 5 unfortunately were selected, and you have seen earlier today the 5 that have been selected for a follow-up during the 12 months of, uh, the coming 12 months of the implementation clock, uh, and they were assessed against 6 criteria: problem definition, solution clarity and innovation, expected impact, feasibility, scalability and sustainability, and of course at the end the quality of the presentation that was made Yesterday. So I don't need to go into the various names. We have applauded them and greeted them this morning. The selection was a real challenge because all projects, even if they were very different in nature and scope, were worthy of interest and bearer of creative and innovative ideas. So today what we will do, and it is what we will be doing during the 12 coming months with the 5 selected, but this doesn't prevent us from keeping a keen eye on the progress of all the 9 of them. Today we are going to go into a step deeper in terms of discussion around the top one, The roundtable will explore ways for implementing the solution or expanding it so that it brings more impact in terms of job creation. So after, we will give the floor to our applicant, Luc. Donc nous allons donner 5 minutes.

We will allow 5 minutes to Luc to read you his presentation, and I think the presentation has been enriched based on the first comments that were made yesterday, and we are— we expect panelists to provide their vision. I will make my comment following Luc's presentation. Luc, if you're ready, shall we?

Well, thank you very much. Once again, I'm going to pitch my project, which has been enriched by the insights of the various panelists. We must state that Revibukina simply means living anew, and it is targeting people who have lost everything overnight, people who are vulnerable, youths looking for their first jobs seeking funding for their studies, the response is not to provide aid.

So the response is not providing aid, but rather a strategy to develop a new market and opportunities for the youth and women. The objective is to support— the objective is to support graduation ceremony support which combines to the sustainable agriculture practice through the production of poultry and support the employment of the youth and women. I am a business development specialist, for your information. So regarding the solution, so these are the numbers. Regarding the numbers, and when we come to the solution, there is an environment component. It's a major challenge at worldwide level. More than 3/4 of animal waste is used, and we also have the deforestation aspect. The global demand in beef is also increasing. Regarding the efficiency and impact, The cost, the average cost per participant is around $330 in the first year. We have the 5 steps of the system. We have solidarity group, Faso ticket, we also have the secular feed, we have the sales and repayment, and this finances the new cycle. We need to separate the chicken production from the deforestation. When we come to the revenue and cost per participant, we have $333 and a net income per year of $600. And this is also something that helps us build a financial history for group members and also those people participating in this endeavor. So, this is an opportunity to include these people with huge ambitions in addition to the revolving kit. And this helps them put together or associate with financial institutions to create a financial identity and create bank linkages and also benefit from entrepreneurship and blended financing opportunities. How does the repayment work? So this is a question that was asked. We have the discipline and coaching involved. It is— we have around 100% of repayment For the group, and we have 70% of the companies, of enterprises, survive beyond the 5 years of implementation. We also have 38% of enterprises which fail due to cash, so— We have the issue of financial literacy that is involved in this, and we have also a monitoring system, and people are financially educated, and we have the discipline. And both these things re— help us to resolve the cash-related problems. When we talk about the AI scoring, artificial intelligence scoring, so this is one implementation aspect, the data exists already, the model works more on an offline mode, so it does not require connection. So it is— there is the possibility of using this model in the far-to-reach areas. We also have the issues of ethics, and it should be Human-based, yes, artificial intelligence can recommend, but it needs to be validated by the financial institution or the supporting coach. So we have a rising white meat demand at global level. We have a surplus of 100% of biochicken. We also have data, we also have incubators providing data. So Breed for Billions is also— Breed for Billions, which is accompanying us, as well as Venture Labs. What else can I add? So regarding myself, my personal experience I have worked more than 18 years in the development implementation aspects, and I participated in a graduation project. So this is the foundation. I'm also a DBA in artificial intelligence. So the resources were mobilized internally to support this digital scoring. I thank you.

Merci beaucoup, Luc, for that.

Thank you very much, Luc, for this presentation which gives us more clarity and detail on what has been already presented quickly yesterday, and this would allow our panelists to react.

Now, our aim with this roundtable is to, to encourage discussion to move beyond just recommendations and create a realistic implementation pathway that would help our candidate clarify, for example, governance structures, financing frameworks, institutional responsibility, delivery sequences, identifications of risk, for example, and how to seize all the opportunities to make his project a success. So we have selected our panelists because they come from different perspectives around implementation. Some are government representatives, private sector, civil society, youth development partners, etc. And this will continue with the implementation clock. But today I would like, as already announced by our master of ceremony, to give the floor to our panelists. Donc je vais commencer.

I am going to start. With the representative from the government, with our distinguished panelist Eric-Armel Ndumba, who is the advisor to the minister and coordinator of the African Center of Research in Artificial Intelligence, Government of Congo. You have You heard the presentation of Luc yesterday and this afternoon. Now, we would like to have your opinion in some areas that are more related to your sector, but also in general terms. How can he be successful in his endeavors? And create practically, create employment as described in his proposal. And he has mentioned what the— some of the bottlenecks, what will be the success factors, success drivers, how can this type of project can be included in national development plans. So I'm going to give you the floor for your first opinion in this regard.

Thank you very much for giving me the floor. I do not know how much time I have for my contribution because I have a lot of things to say. It's impressing, uh, the, the presentation of the young that you just heard. So I would like to congratulate him as well as the other candidates. So I have a general opinion on how governments, public institutions see what the youth is doing currently. I'm very much happy to participate in this roundtable as a rep of the government. It is an initiative which falls within the government's will to translate youth proposals into tangible, concrete results on what the African people want. So one of the major challenges that our continent is facing these days is not problem identification. We know challenges related to employment of the youth, challenges related to digital transformation, and also developing digital skills. So these challenges are well known. The major challenge now is how can we implement or address these challenges? So, in this regard, I would like to share 5 concrete proposals. The first one: each policy related to innovation should be supported by an operational and clear roadmap detailing the institutional responsibilities associated with the required financial resources, the partners that need to participate, timeframe, and monitoring indicators. Second, we should create mechanisms enabling permanent coordination mechanisms between the government, the private sector, the academia, research centers, and technical and financial partners. Innovation cannot implemented by a single institution. It should be within an ecosystem. Third, financing should progress towards the blended financing, including private financing, development banks, and innovative risk-sharing mechanisms. Several African projects have excellent visions, but they do not go that step towards having adapted financial resources. Next, we need to invest in digital skills and competencies. Infrastructures are critical in this regard. We will not have a sustainable impact without a new generation of engineers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and policymakers. Fifth, it is critical to put in place a clear monitoring and accountability continental mechanism. So commitments at international levels must be followed, monitored in time, and, and this would help us measure the impact and also adjust in due time the policies when it is required. When it comes to the artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, I'm convinced that we We need to go beyond strategic reflections and to go towards concrete demonstration. We have to launch African strong pilot projects in agriculture, health, education, and public services, financial systems, and natural resource management. These projects should be considered as— as interesting projects that can be emulated in other countries. Yes, artificial intelligence infrastructure is founded in these pillars. Finally, I would like to insist on one important point. The success of our public policies is not measured by the number of strategies that we have adopted, but on the number of employments that we have created. On the number of employment trained, on the number of enterprises supported, and the number of innovations commercialized, and the improvement of the lives of our population. So if we have an ambitious vision, and then if we relate it to an efficient governance vision, and have a good implementation culture, we can make good use of our technologies as drivers to transformation, but also social inclusion and use of technologies. Let me finish by raising a specific point. This is struggle that I was having regarding financial technical partners supporting several projects in Africa. When you look at the money allocated. Let me give you a simple example. The World Bank would give $100 million to finance projects in Africa, and when we try to segregate these expenditures, we can understand that capacity building component, the Incubators support component represents 0%. I do not know how many countries benefited from the World Bank projects. You can raise your hand, those projects supported by World Bank specifically on digital transformation. You can understand that I talked about the World Bank. It's the same for the African Development Bank and other donors. Just to say that we need to reorganize our resources. If we want to accelerate digital transformation, we need to disrupt the tendency. We need to provide more support to the startups, finance startup projects, and develop digital skills in the African continent. This is a struggle I was carrying for the past 2 years because we try to accelerate digital transformation but countries do not have the adequate skills. So let me stop here for now. Maybe we can follow up on the questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Ndumba, for your contribution to this thematic area. Like I said earlier, we are interested to the presentation made by Luc. But the recommendations and the ideas that you have shared with us are very much important and, of course, can benefit all candidates who have participated to the call for contribution. For the other panelists, I see my colleagues a little bit nervous. I have given more time to the representative of the government because he comes from the public authorities, because they are the ones opening and closing the doors. So it's very much important that we give them due time and listen the position of the government to know where are the entry points. To make a project sustainable, implementable, and achievable, and something that can give us tangible results. And thank you once again, sir.

Is Mrs. Shema Tricky from Growth Teams, co-founder of Growth Teams, and I'll ask her from her own perspective to react to the presentation made by Luc. Gemma, please.

Thank you so much. I'll use my less privileged speaker to be very, very straightforward and structured. So first of all, congratulations, Luc, because obviously we are in the easiest spot to be commentators. In French, we say le spectateur est roi. It's very easy to comment. It's much difficult to come up with something that is founded and that has— that makes sense. So congrats on that. Looking into the presentation and hearing you, I had 5 or 6 points that I wanted to highlight. First of all, the pilot you did is quite promising, but it is at a very small scale. It is in one location. And might not give you enough proof of concept to really scale to the level that you are describing in the presentation. So we talked about your— basically the pilot is about 60 households in Dori, which tells you about how the mechanics works, might validate some aspects, but maybe further higher or larger pilots in other parts of the country, in other regions, or in other neighboring countries would give you more insights about before scaling to thousands and ten thousands of households. The second point is about sort of more— a comment more broadly on these type of graduation models. They are about leveraging, basically helping people getting out of extreme poverty, but where they fall— might fall short is in having sustainable growth after that episode of graduation, right? So what I would argue is that the model might need a second stage. So I understand that the scale, your scaling, is depending on getting new— recruiting sort of new households that are in extreme poverty who would benefit from the revolving fund. But what about deepening the products, the financial products that you could provide to households that have grown graduated from the first stage, right? And really accompany people in getting better, in learning, in accumulating some financial capital throughout the way. The third point is the fact that the revolving fund might need governance rules before it needs more capital. And when you're going to fundraise, these are potentially things that DFIs or even investors, private investors, would ask you. What are the governance rules? Who decides when a household defaults? Who controls the reallocation? What happens if there is a flood or if there is a destruction of livelihood and of livestock? These questions will become inherently very important in the design of your program for it to be able to scale up. The fourth comment is that the timeline that you highlighted for the financing pathway might be a bit overly optimistic. My experience with DFIs is that it takes a year or two to get them on board with a project. So that you might want to reflect a bit on the timeline that you have. The fifth point is that maybe market absorption is an unmodeled risk in the sense that you are modeling your 600 net income figure basically on a stable local poultry prices. But once you increase the supply of poultry, or the households that would supply poultry, if you are focusing on one region, then the prices will go down, right? It's a supply and demand mechanic, unless the demand grows with it. But maybe you want to remodel that a little bit. And then the last point, I promise be quick. The last point is more— I think it's quite a substantial one— is that your model is about the revolving credit mechanism and architecture. Why only focusing on poultry? Potentially there are other products, agricultural products, that you can factor in. I understand that there is basically poultry focus maybe because of the protein revolution, but the protein revolution goes beyond the white meat. It's also the soya consumption. It's also other alternative protein sources. So maybe increasing the products that you are focused on would give you also better chances for scale-up. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Shema, for your insightful input and comments on what has been presented. And I'm sure Luc is listening to what you have said with a lot of interest and take into account your proposals for a better— to better shape the program and make it— the project and make it more successful. Now we will move directly to the third panelist who is Mrs. Aida Azmi representing the— actually double hat. Today the private sector in a previous life, the public sector as well, and today you are here for Pemando Associates. Aida, you have the floor.

Thank you, Madam. I only have one point, Luc, but I'll start with— I was one of the judges that had the privilege to review your proposal and score, so you owe me lunch. I had the honor of uncovering, together with other colleagues, this diamond in the rough. And today, wearing the hat of private sector, private sectors always look for diamonds in the rough. And I like to call upon diamond as an analogy because we know the 4 C's of diamond, you know, the carat, cut, clarity, and color. I know the man knows this really well. But you also have the 4 C's in your solution, which I really like. And those 4 C's, I think some other submissions can also reflect in terms of what you have. The first one that I really like is the circular or the revolving nature of your solution. The second one is the fact that it's self-sustaining, which is cash, and cash is king. The third one is copy and paste, is replicatable. The fourth one is where the point that I'm trying to make in my reflection today as private sector is the coalition or the collective, everyone coming together to make this a success. Now, the one point of reflection in this model, it requires simultaneous coordination. Between all the different actors? You represent TWS as the convener, but you have hatcheries, you have the women, the facilitators, the technicians. I think similar to point that was brought up by Ms. Chiamah and Mr. Eric in terms of governance, my one question is who holds single control tower accountability for delivery performance? But fortunately, I think there's a shortcut to this that you can maybe take pointers and some of the other proposals can also reflect and see how this can fit in your implementation. Because private capital does not fund coordinating structure. We don't care. We will fund accountability and results. Coordination mechanism is particularly important. Institutionalize a delivery unit that has the mandate that can intervene, that can unblock and problem-solve and fast-track whatever that's needed to get your 60 households to 50,000 jobs in 5 years' time. Now, a delivery role is something that has explicit authority, but also a weekly performance rhythm. All the data that you have shared with us in your pilot has to be published, best if it's publicly available so everyone can see. In 1 year's time, when we convene here again, inshallah, in ADIF 2027, you will see the number of jobs or the number of funds that have been sustained. That's the kind of problem you are actually solving by incubating this delivery mechanism. I think I'll pause there first.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very, very much, Aida. Again, very valuable comments and recommendations made to our candidates. And our fourth, last but not least, is Professor Banji. And I'm happy that Professor Ali this morning introduced you and our MC pronounced your name correctly, so do not— I do not have to to do it again, so I'll call you Professor Banji and I would like— you are the former Senior Special Advisor on Industrialization to the President of the ADB and you are also part of the academia and the research world and I think that it is important actually to see from your perspective and I imagine a series of frustration you have lived in your life seeing beautiful project not ending concretely and not transforming into tangible result. I mean, what can we gain from your experience and what can you share with Luc? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moderator, I'd like to congratulate Luke. First of all, congratulate him also working in a very difficult environment in Sahel. We are neighbors there, so I know how things are. Uncannily, my comments are so similar to Cheba's. This is incredible. I was like, she's saying everything I wanted to say. But I think it reinforces the fact that, you know, in this kind of experimentation, because I always see development as experimentation, there's always value in deepening your information, knowledge, and data along the same path, you know, rather than across. So I will also recommend that Luke should deepen the work that he has done to find out more. For example, in terms of the beneficiaries in the poultry sector, you may want to go another level and say, okay, these ones have succeeded now, because we've seen several such— it's like walking up the ladder and then you reach the third step and you fall back on your face because you got promoted too quickly to somewhere that you don't have the capacity. Has capacity for. So I think he may want to deepen that along a little bit more to be able to prove to those who fund him in the future that, look, I really tested it along this. The second one is also to— my second advice will be that these— this kind of institutional thing that is setting up, should become as self-regulating as possible. Of course, you will have external oversight, but donors and DFIs are always excited when they see strong elements of self-regulation, that these things are being regulated by those who are beneficiaries. Of course, sometimes working with partners, in terms of evaluation and monitoring, which is in fact another very important element I think you should put in there. I think one of my colleagues here have also mentioned it. Show everyone that you have an accountability framework and that this will be monitored openly, transparently, you know, and from what you're finding so far, and I— from other literature also, people tend to look down on poor people. You find that the most truthful people actually come from there because they are in survival mode and they cannot risk failing, particularly if there's elements of self-regulation and social control among themselves. People can be shamed for being the one who spoiled the soup for everybody, so I think that will be extremely very important. Then risk mitigation. Please show that there is and there will be a framework for risk mitigation in whatever way. Of course, we can't discuss that fully here, but this is a very volatile environment. You yourself said it in your preamble that, you know, labor of years of work can be wiped out just one day. A flood happens, some bandits strike somewhere, whatever it is. So, show that, that there is room for— in fact, while I was at the bank actually, one of the things you find with this kind of environment is that the government, even the government and people spend a disproportionate amount of their money just to stay alive. Of defending themselves. Government spends so much on defense, I don't want to put it that way, but you know. So you are living in a situation where you are barely just living. So I think you should show it. In fact, we developed a product for risk for this kind of environment that you may want to borrow from some colleagues who work in the bank, not for this particular thing, but you can learn some lessons from it on how you show— and of course diversification of product. You showed poultry. In agribusiness there are four pillars: forestry, crop, fisheries, livestock. I don't know what it is that is plentiful in your own environment, but you may also want to explore or the other such diversity of products. Let me stop here and thank you.

Thank you very much, Professor, again for your contribution that enriches actually the various comments that have been made and complement them. As I said earlier, this is just the beginning of the process. As soon as we will declare ADIF finished, we will launch the implementation clock. 12 months, 12 months during which we will be discussing with our applicants, project supporter, and trying to see how we can establish an environment that will help them move on. And you said earlier that accountability is key. Definitely. We will have— so there are other lunches. We will have a series of criteria against which the success first, the progress and the success of the project will be measured, and these criteria are not only for our project bearers. It is also from our side, the supporters actually of those projects, because I think that it would be a shared responsibility to make the result of ADIF a real success. By supporting them. So, Luc, you've heard a number of comments.

They are not necessarily questions. I think they are more of recommendations for the approach you can use to develop your project ideas on how to view its governance, the benefits, the targets, the environment, the components you can leverage in order to diversify not just the beneficiaries but also the fields of activities because so far you've mentioned just one, et cetera, et cetera. I think in Conclusion. We have a raw gem that needs to be polished. We have the opportunity to do so and turn it into a shining gem. And so a few words before I read the floor to our master of ceremony.

Thank you, Madame Karima. Just some clarifications I must— with regard to the appreciation of the pilot phase, we are starting a new phase with the recommendations of the incubators, the Inventure Lab, among others, to take take into account all we have as data. Based on the graduation approach, we have an opportunity for people to embark on productive activities. The fact that we targeted agriculture because it doesn't require too many skills, but more of rigor. The fact we're using local and enhanced poultry, they are more resistant. We also combine in our kit poultry feed as well as cage. This system, I present it as the Blue Ocean Strategy. This is because we're creating a new market. We are creating a new market. We are a private enterprise for social benefit and we aim to start as a for-profit enterprise to create something that will be sustainable and replicable.

My apologies. Well, these are comments that were made and it's just the start of an interaction. The interactions will not stop here. We are going to capitalize on all the recommendations that and the comments that have been made to continue. We have 12 months, 12 months to build something robust that will be successful.

All our applicants for their selection and for the project that they have submitted, and a warm, warm thanks to all our panelists actually for sharing their ideas as their recommendation, and I'm sure that all our participants have listened very carefully to what has been said and will make the best of it. So thank you very much to all of you for participating in this roundtable, and over to you, MC.

Thank you, Director Karima, Luke, and our distinguished panelists for such an engaging session. Please rise for photos. Danny is right in front of you. If you could look at him, give him a dashing smile, that will be fantastic. Please give them another round of applause, please. All right, a gentle reminder that the forum evaluation is available via the QR code displayed on the screen and on the flyer. We would greatly appreciate your feedback as it will help us improve future editions of the forum. Thank you in advance. We will now move to the final session of ADIF. This session will take a slightly different format featuring musicians, award presentations, and more. Unlike the previous sessions, we would not be using a strict timer, Japanese and Korean style. but we will instead be guided by your response as to if you want us to continue playing, etc., etc. But if it is getting too long, we might step in at some point. Apologies in advance. To moderate this session, it is my pleasure to invite Andrew Mold, Director of the Subregional Office for Eastern Africa, and Mercy Wambui, Chief of the Communications and Media Relations section, but from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Director Andrew and Chief Mercy, the floor is yours. Please give them a round of applause.

No, I'm not singing. Okay, I'm just saying I will not be singing, fortunately. I'm here to first of all introduce, introduce some two very, very, very special guests. We— it's not often that at the ECA, at the Economic Commission for Africa, we have musicians in our presence, but not just musicians and people in this industry, but entrepreneurs. And they have a lot to say about jobs in the creative sector. And so we are going to kick off this session with Polycarp Otieno, widely known by his stage name Fancy Fingers, and you'll see why. He's a Grammy Award-winning Kenyan guitarist, a music producer, composer, entrepreneur. He's also best recognized as a founding member and the lead guitarist for the Afro-pop band called Sauti Soul, and which of course many of you know became one of Africa's most successful musical acts to this day. But Polycarpotino, Fancy Fingers, is more than just a musician, actually more than a musician because musicianship is a big deal. He's more than a musician, he's an entrepreneur, a musical entrepreneur, and you will see with him here on stage, him performing with his guitar. He manufactures guitars and I think he also He also said something about soon we'll be working with additional African musical instruments. So he's really someone to speak to about jobs in this day and age. And he's also very involved in social impact through his publishing, through his work with— on Soul Kids with UNESCO. I mean, Fancy Fingers is just an all-rounded really good guy. And then we also found out that we sort of share commonality, the same, you know, guitarist teacher, but I will not go into my own failure. Professor— and then we have— sorry, before I go to the panelists that will be online with us, we have with us Bolingo Passy. Now Bolingo is from Rwanda, and when we were talking to our executive secretary about the two musicians, our executive secretary, Mr. Gatete, said, "Does he have another name? I think he seems to remember you by some other name, and you seem to have changed your stage, your name, and now you're known as Bolingo Passi, and we will continue to call you as, you know, Bolingo Passi." And he is very, very involved in— I wish you all had an opportunity to hear him sing last last night at an impromptu event that we all ended up in, both of them. But he's doing a lot of interesting work with folk music from his own culture and making it relevant for an audience that needs that sort of groundedness in its roots. And so we will hear from them performing right now. I don't know what they're going to perform, Please give them a large, large round of applause as we welcome Polika Potieno, Fancy Fingers, and Bolingo Pasi to perform Something Mysterious. Thank you.

Alright, good evening everybody. Good evening. We are here, thank you so much Marcy for that lovely introduction. Yeah, my name is Poly Kapotiano from Nairobi, Kenya, also known as Fancy Fingers, and to my left is Bolingo Pasi. Bolingo, what was the previous name you used to go by? Because I don't know.

Rukundo. Rukundo.

Rukundo.

And that means love. It's from my Nyaruganda language. Rukundo means love. Also, Bollingo means love.

Yes, I know Bollingo means love.

That's the translation of my own name.

Okay, so next time we'll give you a Luo name for love and change your name again. Oh yeah, so we're going to— I know there's not been any sort of music in this forum. So we're here to raise the mood up a bit before we get into the session. So yeah, open up, be free, stand if you need to, dance, let go. It's a Friday. Have a good time.

This is my song on my first album called Umutran Churu. It's It speaks about humanity, how the way we treat each other is the key to the success of every one of us. Yeah, thank you so much. Can you help me with this? Cha cha cha cha. Yeah, in Luganda I do like this. Yeah.

Aah! Thank you.

Mwakosi, Charlie.

Thank you so much. 20 fingers on the guitar. Bollingo. All right, now we're gonna get a bit serious and then we'll come back to the music. All right.

Chris, please.

Yeah, come up.

Yeah.

Yes, so good afternoon, distinguished guests and participants. We're going to do a bit of blackmail on everybody here. So if you— I know it's Friday afternoon and everybody's probably eager to go home and start the weekend, but if you stick with our session, there will be a prize of more music at the end. So we very much appreciate your attendance. So Mercy's already introduced Bollingo and Polycarp. We also very pleased to have the presence of Christine Njoki here. She's the founder of a Kenyan fashion brand that combines creative design with entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and crucially job creation. So Christine, you're most welcome as well. Online, we also have Marisa Henderson, who is the head of creative economy program at UN Trade and Development. And very importantly, Marisa is currently just finalizing with her team the creative industries report, which been doing now for nearly 20 years actually, and it's a very important report in terms of tracking new developments in the creative economy. And then finally, Mercy, would you like to introduce Professor Kimani, who we hope has also joined us online?

Okay, so online we have Professor Kimani Njogu, who is prominent Kenyan linguist, cultural scholar, and who serves as the founder and director of Traweza Communications. And he is a communication— he's in communications and strategic media research and also is the chair of Creative— the Creative Working Group Kenya. The Creative Working Group Kenya has been trying to do quite a lot in the in this space of the creative industries, the creative economy, across the different genres of the sector. And he'll— we'll be able to know much more about what he's been doing as an example of what Kenya is trying to do in helping to shape the space at the policy level. Thank you very much. Welcome. Over to you, Andrew, for the presentation.

Thank you very much. Merci. So the idea of this session is to keep it as conversational as possible, but I just wanted to start by setting the scene with a few numbers, some of those numbers coming from the UN trade and development report, and also some observations about particularly the music sector. We are going to have a heavy focus on the music sector, as perhaps the opening would suggest, but we will also, of course, be touching on the fashion industry in this, this presentation. Okay, so let me start with a few numbers on the economic importance of the creative industry. So Africa's creative industries have been growing rapidly in the last few decades. Reportedly, the creative economy collectively for the continent is now valued at roughly $60 billion, and it's argued that it could capture as much as $200 billion in creative, global creative exports by 2030. Provided the right policies are put in place. It's also estimated that around 5 million people on the continent are employed in cultural and creative industries. And in the fashion industry alone, it's estimated that the industry holds the potential to create up to, up to 400,000 new jobs with women being very much at the center of that growth. And I think when you hear from Christine's experience, you'll, you'll understand how that works. So both in music, in film activities like Nollywood, for example, in the digital space, Africa is an extremely creative place. Now, the numbers that are coming from our colleagues at UN Trade and Development show a very notable increase in recent years in creative goods exports. The goods exports are the actual physical products of the creative industry sector, so it may be things like jewelry or fashion textiles, for example, and you can see that creative goods exports have been going up quite significantly. But when you put this in a global context, we see that the continent actually is responsible for less than 1% of total creative goods exports globally. So we're very much still underrepresented. And this is also reflected in service, creative service exports. So we see a very sharp trajectory upwards from about $2.7 billion US dollars in 2017 to $5.5 billion in 2020. 2024. But again, the share of global creative service exports is still very small, and it's very noticeable that the continental creative sector is more dependent on, on the, the services sector rather than the goods creation. I also wanted to just highlight very quickly as well, because we're going to be talking about the fashion industry, developments in the textile and clothing sector. So up to around 2004, 2005, the continent regularly posted a trade surplus in clothing and textiles. That's to say it was exporting more than it was importing. But due to changes in the global market for textiles and the end of the multi-fiber agreement, which put some constraints on some of the large Asian economies from exporting— suddenly we saw that Africa fell into a very large deficit. The clothing sector could not compete with import competition, and that's been particularly marked in Eastern Africa with the sharp rise in matumba— matumba imports. That's secondhand clothing in Swahili. So you can appreciate the extent to which Asia dominates global clothing and textile manufacturers and exports now, followed by Europe, and Africa is down the bottom there in yellow. And you can appreciate there's a few larger players such as Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, mostly in North Africa, but in the rest of the continent, the sector is struggling. So that's just some numbers to set the scene. I now just really wanted to quickly set the scene for the discussion on the the music industry by making a few observations. So in the past, I think a lot of very talented African musicians have had to seek their fortunes outside the continent. So some of these names may be familiar to you if you're musicians. Richard Bona, for example, of Cameroon, Manu Katché from Senegal, Asha, the Nigerian singer-songwriter, Somi, Malatu Asteke. All these people is at some stage in their career, they've sought their fortunes abroad, and some have stayed for prolonged periods. However, we can see some fundamental changes going on in the music industry in the last few decades. So about 30, 40 years ago, African music was really classified as what you call world music. It was very much a niche subsector of the global music industry. So there were some important names that everybody knows on the continent, of course, Miriam Makeba, for example, people like Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti, of course, Franco, very important for Congolese guitar music, of course, Salif Keïta, He was, I think, the first African artist I became aware of really in the 1980s, Cesario Evora and Yossou N'Dour. So in that period, it was really considered world music. And I think what we've seen in the last decade or so is a real transformation where African artists are now center stage globally. So we have renowned artists like Burna Boy, who's worked with our friend here, Polycarp. Uh, Salti Soul, of course, major international artists as well as in the region. Tyler, Rema, Asake, one of my favorites, um, Tems, Diamond Platinumz. So you can appreciate that now if you go to Western Europe or North America, your chances of hearing African music has is much, much higher than maybe it was 2 or 3 decades ago. So it's really now center stage. And you can see that also in the list of the kind of prizes and awards and collaborations that African artists have achieved over the last decade or so. So Salty Soul, for example, won the MTV Europe Music Awards Best African Act back in 2014. Wizkid, Burna Boy, of course, starting to take off 2018. Wizkid's Essence featuring Tems was the first Nigerian song in the Billboard Hot 100 top 10. Very notably as well, Rema and Selena Gomez, their song Calm Down was the first African-led 1 billion Spotify streams. Burna Boy headlined in O2 Arena in London, establishing the first time an African artist had headlined in a UK stadium like that, et cetera, et cetera. So you can appreciate there's been a real change in trajectory for African artists. Now, let me just double down on a couple of numbers for the African continent. Firstly, speaking of the global music industry, industry, the musical industry was languishing up to about 2014, and that was partly because sales of CDs were collapsing, old ways of listening to music like LPs had disappeared. We suddenly saw a very sharp decline because of digital pirating of songs up until about 2014. Suddenly in the last decade or so, global profits have really shot up though, from about $13 billion in the piracy area to $32 billion of revenues. And streaming is the thing that's really changed things. So whereas the physical products from the music sector has declined over time, what we see has increased massively is the streaming revenue. It accounts for approximately 70% now of all revenues from the music business. I think Marisa could possibly clarify that point. Now, musicians often fret about this because if you compare what has happened in the music industry with, for example, with books, books don't tend to be streamed. There are a few streaming services, limited streaming services for books, but as the jazz musician Pat Muffini once said, said he could not understand why collectively the music business had taken this decision basically to give away music in streaming— under streaming platforms, whereas other forms of art were still being paid for the art that they produced per unit. And I think that was a very pertinent observation, which I'm sure we will discuss. So basically, streaming is now the dominant form of of listening to music. And another element we have to consider is the way artificial intelligence is also disrupting the music industry. So there's been some— quite a bit of concern about, for example, Deezer, the platform, is reporting more than 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks coming onto its platform every single day., and once that happens, it starts to erode the amount of money that goes to the artists themselves. So there's a lot of concern around that element. And finally, for Africa, music revenue growth has been very, very impressive in recent years. In fact, this is true across the developing world. In the creative industries, it's very clearly music is one of the most dynamic currently. For the developing world. And you can see here in 2025, it's estimated that revenue growth was 15% for Africa, only behind Latin America. And it's also estimated that the total revenues for the music revenues for the African continent was around $2 billion. The challenge is, again, in terms of revenues, the continent is marginalized compared to global totals. So it's estimated that between 1 or 2% is Africa's share of global music revenues. And in terms of royalty collection, which I think Polycart will have some things to say about, Africa's share of global royalty collections are less than 1%. So there are some challenges. One other stylized fact I'd like to highlight before we begin the conversation now is really about how the continent listens to music is really not like people do in perhaps other parts of the world, and particularly Western Europe or North America. So whereas streaming platforms are the main way of listening to music, for many countries in our continent, in our subregion, they're still listening to music through things like YouTube, for example, on the radio or other devices Now, we weren't unfortunately able to find a study that is more recent and a survey of how people are currently listening. So this one's a few years old. I suspect the situation would have changed, but you can appreciate that more traditional forms of listening to music are still very popular on the continent. And it's basically because people can't afford the streaming services. So that is also, I think, an element that we will need to bring into the the discussions. One final element is how much people make out of individual streams from the music. And so we did some rough computations here where we looked at different platforms and the amount of money that you expect to get revenue from 1 million listens, which is a very considerable amount. Now, Policarpo Tieno's group, Salti Soul, we were looking at the numbers on Spotify. They have a 100 100 million listens, which is a very impressive total, I think, for an African artist. If you took the kind of revenue figures we have here, you can see that Apple Music is actually the one— Tidal is the, the best paying, followed by Apple Music and Deezer, then Amazon Music, and then YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora. So each platform offers a different deal to the artist. Now, the challenge is they do not offer the same rates to African artists because the streaming revenues are lower on the continent and they're more highly dependent on, on advertising revenue, which is also lower than it would be perhaps in Western markets, for instance. So when you compute the amounts that, that come from 1 million listens per artist, 1 million listens is quite an achievement. And they're getting under $1,000 for that. For many artists, Bilingüe would probably testify to this, it costs you more than that to record the material in the first place. So there is a real challenge in terms of how the continent is getting a payback from this cultural success. And so that is my overview, just to put some numbers and context into the discussion., and I think I'll pass back the floor to Mercy, where we'll start having our conversation and speaking with the panelists. We want to keep this conversational, and we want to have the opportunity for people to ask questions from the floor for this final session as well. So with that, over to you, Mercy.

Thank you. Oh, thank you very much. Lots of numbers, lots of analysis. But I do want to also focus on the only female entrepreneur on this panel. That is Chris Njoki. She's a Kenyan entrepreneur. Just a little bit about what she— she's going to tell us more about what she does, but she's a fashion industry leader and advocate for women's economic empowerment. She's the founder and chief executive officer of Ikojin. I don't know whether I pronounced it correctly.

No, no, it's Ikon. The J is silent.

Icon. The J is silent. Yeah. All right. Icon. And her brand is well recognized. She's spread out across the region. And she's built her brand across South Sudan, Juba, Kenya. And she's really gaining global recognition for what she's doing. She's employing people and does quite a bit. And we're going to hear hear a lot more about what she's doing through her brand in terms of economic inclusion and transformation. And so I'll just start off a quick question first with Polycup because, I mean, from the outside we admire the star power, the music, and we all dance to what you produce, but why are so many artists so unhappy to this day? Where is the money going? And so can you tell us about what it is that you're trying to do because you're also an entrepreneur and what you're trying to do to help change the sector but also help artists gain livelihoods? A little bit about that, please.

Thank you, Mercy. Yeah, so the music industry and the creative industry at large is, from the numbers that we've seen as well, is really growing in the continent. And setting up structures that work for the music industry is something that us, Autisol, and as myself are really keen on. So that the artists that come into the industry now have a simpler, easier pipeline to immerse themselves in. And an example of this is, for instance, we have a publishing company, so Soul Publishing, and that's usually the most, yeah, business side of the music, and that's where you make the money is from publishing. One of the ways, of course, but a major way. And you realize that many, many musicians when they get into music— so we are all passionate about music, you know, we play music, we are talented and everything. But there's a business side to it that's just basic knowledge that I feel many musicians should have, and that's what we are really working on. Is to give them information that this is your intellectual property and you can make, you can make a proper living out of this. And something like Soul Publishing that has been in existence for only 3 years now, and there was a huge need because you'd find a situation where current musicians or artists and even like older artists don't have their publishing in order. And we set up the structure where we've currently, we have almost close to 1,000 artists and musicians signed under Soul Publishing, just showing that there was a big need for that. So it's become the number one publishing company in East Africa just in 3 years. And even with that, we are facilitating a lot of writing writing camps and, yeah, giving a lot of opportunity for the musicians to be able to produce music at almost zero cost actually. Because we have writing camps that are happening right now every month at least, different genres, and they're producing, they come together, we bring artists from all walks of life together and they do a lot of music together and that goes into the publishing. So that's, that's just one of the ways, and I think one of the main ways to really have your, your, your IP in order to be able to make that— make the music make sense for you financially. Yeah, and also just the branding side of it also, which is key right now in the world we live in. You know, how you show yourself, how— what, what do you stand for in your music, what do you sing about, yeah, what are your principles and all of that. So we teach a lot of that as well. We have— we're also working on an academy as well, music academy. So I did see from the presentation that there was a football syndrome of musicians going to seek, I guess, better opportunities out there. And I saw an example of— let's say, I think I saw Richard Bono on the list, and that's someone that we are talking to closely as well, because most of them have come to a point where they are like, we want to set up structures, especially when you're at a point where— that we've gotten to, you know, you feel like you— we've done what we've done, but there's so much more to do. It's not about us, it's about the whole ecosystem. And we are working closely with someone like him to set up proper music curriculums that are Pan-African, that, you know, serve the people of Africa and all the creatives that come out of the continent. Yeah, so that's a lot of the things that we are doing to set up the structures properly so that we have happier musicians.

Talking about happy musicians, Andrew, do you want to move the conversation on the jobs and the musicians?

Yes, as the focus is on job creation, I think we should bring in Christine now, because Christine has a very interesting entrepreneurial experience as a young lady entrepreneur. Her fashion business is creating jobs for seamstresses seamstresses, and her team designed the clothes. Perhaps you'd like to just tell us a little bit about your business model and how it works, right?

Yeah. So I, I started my entrepreneur journey 11 years ago. I know I look young, right? But it was 11 years ago. I remember I was 25 and I loved fashion. I just finished fashion school And I knew I wanted the brand to be ready-to-wear, you know, because around me all of the local brands I wanted to support were all very highly priced and just custom-made. And so I wanted to bring fashion home and make it accessible for more people. And what that meant was I needed a lot of capital, which I didn't have. And so what I opted to do instead is, instead of looking for capital, is let me go slow. Let me hire youth who I can see they have the drive, they want to learn something. And that's where I started. I just started hiring. I think my first employee at the time was 18. She was a young girl called, um, Jerry. And I remember I hired her, I couldn't even pay her that much, and I told her, I'm going to teach you everything I learned from fashion school. And at that time, I think she just dropped out of high school. She hadn't even finished her high school education, and she stayed with me for about 9 years, you know. And so over time, growing the brand, it became more about also growing the skills, especially of women. I'm very attached to working with women because I've been able to see a lot of them come from maybe backgrounds where they haven't had the opportunity, but then they have the passion to want to learn something that they'll keep throughout their entire life. And currently we're working with about 40— our team is of about 40, and 99% of them are women. And it's been a great journey. We just turned 11 years this year. And I think it's just been very eye-opening for me seeing that there's not a lot of skill, especially in the fashion industry. It's still quite a young industry in Kenya. Kenya. So there's not too many skilled people out there in that industry, and so for us to make it work, we had to sort of take up that skilling in-house. And we're still working with some organizations who are helping us with the capacity building, so it's become a big part of our business.

So I guess there's two sides to the business, basically. There's one, the creation of the garments, but there's also the the creative part and designing. Perhaps you could just say a little bit about that as well and how you manage that. So you have 40 people actually making the clothing for you. Yes. And the design?

So we do everything. So everything is made in Kenya. And it starts with the design. So the design team is about 4 people. I'm part of the design team as well. We're 4 of us. There's 2 additional designers and an intern. And so we design everything. Everything. And for this, we actually, um, right now are using a lot of AI because it helps us just compress all this data. It helps us with forecasting. And so it goes from there, and it goes now into production where we do, um, the pattern making, and then it goes into cutting. We do all the stitching in-house, and then from there, now it goes into our different retail outlets. We have a couple around, um, Nairobi, and then also some around Africa as well. But yeah, that's, that's the process.

Yes. Well, I'm very grateful you brought up the subject of AI because we were discussing this earlier and Christine was stressing how much it was helpful to her business model.

Yes.

Whereas the musicians, I believe both Polycarp and Bolingo would probably have a different opinion on this. And in actual fact, Bolingo, we could possibly go to this little test to see, to see the audience's perceptions of— can you distinguish between an AI version and an original version? So Bolingo has very kindly given us two versions of his song. One is AI-generated, one is the original one. We actually wanted to see if you from the floor could listen through to the clip and then vote on your phone. So you'll see there's a a QR code there which you have to put into your telephones, please.

Have a look at your screens, the screens in front of you. Take the QR code and go and vote. It will be 15 seconds.

Yeah, this is a very important issue, I think, for artists because it affects, you know, their creativity and the amount of credit that what they get for the work that they do and the skills that they have. And songwriting is not a particularly easy skill to develop. And somebody like Bolingo is a wonderful, you know, composer. Polycarp, of course, has had tremendous success, both himself and with Salty Soul. So I think a lot of musical artists are very nervous about this technology, but it's interesting to hear the contrast that you you were saying. Yes, you, you, you said, actually said it helps with your process of creating new garments.

Yeah, it does, because, you know, um, we have a saying in fashion that nothing is new under the sun. Whatever could have been created in fashion has been created. So what happens with fashion is it actually repeats itself every 20, 30 years. And so AI has been very helpful in sort of consolidating all this data, not just not just our internal data, but even the data outside. Because yes, we're trying to create amazing pieces, but we still want pieces that our audience and our consumer needs, right? So AI is able to very quickly just take up all of this information and just serve it to us on a platter, whereas before that job would probably take like 2-3 weeks. Now it's taking about an hour.

Thank you. Bolingo, perhaps you would like to introduce your song. Just say a few words about it, and then we will do the listen to it, and you will vote, okay? So you'll have to distinguish between the version A and B and tell us which one is the real Bolingo, okay, and which is the AI. But let's introduce yourself.

Thank you. As Andrew said, this is my song. It's called Iwaba Andi. It's one of my new album's tracks. Album is called Inyenyeri. It's being pre-sold on my website, my own website, where people can come and support me like directly and listen to the album. So this is one of the songs on the album. It's called Iwaband. Let's see if you can distinguish from AI-generated and human-created.

Yeah. Okay, so everybody ready? Are you okay with that? You managed to get into the slider? Should we listen? Okay, please go ahead. Sound will help to distinguish it. There's two versions.

You can start again.

So how expert are you in distinguishing between AI and, uh, the original artist. So would you like to vote on your phones? A or B?

A or B?

Right. So they didn't distinguish between— they didn't stop it, did they, between the two spots? Would you like to hear it again?

Yeah.

One more time, and I will tell you when A and B start.

Okay.

So A is the first one. Could you play again, please? Right now, B. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, please vote. And we should get the results up on the screen. Or maybe—

Let's see who are the true music lovers.

Which song is AI? Is it A or B?

A.

All right.

Should I embarrass anybody and ask did they vote for B?

Who voted for B?

Hands up.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, thank you. That was a fun exercise. It does show the competition a lot of musicians are under, however, you know, with this surge of AI-generated music. And I think for an artist like Bolingo, who's genuinely very, very talented as a songwriter as well as a performer, you know, the trends are worrying. So he's— the person in your studio did this for you, didn't they, last night? The AI-generated version. I just wanted to ask you a little bit, Bolingo, about your trajectory, because as a young artist, you're 25 5 years old, you're on your second album, your third album is about to come out shortly.

Yeah.

How do you manage this? Because often for a young artist you have to end up being like a one-man show, really, no? You have to be both the performer, the composer, producer, the manager, instrumentalist. You have to hire the musicians, the marketing. So how do you manage to balance this, uh, I can imagine it's a very difficult task.

Thank you. This is a very serious question because the music nowadays, it's really hard to find all the people needed to make a song production be complete because the song production needs a lot of people. And most of us young artists, we don't have enough funds to hire each individual to do their jobs in the song. So there's no solution. You have to learn how to do many things at once yourself. You have to become a songwriter, and you write your own song, you sing it, you put background vocals yourself, 'Cause if you're going to hire other singers to sing some background vocals on your song, you have to pay them and you have no funds and there's no one who is going to come and pay for that, except if you are lucky enough to have an executive producer. So it's really challenging to do all of that work alone. But I can say one of the good thing about doing many things on your creation, it gives you more possibilities to orient your vision as an artist in the creation of the song. But also it's tiring, and also there are some parts like business part, like me, I'm not good in any sort of business thing. I'm just an artist. I can produce. I can play instruments. I can— I'm known as a live performer. I can do many concerts, live performances. I can be a bandleader. But when it comes to business, I should need someone who is really good in that part. And it's really hard to find a businessperson who really knows how music and art works because it's It's a different occupation where you need to understand and differently from other occupations. Like, we need publishers, we need managers, we need booking agents, and we need, like, structure, structure to make sure that every income, every royalties, they are coming to your— directly to your accounts, and there is a lack of infrastructure in most of places in countries in Africa. Your songs, you can't generate in every way possible. Like, for example, most of the songs are being played on YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer, but we forget that radios also are playing the songs. And radios are supposed to pay artists. Most of radios nowadays, artists are paying radios to play their songs, which is inverse. So it means that there is amount of money that is not going to an artist. So in different— like me, in different places in Kigali, in hotels, I sometimes go to the hotel and find some— young artists also playing my songs, but again, nothing from my own songs. So it's a journey, but still there are other opportunities, like in Uganda, you have good infrastructure, we have the support from the ministry where you can present a project, where you can seek your guidance, but still we need— Speaking for all artists, we need those people who understand IP, IP law, intellectual property laws, copyright, who can make sure that the structure is giving enough accreditation and income to the artists.

Thank you. Thank you, Balinga. Yes, Christine.

Yeah, I'd just like to add on that actually because it's the same. I think even for Polycap, you'd say, because even for me it was the exact same, you know, when you start out you don't have money to hire everybody, so you have to do everything at the same time, right? And you sort of have to learn all these different components. And now when it comes to getting people, I think the one thing that from my experience I realized, because it didn't take me until I think our 7th year before I got somebody who could teach me about the money, me. So about accounting and where the money was going and everything. And I feel like that's the one thing that we're not training creatives on. It's like, follow the money. Because at the end of the day, we are creatives. We love doing what we do. We don't need someone to train— I don't need training on how to design. They probably don't need more training on how to play music. But we need training on the business side. So we need training on how do we make sure our accounts are good, how do we follow the revenue. Because for us to keep creating, we need the money, you know?

Yeah.

Polycarp, you mentioned something about you having a business as well where you're helping young artists precisely in this issue that, uh, Bolingo is saying about intellectual property.

Yeah.

How does that work?

And yeah, um, because we— I mean, coming up in, in the industry in Africa, um, we experience the same obstacles, I'd say. Um, I don't see them as, as problems per se, but as we're leveling up in the industry when we started out is you realize you get to a place where the structures are not set up in the region you're in at the level you've gotten to. So like, okay, what do people do when they get here? Okay, now we have African recognition, we want to take over the world. Who do we need on our side to business-wise to really take us there. And you look around, you're like, oh, actually, probably we're the first ones to do this. So what do we do? We set up the structures ourselves, and we're like, this is what we need to do, so that also the people, the artists, the younger artists coming behind us don't have to go through the same, the same issues. So for instance, as I talked about the Soul Publishing, and also we have a record label as well. And with the publishing is we are able to putting funds in there to facilitate all these different sectors that an artist needs to thrive. So there's a legal side, as he mentioned, where there's actually training for this artist to understand exactly what their rights are, what their IP rights are, and also setting up structures for them to be as creative as possible with literally zero fee, and that is compensated from the publishing. And it's very, yeah, it's very, how do you say, it's, it's a win-win situation for everyone in that, in that regard. Because I mean, we have a, for instance, a world-class studio back in Nairobi, and at 20 years old, I would not dream at the stage that I was to be able to get into that kind of setting. But we're providing that opportunity for younger artists to do that. And also, as you've seen, there's a rise in the— in everything, in all the young people who are involved in the creative industry. It's not the same as when I was 20 years old— 20 years old, sorry, which is many years ago. It's not the same. So now there's— I mean, the generation now, it's so many young people are getting into the creative industry. And we'd really love to set up the structures for them, for it to be easier for them to create a legacy as well, but then to just be able to create proper jobs and proper careers for all these young people. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. You know, one thing that always strikes me when I speak with musicians from the region, they do complain about job insecurity and sometimes the lack of respect towards musicians in terms of payments, for example. I know of many musicians that they'll do a gig and subsequently the venue will refuse to pay, or, yeah, or they'll postpone it over a long period. And of course, for a musician, if you're living, you know, hand to mouth, you can't afford to do that kind of activity. So it is a very difficult market. I did just want to bring in Marisa, if she's there. Marisa, did you manage to connect online? This is our colleague from UN Trade and Development, and they have the biannual report on creative industries. And I did just want to ask Marisa about any new developments because they're just finalizing their 2026 Creative Industries Report. Good afternoon, or good evening now. I hope you were able to follow the conversation. I believe Mercy will have a question for Professor Kimani on the policy side, and I was thinking perhaps you could just update us a little bit on this new report and what some of the key messages are, and what the main changes are in the creative industries, and particularly the music industry, that you can see. I'm afraid we can't hear you at the moment, Moïsa.

Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can now. Yeah, thank you very much.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, yes, we have a resolution that will be— we are going to present the report to the General Assembly this October, and they ask us how the creative economy can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. So we work with different agencies to see— the UN agencies— to answer this question. And one way of doing this is through trade and creative industries and how the, the results of this beautiful music which has listen to, or the designs that we've seen in this meeting, are products that can help make money to individuals and companies and therefore exports and create jobs. So the main, the main argument is that yes, the creative industries can actually help create jobs and create sustainable jobs and, um, and at the same time grow the economy. But it is not automatic. There have to be a lot of elements in place that are related to the different government agencies and the creators. So the government has to facilitate the creators, and there has to be a dialogue between the creators and the governments. Because as you, you show very clearly, the, the business models of the different sectors of the creative industries are very different and they need different kind of settings. The music industry, as you have been saying, you mentioned that you wanted to know about the streaming. Yes, it is through streaming where Muses, musicians can get money. And, and, um, the figures that we have from the industry are like, yeah, global music recording revenues hit all-time high of $31 billion in 2025. Okay, so streaming alone creates about $21 billion. It's a lot of money. So of all that money, some money goes to the, to the creators. But because now it's streaming and you stream in a platform, platforms are making a lot of money. Um, so we, one of the things that we see is that there is a lot of the way, um, these platforms are getting money is through advertising. So Meta, Alphabet, are creating and are generating a lot of money through advertising. And the platforms, maybe as you were saying, the money that creators get is not so much, maybe it's not, it may not be enough, or as musicians would like, but it depends on the market. So countries are trying to find what governments are trying to find ways to protect, to find a balance between the platforms, the musicians. So, it is a work in progress, and you can see that we— UNCTAD produced a survey with member states, and member states, including some from Africa, South Sudan, Gambia, and South Africa, They showed us how the government is trying to implement laws that protect the musicians and at the same time encourage business. So that's one thing that is very important. Another thing is that I— can I continue?

Perhaps, Meissa, we could just give an opportunity for the panelists to just say something on that. Polycarp? Yeah, because I think, you know, there are some African platforms, but they're not— the traffic they get is not comparable perhaps with the big international platforms. I mean, is that a challenge for Africa, that it doesn't have enough platforms of its own and the revenues are staying on the continent?

Yes, yes, that is. You're talking about streaming, right? Mostly, yeah. Streaming, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, for sure. Yeah, there isn't— I don't think that they're that robust to be able to, to, um, you know, acquire the number of streams that would make sense, number one. Number two, even from the previous reports that you presented, how we consume music is very different, you know. So it's still heavy on radio and YouTube, I guess, is so much more accessible when you have a phone, but then the numbers do not make sense. Yeah, so I, I feel there's ways in which, um, and I guess that's why we are all here, is to develop again systems that are— because the African continent is very unique in the way we do things and business and all these things, you know. So I think curated platforms that that speak for the African continent and African creators is what we need to make and work on with all the variables that come with our terrain in the continent.

Thank you. Mercy, would you like to follow up?

Yes, I do want to turn to Professor Kimani Njogu, who is chair of the Creative Working Group Kenya. To comment on this question of the Kenyan ecosystem and what the working group has been trying to do with the government as an example of trying to shape the sector a little bit or have the government pay attention to the sector in a positive way, if possible. And I do also wish you could— any one of you could comment on the question of the platforms versus the artists, because this is, this is a big issue. Marisa, you just said that the platforms make a lot of money. I think for me the question is, where is the money going? The platforms are making a lot of money, but we find that artists get taxed more than what the platforms need to be, to be, to be to be taxed. And this question has been, you know, of interest. In fact, I'm seeing our boss, Executive Secretary Mr. Claver Gatete, who has been paying attention to this question of taxation of the, you know, of platforms versus, you know, do we need to tax them and what are governments doing, what should governments do to help open up this ecosystem in a way that supports the creator. Professor Kimani.

Yeah, thank you very much, Mercy and colleagues, for this opportunity. Just to indicate that it's absolutely important for governments to appreciate the centrality of the creative sector not just for social development but also for economic development. And for us in Kenya, we recognize this much early— at least the sector recognized this very early on when we are developing a new constitution for the country. And we realized that one of the ways in which you can develop systematic policy frameworks was to embed the creative industries within the new constitution. And therefore, as a sector, we created what we called the Consultative Committee on Culture and the Constitution, and we did a lot of advocacy work to ensure that arts and culture were well protected in the constitution and the government was required constitutionally to invest in the creative sector. In fact, because I was the co-chair of the consultative committee, we argued very strongly that artistic freedom needed to be protected alongside scientific freedom and academic freedom, and we got that in the constitution. So constitutionally, artistic freedom is protected We also argued very strongly that culture is the foundation of the nation. If you take people to be the foundation of the nation, then culture must be the foundation of the nation. And therefore, for the last couple of years, we have provided input into key discussions And we have appeared several times in Parliament to engage with members of Parliament, especially on issues of platform. There was, of course, a very big question of benefit share between platform owners and creators, the ringtones, and the extent to which, for example, the intermediaries should be— should not be getting more than the creators, and so on. and we were able to successfully convince Parliament that the creative sector, the creators, should be earning more than they were earning. So we also think that the investment in the complete value chain of this sector is really key, so that if you are talking about fashion— and Christine, thank you so much for all the work that you to do, that we must be investing in the full value chain of the fashion industry, from cotton to exports, and enlarging the market for the fashion industry. For music, again, enhancing consumption, distribution, and so on. I want to just make a comment about, you know, an area of immense concern to us in Kenya, which again we are engaged in, and this is the area of piracy. And to say that we do require, especially within— across Africa, to invest more in enforcement of the protection of the intellectual property rights of creators. And so that is one area. The other area that again is of immense concern to us relates to rights administration. So, for example, we know that, you know, royalties are collected but not necessarily shared with creatives. And even when they are shared, they are shared to a very small degree. We do need to find a way in which the state, the government itself, supports the creative sector. So in my view, there is a big role for the government to play in protecting the sector and ensuring that it is producing maximally, whether we're talking about, you know, music or fashion or film or video arts and so on. And that's the— you can never ignore the process of policy formulation. Many creators, many creatives find the work of policy to be very slow, and I want to agree with them. It is very, very slow. So the Creative Economy Working Group recognizes the pace to be a slow pace, but we've been very consistent systems. Only this month, actually, this month, yeah, this month, we engaged a bill that's coming up through the Ministry of Youth Affairs, and this is the Creative Economy Bill, which has huge challenges. And we have engaged it, we have suggested ways of improving it. We think that it has potential for fast-tracking investment in the creative sector, but we think that it needs to be much more robust and less— it should be more facilitative and less punitive. We think that the taxation angle needs to be minimized to grow industry. We also, I think one of the other achievements that we have made recently is really interesting using arts and culture within the competency-based education system so that we invest again strongly in the, in the, within the educational system and create talent there. But funding for the, from the government across Africa is really, really critical. You cannot be operating on 1% or less than 1% of the GDP for arts and culture. I mean, we need African governments to be investing much more. We need African governments to be able to provide mobility funds for creatives. We need the borders to be much more open. I mean, we must be having a visa-free opportunity for creatives to move around Africa. Currently, only 28% of African countries are visa-free. In fact, even when our creators, creatives, get to countries, they are also subjected to extra taxes, extra barriers to income generation. So I think there's a lot of work to be done both at the level of the nation itself but also at the continental level. I think that if you look at the global Professor Kimani, thank you.

If I may, so yeah, so thank you. You, you've given us a, a litany of, um, you know, very legitimate, I think, um, complaints that many people in the creative sector have there and weaknesses in the current policy. But you've also reiterated the importance of the government's role in all of this, and I think that's something that conversation with Marisa earlier, she also stressed. Were there any topics there that Professor Kimani mentioned there, Marisa, that you'd like to just quickly come back on?

Which point would you like me to emphasize?

Well, he was speaking very much of government's role in the creative sectors and the change in the constitution on this point. and then the bill as well on creative industries to attract investment. I believe the UNCTAD report very much supports the idea that government has to have a proactive role to make this happen, to have a more healthy creative industry across all the sectors.

Yes, yes, can you hear me? I want to make sure you can hear me.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can, yes. Just a short comment, please, because we have 3 Kenyans here as well. I think it would be good they react to Professor Kimani's comments as well.

Yes, so I cannot agree more. I think it is the countries that have successfully actually integrated creative economies, the ones who actually do not ignore the policies I mentioned. So I couldn't agree more with that.

Um, Policarp, Christine, or Mercy yourself, um, Perhaps you have some responses as well.

I'd like to— I really would like us to— because again, we also need to focus on the job creation and the opportunities for young people. The question of taxes really annoys me. I'm being very honest on this, in this conversation. It's a conversation. We are not doing speeches today. But the question of taxes really bothers me because young people are already taxed heavily on their mobile phones. They need to be online. They need to have the data to be online, to go on YouTube, to upload their music. And I think this is where we really need that conversation, you know, well-grounded in data that supports governments to see how to vary taxes so that they are not overtaxing the sector so that it grows and it thrives. But I'd like to hear from Polycorp pick up on his opportunities for job creation and manufacturing because you're also— you go from stage to manufacturing guitars and you're creating jobs. So over to you.

Thank you. Yeah, on the fact of manufacturing, which also Christine is in, so for me is being in The place that I'm in, in the industry, again, there's a need to build a lot of this in structures, including infrastructure as well, and manufacturing. So the— this guitar that I was playing, that you, the audience, can see right in front there, is, uh, is a— is an African brand, right? It's a high-level guitar. That, you know, we manufacture. And the whole idea is also to just put the continent at the same place in terms of what we can do in terms of quality with the best of the best globally. And that inspires young people to be in that conversation and be like, you know what, I can make just as great as anyone else in the world. That's number one. Number two, it's all about job creation. Again, it's a, you know, made in Africa piece. And I, from the report, again, that was very keen on— I saw that there's a huge— there's an increase in creative goods export out of the continent. And we'd love to see more of that because, again, all— like, the guitar, for instance, is the number one played instrument in the world, and 90% of that wood comes from Africa. We just don't— we're not able to manufacture them ourselves. And yet you can argue that the guitar instrument, the first— the origin of the first guitar is— came from the continent. The lute came from here. We have a lot of string instruments as well, traditional string instruments out of the continent. And I'd love to bring that to the fray, to be able to produce traditional instruments that are getting extinct that are a huge part of our culture, and creating this manufacturing plant that we are in the process, still in the very pilot phase of creating it, creating capacity for, for the whole business, training artisans in craftsmanship and luthiery, which is the art of making guitars and other instruments as well. So this is something that is lacking out of the continent, and the whole idea is also to create a creative hub around it where younger musicians can come and be part of the whole, the whole ecosystem that comes with the manufacturing plants. And I don't think there's any in the continent at the moment. That is something that we pride in and we are heavily working on to be able to get it to the highest level possible.

Sounds good. Maybe, Chris, you want to—

I can just jump in there. I think for me, especially to Mr. Kimani, and thank you for the points you made, I see that the biggest potential we have for job creation creation in Africa is in manufacturing, you know. And even when I look at what PolyCup is doing with the manufacturing of guitars, what we're doing, my dream is to be able to employ 100,000 young women, you know, across nations in Africa to be able to produce not only for Kenya but for their respective countries. But then one of the concerns I have and a lot of us have in the fashion industry in Kenya is we, we are all competing. We're not competing against each other, but we're competing against this one big thing. And I'd like to address it here, which is the secondhand imports. I mean, it's massive right now, and it's just impossible to, you know, match up some of those prices. And I understand, of course, it's a process. It's not something that can be stopped immediately. But I feel like some of those— when we talk about the government investing in arts and culture. I think before even the investing, I think part of that should be to sort of tighten some of those, um, you know, imports coming in, because they really do affect how we're able to grow the local industry. And so I'd love to know what some of those, um, if there are any, anything that's being done currently to help with— I know it's a conversation we've had a lot, you know, with the secondhand imports, if it's something that's being addressed, and because it can really help.

We could have a long discussion around that, Christine. The Matumba policy, for example, of the East Africa Community, which didn't really work as it was supposed to, but tried to restrict the import of secondhand clothing. I'm being told we're running over time, and Mercy and and myself also agreed that it would be good to have just a couple of questions from the floor if possible. And of course, we're also cutting into the time of the artistic time at the end because we were going to get a little treat. If you remember, I was saying that if we kept the discussion tight, then we could return to some music at the very end.

I do want to ask our— friend Girum Mesmur, who is Ethiopian, because— yes, and to just comment from the floor, you comment on this question, especially on the consumption of music in the diaspora and the potential for earnings for artists if they get it right, in a few minutes.

Thank you, Mercy. It was very interesting to attend this. In the case of Ethiopia, we have— it's a big population, and so is the population so big in the diaspora. And it's a society that consumes its own music a lot. So musicians get to travel major cities outside of Ethiopia, but mostly within the diaspora. And it's— I would have to say it is largely limited to the society, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Sudanese, Somalis who are familiar with Ethiopian music coming to consume Ethiopian music, live music. So it's largely the live music that is out there, and it's mainly— Most nowadays, most album releases are also YouTube-based. That's the popular platform. And there's not much earning for musicians, so it's— and there's no infrastructure digitally to monetize that much. So this needs a lot of training and so on. And also, at the policy level, music instruments are taxed as luxury items, sometimes up to 300% from how much you, you'd buy them. So it makes it for musicians very difficult to, to really have studio equipment, instruments, and so on. So the kind of initiative that Polycarp has is very impressive, and that's the kind of thing also we need to really encourage and make instruments, make it sustainable here. And we, we have the raw materials and probably needs the knowledge and the guidance to, to be doing this. And I'm very much personally impressed at what Polycarp has grown to a level where he's very knowledgeable in the industry and making differences as an entrepreneur and musician. Because I came to know him very early, as early as 2009, when it was his, as he told me yesterday, first travel outside of Kenya to Ethiopia. We shared stage back then. Then as part of— he came as part of the early Saudi Soul, and it was very memorable. And welcome, and it's nice to be sharing the stage again. We were on a jam session last night.

Yeah, and tonight and tomorrow night.

You're welcome. Absolutely welcome again to add this and share your journey.

Thank you.

Thank you, Girum.

Thank you, Girum.

Maybe just one round of questions from all the panelists.

There was a lady there that just wanted to ask a question. I think we should be democratic and let the floor speak as well. We are pressed for time, I should stress that, but we have— so just bear in mind we don't want to sacrifice the live music at the end of the session.

Introduce yourself, where you're from, and

Okay, my name is Omolola Lekbede from West Africa, Nigeria. I'm a research fellow here with ECA.

I have two questions, one for Christine. We all know that for the fashion industry there's a whole lot of drama, especially after award night, speaking about fashion theft. So how do you deal with that, like, to protect your brand from fashion theft? Two, how do you ensure that your fashion designers— like, you give them guidelines to ensure that they don't fall into fashion theft themselves? So I have the second question for the musicians. I know you mentioned that radio is a big thing, but currently in Nigeria we use social media more. You will see young artists come on board, use their Instagram, and sort of blow.

This is a term we use in Nigeria to say they are now known.

So how do you use social media to ensure that your music is transmitted well beyond the traditional media?

Thank you.

All right. So thank you for the question. I think I'm going to start with the first about fashion theft. And I know the—

Let's take one more question so that we do a round and then you can answer all of them.

Hi, my name is Camilla Talam. I have a question, I guess, in general for the panelists. Two quick ones. One, there was a discussion about the use of AI to improve efficiency in the processes. I'm wondering to what extent can you use AI to increase efficiency in your creative processes while still ensuring that AI doesn't take away all the diverse jobs that could be created in this sector? Number 2, there was a discussion about government funding for the creative economy, especially for the services sector. What particular things should the government be funding, particularly for the services creative sector?

Thank you.

I think we can start with those questions.

The fashion theft, Um, yes. Um, so on the fashion theft, I know you're addressing what recently happened in Nigeria during the red carpet, and, uh, it's, it's, it's a big conversation in fashion. But just from seeing what other brands are doing, because this is something that happens— so fashion theft basically is like plagiarism. You come up with a design as a designer, and then you find other brands replicating it, either for cheaper or whatever. And to be honest, it's never gonna change in my opinion. It's one of those things that— because what happens, you could say you want to go and copyright that design and make it yours, but what happens is when you copyright a design, if you just change anything small, it becomes a completely new design. So case in point, this top, if someone just maybe made this V slightly higher, that's a completely new top, but they can maintain the color print, everything. And And so for me, when I look at it as a creative, I try not to dwell on it so much. Just keep creating so that they can only be as good as your last design. So they're always behind you. Just keep making sure you have the— yeah, yeah, just don't stop creating. When it comes to AI to increase efficiencies, so I know for us what we've done, because I'm a huge fan of AI, I think it's— really made some of our processes shrink down in terms of time. And what I've also incorporated now, even in our hiring, is I will look for candidates who are pro-AI. So I'm not— even during, during the interview session, I ask, okay, so what are your thoughts on AI? And they don't have to know it. They just, just don't need to be afraid of it. You know, if we can get more people to embrace Because it's here, you know, it's not going anywhere. If we can embrace it and have a team that embraces it as well, what it does is it makes work move faster. But the minute you have some team members who are scared and worried, then it's like, okay, you know, that's just how I do it. In terms of government funding, I think for me, I'd mention it in the, in one of the, uh, the last comments, is we need to teach creatives more on the business aspect. So if the funding can go in training creatives to look at not just their talent as something fun and they enjoy doing, how do you make this a livelihood? I think that would go a long way.

Um, yeah, my sister from Nigeria asked about musicians using social media, um, outside the traditional media. So I mean, when we're in an era where social media is is the most important tool for you to use, to be honest, because that's where your branding is. That's kind of like your, your CV. It's your digital CV as a musician. And definitely, yeah, you should embrace it. And consistency is what really gives— if you believe in yourself and, you know, you take good angles, of course, take good quality videos and post them But still, your authenticity as you do this is the most— still the most important, because— so that you're not always chasing virality, because that's what is, is the most common thing right now with young people, is you just, you're just looking for that virality. And it can make you get depressed as well, because you won't get it every day. One out of a thousand videos may go viral, but it doesn't mean that you stop. It's— that's not what to chase. It's more of your CV, it's more of what you present. You can have a video that has 1,000 views and that's where you get your big break from, or someone sees it and be like, that's what I want. And the one for that has a million views is just there, people watch it but you never really got anything from it. It's just you got famous and then how do you actually make your career out of that? So yeah, it's, it's as important, still very important, but it's It's just how you use it and not begging too much on it also, you know, but still use it efficiently, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Bolingo, would you like to add anything on the use of social media?

Yeah, sure. As Polycap said, social media is a good tool for creatives and it really helps an artist to reach every corner of the world, of course, but we have Also to be careful because when you just want to be— to go viral without having a content and good quality creativity that can make you different from others and where you can get people coming to you, thank you, this is good, I want to invest in you and want to love what you do, want to hire you. So going viral it's different from having the real audience, the real people watching you. It's really different. So I think that is my opinion on this.

Thank you. Thank you, William. Merci. I think we should probably be wrapping up now then. Yes. And especially if we're going to have a very short musical session because, of course, the Executive Secretary and Mama Keita Deputy has to— they have to take take the stage next. So any final summing up, I think, Mercy, on our part?

I think we've heard a lot about talent. It's not the problem. The issue is a whole range of issues to do with the ecosystem, the challenges that people are not really making a living from their talents, especially in East Africa. So it's not about creativity. There's plenty of it. We need to evolve this creative sector into one that has the right investments, one that has the right policies, the right sort of frameworks. But maybe I'd like to have one in 30 seconds, what would you change if you had the opportunity to change PolyCub?

Chris and Bolingo. What would I change? I mean, I'll start by saying actually that I know everybody in this room has probably a child or a nephew or a cousin, someone that's in the creative industry. So it is up to all of us to really make the changes that we know we need to make. I would definitely look at building infrastructure for the industry and setting up the the ecosystem that works for, for us. And policies as well is very key. And thank you, Dr. Kimani, for all the comments that you gave. But I know things can work faster than they have been. It's been— we've had these conversations for quite a long, long time, and it's time to actualize them right now. Yeah.

Chris, what would you change if you had a magic wand?

Um, I think what I would say is I would make it easier for creatives to be able to explore their passions, but also make that their livelihoods and make it something that's successful for them. And for this, You know, it doesn't have to be a lot because we all sort of focus on this big word funding, but it's just removing some of the roadblocks that would make it easier for a creative when it comes to, you know, policy, you know, being able to have access, just overtaxation, small things like that. It doesn't have to be this big fund that we give to them. Just make it easier so that anybody who's starting, whether they're in the 20s, and because a lot of them are youth, all of us here started when we were really young, and the journey was a lot more taxing than we'd probably explain. But I think now that there's knowledge and, and we're all talking about it, I think being able to just remove those roadblocks for the young creatives would go a long way.

I like the observation, by the way, again, about taxation, the thing you were saying, because because 300% considering instruments as luxury items is a pretty burdensome state of affairs, isn't it?

Malingo. Thank you. For me as young artist who also does most of the processes in the production process, as a songwriter, producer, composer, singer, instrumentalist, I think what I would change is I would put more efforts into having a structured ecosystem where the whole production chain, each individual in the production chain gets his or her revenues or royalties from what she or him has done. So if you are a songwriter, you need to have your royalties from your song you wrote without being the singer of the song. And most of the writers are there, their songs are being played, being popular, and they're getting nothing from the song. And so producers do a lot of work to the song, they create music, everything, but after now this goes viral, a producer is getting nothing. So I think I would emphasize to have an ecosystem and production chain that values each individual creative to have their own income to their pockets.

Thank you. So you're defending producers there very, very adamantly. Yes. Mercy, may I have a final thought as well? Because I just liked Chris's observation about the importance of don't stop creating. You have to keep ahead of the curve. You've always got to be producing new material, and I think that's what most artists strive for, isn't it? To be constantly producing new works. So if I had a takeaway from today's session, it would be that. Shall we wind up the session, or do you have anything to add?

I think we can wind up the session now, and as promised, We have one last performance and it will help just get that creative thinking sealed in our DNA. And we hope that from this conversation we have enough material from— I know there are note-takers taking all the calls and all the issues that came out of this so that there's follow-up, ECA, WFP is here to support that, especially on the research side, on the data, on strengthening that, the analysis, working with UNCTAD. And thank you so much to UNCTAD for offering your initial findings from the report that you're working on. And also, we know that this issue is not— the conversation doesn't end here. There will be very interesting results coming out of this, especially on the question of how governments can better support this ecosystem. And we have our Executive Secretary here who believes in the sector, who will probably have something to say about it when he takes the stage. But for now, can we have the closing remark— is a song— from our two creatives right here? Thank you. Please take the stage.

Thank you. Thank you, Kristin.

So I'm not the singer, but I just wanted to make a quick announcement. The organizers have informed me that the participation rate on the evaluations is really, really low. Please, the QR codes are up there. Can you kindly scan as we listen to music? As the setup, since this is a creative session, I have a little jingle that is not produced, so we will try together. I say something, you repeat. Distinguished participants, distinguished parties, we would like you to fill, we would like you to fill the evaluation form, the evaluation, the evaluation form. Okay, all right, so we'll leave it to the real musicians. Thank you.

Please fill the form, huh?

We've sang, we have talked, please fill the forms.

Thank you.

I see you want to take our jobs. Yeah, um, yeah, um, I'm honored to finish this amazing forum with music. So this is a song that I composed with my band 6, 7 years ago. Some of you may know it, so you may know, I don't know, but if you do, please feel free to sing along. If you get to hear this song, somebody loves you. Hello, change your mind and come back home. Somebody loves you.

Yeah.

Hello, if you get to hear this song, somebody loves you. Susanna Bane. So I want to teach you guys something. You guys want to sing along?

Are you ready?

So just the word Sanjay, that's it. So when I say Susanna You say, nice one. Okay, only, only to my right. I can only hear to my right. In the middle. 1, 2. Hello, hello, hello. Means auntie, like your aunt, you know, like someone. It's a respectful way of calling someone. So we're trying to to lure Susanna to come back. Okay, so— Susanna, hello, hello, hello. If you get to hear this song, somebody loves you. Susanna, oh, hello, hello, hello. Change your mind and come back. The way you're singing, Sanjay, Susanna is not going to come back. So please louder so Susanna can hear so she comes back.

Okay, all right.

Susanna, is Susanna here yet? She's not here yet, so we need to be louder than that.

There you go.

Hello, hello, hello. If you get to hear this song, Somebody loves Susanna. Oh, hello, hello, hello. Change your mind and come back. Somebody loves Susanna. Hello, hello, hello. Nice. Didn't you get to hear this song? Somebody loves Susanna. Hello, hello, hello. Change your mind and come back home. Somebody loves you. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Beautiful Bolingo and myself, Fancy Fingers. Um, yeah, have a lovely, lovely evening. That's the end of it, by the way. It's already gotten dark, so one more. I'll let Bolingo take the stage for this one.

This one will also calm your mind a little bit. It's one of the classics from Ugandan traditional music by Les Cyprien Ogamba. So it's called Akabindo Kayogo Kuru. I'll let you know when to come with your clapping like this—

cha-cha-cha!

Don't worry, don't worry, I will just let you know when the time is right here. If someone can dance the Kinyarwanda dance, yeah, you can come up front.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Professor Chan. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Oh, it's so— you will, you will— we have all your emails. We will receive invoices for this performance. I'm joking, but thank you so much.

I think one more. They're asking for Malaika. Malaika? Is it that one?

One for the road?

Yes. Permission for— yes. Okay, yes. Says please.

Yes.

Thank you so much. Which song is popular? Which Malaika? That one. All right, people like love love songs.

We love you, Susan. Okay, there's a lady in the audience who can sing.

Where is she?

Where? Where? Please point, point at her. Everybody point. Where is she? There's someone who can— is, is she the one? Oh, okay, okay, awesome. Give it up for them.

Thank you, thank you.

Check your emails.

Alright, that was a very uplifting and inspiring end to Adiff. Now we are approaching the conclusion of today's program, but I think they deserve one more round of applause, please. And now we know the different talent talents we have in the ECA, from the singers to the dancers to, you know, we shall be calling upon you for future presentations.

Thank you very much.

All right, as we approach the conclusion of today's program, it is now my pleasure to invite the Deputy Executive Secretary for Program Support at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Madam Amaketa, to move us from conversation Nations and singing to commitments and officially launch the ADIF implementation clock. Mama Keita, you have the floor. Are you going to sing or are you going to talk?

Thank you very much, Madame MC. I think that I will prepare for next edition and Josephine can coach me.

Yeah.

Executive Secretary, distinguished participants, Kollegah, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen, as we come to the close of the inaugural Africa Development Impact Forum, I would like to begin by expressing my deepest appreciation to every one of you for your participation, your ideas, your energy, and most importantly, your commitment to Africa's future. Over the last two days, this forum has demonstrated what becomes possible when evidence producers, policymakers, implementers, investors, innovators, and development partners come together around a shared purpose. When we conceived the Africa Development Impact Forum, We were responding to a challenge that many of us all too well— know too well. Across Africa, there is no shortage of research, policy recommendations, pilot projects, innovation challenges, strategic frameworks, and declarations of intent. Yet, despite all these efforts, too many good ideas never reach implementation. Solutions remain trapped at pilot stage and too many recommendations never find their way into budgets, policies, investment, and too often conferences and with excellent conversations but limited follow-through. ADF was created because Africa does not have an evidence platform but an implementation gap. And if we are serious about creating jobs for our young people, advancing industrialization, accelerating innovation, strengthening skills system, and advancing Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, then we must become equally committed to implementation as we are to ideas. Adif aims at moving from ideas to action and from action to impact, and the theme of this year was job creation. Over the past months, through our pre-forum stocktaking process, we have heard from researchers, practitioners, policymakers, entrepreneurs, development institutions, and young Africans from across the continent. We examined evidence on job creation, industrial policy, critical minerals, and value supply chains, entrepreneurship, skills development, creative industries, artificial intelligence, and the future of work. Over the last two days, we have moved beyond identifying challenges and focused on solutions. We have witnessed the creativity and determination of participants in the policy and strategic hackathon, seen innovators present their ideas that have the potential to create jobs, strengthen institutions, and improve lives. We have engaged in honest discussion through the simulation roundtables and what implementation truly requires— who does what, by when, with what resources, and under what conditions. We have participated in thematic solution sessions that challenge us not simply to discuss policy, but to to think practically about implementation pathways, partnerships, financing mechanisms, institutional arrangements, and scaling opportunities. Across the hackathon and thematic sessions, we heard a clear call to move from analysis to action. Young innovators, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners presented practical solutions to tackle unemployment, skills such as skill mismatches, financing constraints, industrial underutilization, and barriers to entrepreneurship. Hackathon participants also demonstrated impressive preparation and critical thinking, responding to judges' questions with thoughtful, well-reasoned answers that highlighted both the feasibility considerations and the potential impact of their proposals. Panelists proposed digital platforms to connect youth with job skills, markets, and investors, integrated industrial and agro-industrial ecosystems to activate local production and create employment, innovative financing mechanisms and alternative credit models to unlock capital from youth-led enterprises, and strong support for renewable energy, agriculture, and technology sectors with high job creation potential. The forum emphasized the need for comprehensive youth entrepreneurship ecosystem built on data, mentorship, skills development, market access, and coordinated policy support, while calling for stronger partnerships to make data and information more accessible to young entrepreneurs. Panelists also highlighted the importance of integrated AI into national jobs and skills strategies, investing in digital infrastructure and AI-ready talent, and ensuring technology is adopted responsibly to create opportunities rather than deepen inequalities. In support of regional integration, panelists called for the scaling of interoperable cross-border payment systems, strengthened digital trade infrastructure, and improve dispute resolution mechanisms to enable youth and women-led enterprises to fully benefit from the AFCFTA. Great insights have been shared, really. For effective job creation, the forum emphasized the importance of having TVET policies and of aligning them with industrial policies. The forum noted the need to shift from from simply producing graduates to prioritizing employability in education systems. They noted the need to move from traditional lecture-based teaching to industry-related training. The forum recommended encouraging African scientists in the diaspora to share the expertise with the continent and to come back to the continent. It will also be important to promote labor mobility by recognizing skills, certificates, and degrees across the continent. The AFCFTA should serve as a platform to boost production, value addition, and sophistication rather than being limited to a mere trade— a simple trade agreement. With consolidated markets, numerous sectors can develop and create many jobs— agriculture, creative industries, mineral, pharmaceuticals, energy, services, and many more. Collectively, these discussions have resulted in a shared commitment by member states, ECA, development partners, the private sector, and youth leaders to pilot and scale solutions, strengthen accountability, mobilize investments, and build the partnership necessary to translate ideas into sustainable jobs, thriving enterprises, and inclusive economic transformation across Africa. Adif core ethos is the multi-sectoral approach. We, as partners, must co-create and collaborate. No government can deliver alone. No think tank can design policy. And no private sector can solve systematic and systemic challenges alone. No institution a single country, regardless of its mandate or resources, can create the scale of change and jobs needed for Africa, and therefore Africa needs partnership. As we conclude this forum, we celebrate not only the quality of the discussions and the solutions shared over the past two days, but also the partnerships, commitments, and collective ambition that have emerged from them. However, the true success of ADDIF will not be measured by what happened here in Addis Ababa. It will be measured by what happened next, whether the ideas discussed become action and whether the solutions identified create jobs, strengthen institutions, and improve lives across the continent. It is therefore my pleasure to formally launch the Addis Post-Forum Implementation Clock. The implementation clock is the mechanism through which ADF moves from dialogue to delivery, bringing along commitments from the Africa Business Forum, the Conference of Ministers of Finance that we organize every year, and the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development. It is a platform and mechanism for implementation, accountability, learning, and partnership that will support what selected solutions emerging from the hackathon, simulation roundtable, thematic solution sessions, and over the forum engagement as they progress from commitment to impact. It will also accelerate the transition from design to delivery of initiatives emerging from the AFRSD and other discussion forum. At the heart of the implementation 4 o'clock will be monitoring and accountability dashboard, which will publicly track commitments, milestones, and progress, promoting transparency, accountability, and opportunities for collaboration and support. We will also establish community of practice, bringing together different stakeholders, including governments, researchers, development partners, private sector actors, and practitioners, to exchange knowledge, solve implementation challenges, and accelerate learning across countries and sectors. To provide strategic guidance and sustain momentum, an ADF advisory board chaired by ECA and supported by our partners will provide oversight, strengthen partnership, and help mobilize the support required to advance implementation. The success of this initiative depends on all of us. We call upon think tanks to join us in this process and continue supporting implementation and generating practical evidence from what works. We encourage governments to join us and champion and scale promising solutions, invite the private sector to engage as investors, innovators, employers, and implementation partners. We call upon development partners and development finance institutions to join us and help bridge the gap between ideas and impact by supporting delivery, learning, institutional strengthening, and the scaling of successful interventions. Now, the Executive Secretary is going to thank each of you properly, but allow me also to extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all those who made this forum possible: our member states, think tanks, development partners, private sector representatives, youth leaders, speakers, moderators, participants, judges, innovators, and the entire organizing team, the ECA organizing team and partners, the steering committee and their respective teams, teams, all, I mean, all who were involved, really a big thank you to you all. Your contribution, expertise, commitment, and collaboration have made ADIF 2026 a success. Let us leave this forum not only inspired by the conversations we have had, but committed to the action that must follow. Together, let's transform evidence into implementation partnerships into impact, and commitments into measurable results for Africa's development and transformation. Thank you all, and safe travel, and we look forward to continuing this journey together through the ADIF Implementation Clock. And thank you very much.

Thank you, Mama Keita. And now it gives me great pleasure to call upon the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Mr. Clave Gatete, to provide remarks and officially close the 2026 and first ever Africa Development Impact Forum. Please give him a resounding round of applause as he takes the floor.

Good evening, everyone. I wish I could sing, but I'm still learning. And before I give my closing remarks, which is going to be very short, I just wanted to say a few things. First of all, I never knew that you have this kind of skills. Apart from what we discussed here for the last 2 days, I was really surprised. That even our own here, our own staff, really have other skills beyond economics and social areas. I never knew that Andrew knew anything about music. I've known it today, and surprisingly, whoever I asked, they knew it, but I knew nothing. I never knew that Josephine could sing. Better than many people that I see here. And I saw Veronica, who is going— I'm going to work together to teach people how to dance in Rwanda. And many others, I think, really have so much of the skills. But I wanted just to say a few things before I go on, on the creative industry. This is an industry where Africa has lost almost everything. You create music and you take it to America, you take it to Europe, they gain, you lose. And all over the continent, everybody likes music. There is no event that can happen without music. You saw that when you are singing here, everyone was asking for more and more, and then afterwards you say, "One for the road." That means everyone likes music, but no— but we don't want to support the music. And it cannot go that way. And that creative industry here, we have to really wake up and find a way of supporting this area. First of all, to have an institution of government that is in charge of this area. Everything we've been talking about in terms of education, in terms of the tax waivers, in terms of supporting different sectors in this area of creative industry, if we don't do it, we as Africans will keep losing and will be able to lose to others. Earlier on, we were having a meeting with the Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO, and we were talking about really what to do about fashion. And now, we've taken action. We've talked to people people in New York. We are trying by the end of this year or next year to organize a big fashion showcase working with ambassadors in New York. We called them, we discussed with them, they now have an assignment for us to see how we bring the whole entire Africa to New York because that's where we can make real— so next time we'll be talking about results. We will not be talking about what we intend to do. So there is quite a lot, but I think we need to wake up in this area. But then, of course, let me just say a few things, Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, colleagues. As we conclude this inaugural Africa Development Impact Forum, allow me first to express my sincere appreciation to all who have contributed to this success. I thank you wholeheartedly for staying here, for contributing the ideas, and for being part of the ADIF. Thank you so much. I also wish to thank my colleague, Deputy Executive Secretary Mama Keïta, who has been here for all the time, for her comprehensive reflections on the rich discussions, insights, and outcomes that have emerged over these past two days. Rather than As we revisit those important conclusions, allow me to leave you with a brief thought about what comes next. When history reflects on gatherings such as this one, it will not ask what we discussed. It will ask what we delivered. That is why I leave this room encouraged, not simply because of the conversations we have had, which are very rich, but because of the possibilities you have identified and the commitments we have begun to make. Over the past two days, we have seen abundant evidence that Africa is rich in ideas, innovation, talent, and solutions. So the challenge we have is not discovery, it is delivery. And perhaps no initiative captures that reality better than the ADF Post-Forum Implementation Clock, as mentioned. A clock reminds us that time moves whether we act or not. Every day that passes without implementation is a day of lost opportunities, unrealized investments, and delayed progress. Time matters for Africa's young people, for entrepreneurs seeking capital, for innovators seeking scale, and for communities waiting for jobs and better livelihoods. That is why the Implementation Clock is not simply counting time. It is counting on us to transform our commitments into actions and actions into impact. Anchored by a monitoring and accountability dashboard, it will publicly track commitments, milestones, and progress. It will ensure that implementation remains visible measurable, and accountable. It will create a mechanism through which countries, institutions, and partners can learn from one another and mobilize support where implementation gaps persist. In short, it will help us answer a fundamental question: not what did we promise, but what did we achieve? The discussions over these two days have reaffirmed that Africa possesses enormous opportunities from entrepreneurship and digital innovation to industrialization and regional value chains, skills development, and critical minerals. The issue is whether we can organize ourselves to seize these, to seize them at scale. This is what ADF matters. It was established bridge one of Africa's most persistent development challenges: the distance between knowing and doing, between evidence and implementation, and between potential and impact. As we leave this— as we leave Addis Ababa, let us remember that development is ultimately judged by outcomes. The clock is running. The dashboard will track our progress, and future generations will judge our results. We must work to ensure that when they do, they see a continent that chose implementation over inertia, action over hesitation, and results over rhetoric. The implementation clock has started. The responsibility to keep it moving belongs to all of us. I thank you. For your kind attention, and I wish you all the best as you head back home. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Mr. Gatete. Excellencies, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen, there is little left to add. It has been a true pleasure to moderate ADIF, and I thank you all for your warmth and engagement throughout. On this note, I wish you a wonderful weekend, and for those traveling from Addis Ababa, safe journeys. Thank you for being part of the first inaugural Adiff.