2010 World Cup: Time to Launch Creative Africa

By James Shikwati

For six weeks in 2010, billions of viewers across the globe will have their eyes focused on South Africa during the World Cup. Thousands of football fans will flock to the home of Shaka Zulu to support their favorite soccer teams. An estimated 15,000 accredited TV commentators, cameramen, crew and technicians are expected to facilitate live coverage of the games. It’s going to be booming business for tour operators, airlines, hotels, cell pone service providers, advertisement agencies…the list is endless. How much in billions of dollars is Africa likely to mint out of this event?

It will depend on the level of confidence and mindset that we develop before 2010 for us to mint gold from this event.  It is important that African countries consider the fact that although the event will be in South Africa; it belongs to Africa. This is a unique marketing opportunity for Africa that the Mandela campaign for hosting the World Cup has given to the continent. African governments should get out of their bigotry and nationalism-sovereignty claptrap and proactively prepare their citizens to join this gold rush down south.

We must urgently position our creative industry for this event. This is the time to invest in our infrastructure and security to attract World Cup fans to choose our roads to Johannesburg. It is the time to invest in our cultural sites, traditional cultural expressions, and performing arts, recreational and audiovisuals in readiness to feed the hungry eyes of the World. Sub Saharan Africa has for a long time been viewed only through the prism of conflict, diseases, poverty and hunger – this is the time to bring out the creative Africans that is perpetually suffocated by donor subsidized government systems on the continent.

Individual Africans must use the World Cup event to grasp the fact that we have always swam in wealth only that our mindset makes us see poverty. Reframe the mind and you wonder why the World will spend billions of dollars on watching 22 able bodied men chasing air pumped in an animal skin (may be synthetic these days)! Reflect on your attitude towards wealth and you witness musicians, designers, and arts and crafts earning creative people millions of dollars. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Africa trade in creative products is only at 0.4% of World’s USD 424.4 billion - trade as of 2005!

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa should be used to rally African strategists to help uplift the continent’s USD 1.7 billion trade in creative products to a higher level. Africa Union’s Nairobi Plan of Action of 2005 for Cultural Industries in Africa must be

removed from the shelves and taken to the people. It is not enough to whine about alien culture invading Africa when we do little to force our policy makers to promote a friendly business environment that should not only protect our creativity but also helps in the commercialization of the same. We should therefore measure the success of African Union on how effective they will be in making it easier for the 54 nation – states in Africa to drive down to Johannesburg to sale their creative arts and mint money at as private citizens.

I refuse to support the notion that Africa is poor in original ideas, imagination that can be expressed in text, sound or image to generate wealth. In our quest to industrialize Africa, we have frowned upon art and thought we should convert each one into a scientist. In the process we have started loosing valuable aspects of our creative culture, which we would ordinarily have used to launch ourselves to industrialization.

Picture this; creative economy related products such as cameras, computers, broadcasting and audiovisual equipment hit a mark of USD 274 billion in exports from developing countries in 2005. Talk of industrialization in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore and you clearly see strategists tapping into the World Creative Economy. The point is, we have ignored our creative economy by erroneously viewing African music, art, design, games to be evil (for example eshilemba in Kenya), waste of time and uncivilized!

Creative Economy can serve as the most strategic launching pad of competitiveness because culture is unique with a given people. We should discourage our youth from investing too much in reproducing American art in Africa and rather promote them to market our art to the outside World.  Idle youth can borrow an idea from the mariachis of Mexico who literally hawk live music in entertainment spots and on highways! Instead of our government cultural department using music and art as a preserve for politicians and tourists they should instead create a commercializing agency that can help transform our youth into superstars overnight.

Our poverty is artificial because Africa is rich in culture and we have simply failed to commercialize it. We have an education system and cultural socialization that makes us look out to the rich nations for help and ignore the gold in our hands. To be a little harsher on ourselves – we behave similar to the fabled dog that dropped an mfupa (bone) in water in the quest to seize the mirror image of the same. Africans must stop looking out there for bones, because we already have them here (minerals, culture…creative ideas). All we ought to go for out there is to study their strategies, how developed societies successfully transform almost everything and make it assume commercial value. Next time you meet ‘poor’ sukuti dancer help… them get to the bank and the Ministry of Culture will suddenly turn into a wet one! Come 2010, we should all be set to market Africa to the World through the Johannesburg exit!