Africa’s minerals and natural resources seldom claim the headlines in discussions about the continent’s emerging industries. On the contrary, culture, or the legal and illegal business in Africa’s cultural and historical relics and the revenues thereof are bound to become Africa’s newest booming industry. Although invisible and non-quantifiable, the business in African cultural relics are said to be the biggest underground business in the world. From Europe to America and China and to the rest of the world, African culture is in big demand from the biggest museums, the biggest online marketing sites, the biggest collectors and the biggest art lovers.
It is difficult or nearly impossible to estimate the annual turnover in African culture industry for many reasons. The first and most important reason is the fact that the African culture or art market is an illegal one and data on the volume of transaction is kept tightly secret. the second reason is that the African art market is conducted with the collaboration of official European quarters, allegedly including officials in high places, museum curators and the Mafia-like networks of facilitators, sellers, contacts and bank managers that are suspected to be indirectly involved either by having huge stakes or by keeping figures on such transactions unavailable to the media and the African culture activists.
What is the secret behind this growing demand in African culture? There is no secret about it. Africa is not only endowed with tremendous natural and human resources that are not yet properly harnessed or exploited. It is also endowed with amazing cultural and historical relics that have long attracted the attention of the Western world. Colonialism did not come to Africa in search of these relics. It came in search of territories, natural resources and geopolitical advantages. Yet, Africa’s cultural items were so beautiful and so mysterious, so spiritual and religious in their nature, that the colonial authorities could not resist their allures.
African art has first become a subject of discussion and interest in Europe when it became the source of inspiration to many renowned European artists, including Picasso who looked in the African mask in particular, the potential for cubist expressionism that quickly became the talk of the European art world. “In the 19th century and as a direct result of imperialism thousands of African objects had arrived in Europe. Far from being considered artworks, they were considered artifacts of colonial conquests and held little to no economic value.
But during the early 1900s, with Picasso leading the way, African arts aesthetics became a source of profound inspiration for the School of Paris, which had been searching for new and radical ways of representation. Picasso saw in African figuration a religious depth and ritual purpose that both startled and moved him. Its sophisticated use of flat planes and bold contouring was unlike anything the artist had encountered before.”
However, the impact of African art on European modernism was not limited to Picasso and Cubism. There were also other famous European artists who used African art techniques in their works. “But while the impact of African art on Picasso and the birth Cubism has been examined tirelessly, the works that inspired an entire movement are rarely examined in their own right. Instead, non-Western art is often viewed as the tool that enabled European artists such as Gauguin, Braque…African artisans have been abstracting the human figure for centuries.”
However, this love affair between African and European art forms did not last long. And the most of the Western artists who made extensive use of African art to promote their careers quickly forgot about it perhaps feeling embarrassed to borrow from a colonized people and a colonized culture, something that in their views might diminish their importance.
The African art industry is a rather recent phenomenon. It would be erroneous to conclude that the use of African art forms by Picasso and the other western artists had contributed to the birth of the African art industry as we know it now. There is a long temporal gulf between the rise of modernism and the birth of African art or culture industry which dates back only to the last decades of the 20th century.
The contemporary African art market is a thriving business despite the global economic and geopolitical challenges. According to Art Tactic, a website on African art market, “Despite global economic and geo-political challenges, the African art market only fell by 8.4% in 2023 compared to the general art market which saw a decrease of around 18%.” Given the fact that the African art market emerged recently, and that the global art business is long entrenched dating back to more than a century ago, it would be safe to say that African art is still vibrant and on the rise, enjoying higher demands that the global demand put together.
Among the triggers of the African art and culture market are, Africa’s music industry which a different story in its own right. The rise of African music to global prominence is an even recent event but its growth has always been impressive as its recognition conquest range from winning the Grammy Awards to irresistible worldwide expansion. African music was considered as an independent category and has proved that it is indeed a rising, vibrant and world-conquering genre of music that deserved the honor at the Grammys.
According to other sources, “the decision to include an African-specific award came about because, music from the continent is now prevalent everywhere in the world. This year, Afrobeat has been accepted as an independent music genre fast expanding throughout the world. This year, i.e.2024, Tia from South Africa has won the First-Ever Grammy award for Best African Music Performance.
According to another source, “The African music industry is currently enjoying a spectacular rise, with its diverse genres and talents not only conquering the global charts, but also earning a place on the prestigious Grammys stage. From electrifying performances at the FIFA World cup to the creation of a new Grammy category, African music is undergoing a true transformation, overcoming long-standing structural challenges.”
Sub-Saharan Africa in particular is revealed to be the fastest growing region in terms of recorded music revenue in 2022, according to the World Music Report 2023from the International Federation of the Phonographic industry. This growth is fueled by newer genres such as Afrobeats and amapiono, which blend distinct West African styles and South African kwaito, respectively.
Africa’s cultural industries include film, television, radio, music books and press. There are also creative cultural industries like design, architecture and advertising. Africa’s culture industries are estimated to be a huge industry. However, due to lack of information or data on the volume of financial transactions, the industry is still shrouded in secrecy or reluctance to divulge the true figures; maybe for fear taxation and other obligations to the respective governments under which they are operating. It is however absurd to hide figures about the volume of transactions in an industry that could thrive through transparency or openness.
As we saw above, Africa’s cultural industry consists of many layers of activities, including music and painting that are prominent. The African music industry is the single most booming industry among them maybe followed by the film industry that has become a huge income earner both for the film studios and for the Nigerian government through taxation and other revenues.
That is why that some of the biggest Nigerian banks were behind the boom in Nigerian cinema as they were providing huge loans to promising studios that launched or started the phenomenal growth. However, the film industry cannot be considered the biggest culture industry on the continent in terms of revenue compared to the music industry, because it is largely confined to Nigeria while the music industry has become global in its reach.
The Nigeria model of expansion in the film industry could perhaps be used by the few studios that are still alive in the country while most of them have now disappeared for lack of investment. The problem may be that the banks themselves are wrestling with their own problems in managing their resources. This is not clearly the ideal time for banks to engage in high risk investments and until someone, sometime would come up with an alternative solution to support the Ethiopian cultural industry.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald June 13/2024
