Inside GAAGA World’s Plan to Build Africa’s Creative Economy
Africa has produced some of the world’s most influential music, film, fashion and digital culture. We’ve seen Nigerian artists sell out global venues and African creators build audiences across continents. Local stories are travelling through international streaming platforms, social media and digital communities.
Yet this cultural influence has not significantly translated into lasting economic value.
A musician may achieve a breakthrough, attract major brand partnerships and build a large audience, only for the momentum to slow down without developing into a durable business. A creator may generate millions of views but lack the production systems, commercial strategy, investment support or operational team needed to turn the attention into long-term wealth.
The problem, according to the founders of GAAGA World, is not a shortage of talent but a shortage of infrastructure.
Founded in Lagos in 2025, GAAGA World describes itself as Africa’s first full-stack creative venture studio. The company aims to provide creators with access to investment, production support, brand development, strategic guidance and technology while helping them retain ownership and build businesses around their intellectual property.
Its broader ambition is to change how creative value is created, scaled, and retained across Africa.
Why creative success does not always become creative wealth
Across Africa’s creative economy, talent has often been expected to carry more than its fair share.
Creators are frequently required to be the talent, strategist, producer, marketer, business manager and financier of their own careers. Even after building successful platforms, many continue operating without the systems that help creative businesses scale beyond the individual behind them.
This creates a familiar pattern: visibility grows faster than infrastructure.
A creator may have an audience but no dedicated production team. An artist may have cultural influence but lack the commercial structures needed to build new revenue streams. A successful creative project may generate income without developing the systems required to preserve, reinvest or compound that value.
GAAGA World co-founder Alese Ayomide Salban believes this explains why the growth of Africa’s creative talent has not always been matched by the growth of creative enterprises.
“Ten or fifteen years ago, Nigeria was producing more varied and ambitious creative content than we are today, and the internet was not even at its peak then,” Salban said. “We had television productions, long-form content, storytelling that travelled. Now we have every tool available, global distribution, and the landscape has narrowed to mostly skits.”
For Salban, the issue is not that African creators have become less capable. Rather, the environment surrounding creative talent has not developed at the same pace as the tools available to creators.
“That does not happen because talent has declined,” he said. “It happens because the environment around talent has not been built.”
Creator-led enterprises
GAAGA World’s model is built around a simple idea: creators should not have to build every part of a business alone.
Co-founder Damilare Adeyemi, who holds a Master’s degree in Data Science from the University of Salford and has experience in the fintech sector, points to global creator businesses as evidence of what becomes possible when talent is supported by strong operational systems.
In the United Kingdom, creator groups such as the Sidemen have expanded beyond content into consumer products, media, events and broader commercial ventures. In the United States, creator-led businesses such as MrBeast have demonstrated how a digital audience can become the foundation for large-scale companies.
The common factor is structure as against popularity.
“The creator is the face and the engine,” Adeyemi said. “But they are not carrying the entire operation alone. That team, that system, is what most African creators have never had access to.”
The implication is significant for Africa’s creator economy. If creators are supported by teams that understand production, data, distribution, branding, finance and intellectual property, they may be better positioned to build businesses that continue generating value beyond individual campaigns or viral moments.
In this model, creative work becomes the starting point of an enterprise rather than the entire enterprise itself.
A venture studio rather than a traditional talent agency
GAAGA World is positioning itself differently from conventional talent management companies.
Traditional agencies generally earn commissions by negotiating opportunities, securing partnerships or managing aspects of a creator’s career. GAAGA World says its model is designed to go further by investing in creator-led ventures and helping build the businesses around creative talent.
The company uses revenue-sharing agreements and intellectual property equity structures to align its growth with the long-term success of the creators and businesses it supports.
With this approach, creators are now becoming founders, media owners, product developers, and business operators.
Rather than treating a creator’s audience as the final product, the venture-studio model views audience trust as a foundation for building additional value. That could include intellectual property, consumer products, media properties, digital platforms, licensing opportunities or new forms of creative enterprise.
For African creators, the model could offer an alternative to relying primarily on advertising revenue, brand deals or one-off commercial opportunities.
Why global audiences change the economics
GAAGA World’s founders also argue that the geographic composition of an audience affects the commercial value a creator can generate.
A creator whose audience is concentrated in a single local market may face different pricing conditions from one whose content reaches audiences across Europe, North America, Asia and other regions.
“It is not that global platforms undervalue African talent,” Salban said. “It is that most African creators are still primarily reaching African audiences. The moment the content travels, the economics travel with it.”
This argument highlights an important distinction between visibility and market access: a creator can be highly influential within a local community while still having limited access to higher-value international partnerships, global distribution networks or larger consumer markets.
Helping African content travel may, therefore ,require stronger production quality, better audience insights, strategic partnerships, and a deeper understanding of how stories can connect across cultural boundaries.
Keeping more creative value within Africa
GAAGA World’s long-term vision is rooted in the belief that African creative wealth should be built and retained within the continent.
The company’s founders argue that previous generations of successful African creators often generated significant cultural and commercial value without having enough locally rooted institutions capable of helping that value compound.
As Africa’s creative industries grow, more attention is being directed toward the systems that sit behind creative output: investment, intellectual property, distribution, production infrastructure, legal support, technology and business development.
The opportunity, hence, is to build (more than creating globally successful artists and creators) African-owned companies that participate in the value generated by those creators.
Launching within Lagos’ creative ecosystem
GAAGA World launched publicly during VVS Lagos’ Afromodernism Week, held from July 5 to 12 across venues in Lagos.
The event brought together participants from fashion, art, film, music and technology through exhibitions, panel discussions, screenings, showcases and cultural experiences.
GAAGA World’s presence throughout the week reflected its belief that creative infrastructure must be built close to the communities and industries it intends to support.
The company participated across several VVS Lagos events, including the opening gala, panel discussions at Alliance Française, a private collectors’ viewing at Blank Space Oniru, a trunk show at Mikano, Future Labs exhibitions at Yenwa Gallery and the British Council, the VVS Film Experience, and the closing runway show and after-party.
For a company focused on strengthening Africa’s creative ecosystem, the setting was strategic.
VVS Lagos has spent five years bringing together creative disciplines, institutions and audiences. GAAGA World is entering the market with the ambition of building the commercial and operational systems that could help more of those creative ideas become sustainable businesses.
The real test will be execution
GAAGA World is entering a market where the need is clear but the challenge is complex.
Africa already has talent agencies, artist managers, production companies and creative businesses. What the company is attempting to build is a more vertically integrated model that combines capital, management, production, technology and creator ownership.
The success of the model will depend on how effectively it identifies high-potential creators, structures investments, builds commercially viable ventures and balances institutional involvement with creator ownership.
It will also need to demonstrate that its infrastructure can produce measurable outcomes: stronger businesses, diversified revenue, valuable intellectual property, sustainable careers and greater long-term wealth for African creators.
But the problem GAAGA World is addressing is difficult to ignore.
Africa does not lack creative talent. It does not lack stories, audiences or cultural influence. What remains underdeveloped are the institutions capable of helping creative value grow beyond individual success.
If GAAGA World can help close that gap, it may contribute to a larger transformation in how Africa’s creative economy operates.
