Gallo acquires stake in Content Connect Africa

The deal comes more than a year after Black Coffee acquired a significant portion of the label. It will see Gallo’s catalogue linked with CCA’s technical capabilities and pan-African reach, as well as the musician’s international experience to create a platform for innovation.

The partnership will focus on developing emerging artists and offering them a pathway to gain regional and international success. It will start with the two companies partnering with musicians on brand work, providing backend services for independent labels, and developing and launching local artists.

“We’re at the beginning of an industry revolution where African artists participate in structures to encourage new ways to monetise content,” CCA CEO Antos Stella said. “CCA has a footprint across the continent as an aggregator to the continent’s major telco’s as well as a pipeline of established and emerging artists that will benefit from Gallo and its shareholder Black Coffee’s experience and guidance towards an equitable transformation.”

Black Coffee said: “We’ve had the same 10 or 15 artists dominate the last decade. This partnership provides us the capacity to develop faster by leveraging technology and the CCA relationships.”

The deal is a move away from an ownership-only set-up towards a rights management model, and a more strategic approach to industry development through education and the provision of digital tools for African creators.

“We would like to see artists far more involved in the process and not be tied to the one-size-fits-all deal structures,” Gallo managing director Simukayi Mukuna said. “We want to develop solutions that are born from Africa, for Africa, to export to the world. Our approach is underpinned by an emphasis on the use of scalable digital tools that support the creative process.”

Since emerging as pioneer of caller ringback tones, CCA has evolved into a major distributor of content across all platforms. The company offers synergies between marketing activations and strategic content, and develops new platforms for content creators.