ACCES 2023: Thank you Dar es Salaam, hello Kigali!

Dar es Salaam is the first African city to host the music conference in two consecutive years, a decision based on a new sustainability model to build on the progress made in the previous year and create more opportunities for local music professionals. The bet to hold ACCES for a second time in Dar es Salaam paid off when the music trade show saw its biggest attendance since it was first held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2017, with thousands of music executives, performers, trainees, facilitators, students and concertgoers attending a wide range of curated activities hosted at two top venues, Mlimani City Conference Centre and the Warehouse live venue, for ACCES’ conference sessions and showcase programme, respectively.

Developing the industry

Some 1 200 delegates from over 40 countries attended ACCES’ conference sessions comprising keynotes, panel discussions, film screenings, workshops, exhibitions and presentations by about 70 top speakers and facilitators, while more than 2 000 avid music fans showed their support for the 14 live acts and 96 individual showcasing artists on three separate nights featuring big names like Sho Madjozi (South Africa), Marioo (Tanzania), Christian Bella (Tanzania), Zolani Mahola & The Feminine Force (South Africa) and Kasiva Mutua (Kenya), to name just a few. The ACCES showcases platform is envisaged to provide talent discovery opportunities for the performing artists, many of whom end up being approached by record labels, collaborators and international talent bookers.

Apart from its eclectic programming and representative cross section of Africa’s popular and upcoming sounds, ACCES is a leading networking platform where music companies and startups including distributors, labels, fintech solutions and streaming services get to discuss their work and make new connections among each other and with their local counterparts. About 380 entities operating in the African and global music industries we represented at ACCES 2023 while well-known companies and organisations such as CISAC, SACEM, The Orchard, Ditto Music, the South African Music Performance Rights Association (SAMPRA) and Boomplay Music got to flaunt their products and services at the ACCES Exhibition Hub.

“We’re very happy that ACCES 2023 was such a booming success,” Eddie Hatitye, the director of the Music In Africa Foundation, which organises ACCES, said. “We saw players from many parts of the music value chain represented at the conference and our carefully curated showcase platform showed the world that Africa is indeed writing the next chapter for music globally. We hope that all the new connections made at ACCES can provide more opportunities for the development of the African music industry. Now we look forward to doing it all again in Kigali and we invite everyone who wants to get up close and personal with African music to be there come November 2024.”

Education drive

Hundreds of young music professionals attended workshops and masterclasses to learn about the intricacies of the local and international music industries. ACCES’ ethos has always mandated for a strong element of educational opportunities for its attendees, and this edition was no different when respected music executives such as Sipho Dlamini (gamma./UAE), Sonia Boton-Gboh (Roxanne/France), Ezegozie Eze, Jr (EMPIRE/Nigeria), Victoria Nkong (All Africa Music Awards, Nigeria), Julz Ossom (African Music Week/Canada), Siya ‘Slikour’ Metane (SlikourOnLife/South Africa) and Rowlin Naicker (Sony Music Publishing/South Africa), among many others, shared with the audience useful tips and strategies about how to navigate the complex music industry. Topics up for discussion included intellectual property, artificial intelligence, artist management, artist branding, music entrepreneurship, music distribution, collaborations, and digital music strategies. There was even a session on the rise of Tanzania’s very own singeli genre, which served to promote the homegrown sound and sensitise delegates from outside Tanzania about one of Africa’s most exciting electro sounds at the moment.

Also connected to ACCES’ educational drive to further professionalise the African music industry is Gender@Work, the first pan-African training programme in event production and business management designed solely for women. The programme helps to upskill and increase the participation of female professionals in the African music sector, and this year hosted 15 participants from Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, who ran the ACCES showcase stage to perfection.

#ACCES2023 and official support

ACCES 2023’s online visibility during the event was on point, with a live stream of the programme and thousands of photo and video posts circulating social media, reaching about 5 million users and in the process promoting the African music industry and its sounds around the world.

To cap things off, the Music In Africa Honorary Award, given out on the final night of the event, acknowledged the outstanding contribution of the Tanzania Ministry of Arts, Culture and Sports and the National Arts Council of Tanzania (BASATA) for supporting the local music sector and hosting ACCES 2022 and 2023.

“The partnership we forged with the ministry and BASATA went a long way in organising this event professionally and making sure that the local music industry got the value it needed from a niche conference such as ACCES,” Hatitye said. “We want to thank them for all their hard work and for helping us to amplify Tanzania’s music on the international stage.”

Next, ACCES will publish an open call in early 2024 for African musicians to apply for showcasing opportunities at the Kigali edition. For more information and updates about ACCES 2024, visit the ACCES official website.