Ghana: African Music Business Dialogue urges knowledge sharing

Ghanaian musician and creative entrepreneur Trigmatic told Music In Africa that the vast potential of the creative industry as an economic booster, as seen in the US, Europe and African countries such as Nigeria, inspired him to organise the inaugural African Music Business Dialogue (AMBD). The event was held in March and welcomed industry professionals from across the continent to Ghana’s capital Accra. Running under the theme, The Bigger Picture: Action Today, Wealthier Tomorrow, the conference was an addition to a growing list of African forums aimed at facilitating key conversations to drive the industry, particularly as it settles into the digital era.

AMBD saw discussions around revenue generation for all players in the value chain while unpacking untapped opportunities. The seminar also tracked the journey of Ghana’s music industry, its growing festival culture, and the country as a tourism hub enabled by a burgeoning music industry.

Speakers on the bill were Afro Nation Ghana festival boss and The Rave Group CEO Ruddy Kwakye, sound engineer and producer Kofi ‘IamBeatMenace’ Boachie-Ansah, creative entrepreneur George Nii Ofoli Yartey, veteran producer and label exec Panji Anoff, Ugandan TV presenter and music PR expert Sheila Gashumba, and Michelle Mckenzie, who heads UK-based social enterprise Urban Inclusion Community, among others.

“Whenever Africa shows the world that it has gotten something, Africans get excited when the world jumps on it and it makes them lost in the mix of it all,” Trigmatic, who was recently appointed to the governing body of the National Folklore Board, said. “The concern is to discuss how Africans can benefit from the high demand for African music”.

The musician also cited a lack of administrative support despite the creation of regular creative partnerships. He said that while some African countries had shown progress in their approach to the music business, the entire ecosystem was not on par yet, and this is where AMBD came in.

Boachie-Ansah stressed the value of platforms like AMBD to empower the creative industry. He said creatives had more opportunities than ever before to leverage professional careers. He lauded the event for exploring subjects like intellectual property, branding and marketing in the African context.

“We are living in the age of information and information is a very important currency,” he said. “For us to compete or thrive in this fast-evolving digital landscape with regard to music and other digital media, there is the need to normalise conversations and understand how to leverage IP and make sustenance out of it.”

Boachie-Ansah believes that although social media has become an everyday tool of communication for the masses, there are intricacies in the digital landscape that creatives need to be trained on to yield positive results. In this way, conferences such as AMBD serve as important conversations to evaluate the potential of digital for music creators.

Music lawyer Adwoa E Paintsil, who was a panellist during one of the sessions, lamented the information gap that she hoped events like AMBD could bridge. “Even in 2022, people are still making basic mistakes they could have avoided if they had just one of these sessions and just listened. And I see it, litigation can be very expensive, draining and demoralising. If you’re fighting big corporations, you’re at a disadvantage from the start.”

In the next five years, Paintsil hopes to see artists equipping themselves with the legal knowledge required to navigate the particularities of intellectual property. “I don’t want to be reviewing contracts and you’ve signed away your music and basically your life,” she told delegates “I want to see a world where artists are making their worth, because creativity is important, music is important, and it’s important that people are rewarded for their work. I want artists to do better, to read for self-development. Read wide, read every single term. If you don’t understand, use a dictionary so that you don’t find yourself in certain dilemmas years down the line.”

Touching on the importance of PR for creatives, Gashumba said that while many people knew about the production aspect of the music industry, more needed to be done to sensitise artists about the integral role PR played in the success of releases. She also spoke about social networks, particularly TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, as platforms that could engage wider audiences, apart from traditional media.

On tackling structural challenges in the music industry, Boachie-Ansah suggested a concerted effort among creatives. “For you to change a system, you need to come as a unified front,” he said, adding that “the more we have such exchanges, the more we close that knowledge gap.”

The AMBD organisers say they are planning another conference later in 2022, to revisit Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah’s vision for a united Africa through music.