At the 7th edition of the Africa Soft Power Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, the Chairman of Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX Group) Plc, Alhaji Umaru Kwairanga, called for a fundamental restructuring of how African capital markets evaluate intellectual property. Speaking under the central summit theme, “Africa’s Compound Interest: Aligning Ecosystems of Finance, Creativity and Human Capital for Growth,” Kwairanga urged continental financial institutions to move past treating African arts, music, and film as mere cultural assets.
Instead, he argued that these sectors must be institutionalized as a structured, investable asset class. To bridge the gap between creative execution and global capital markets, the NGX Group is designing modern compliance frameworks to help tech innovators, media studios, and independent creators move from international visibility to long-term ownership of their underlying IP rights.
1. Shifting Creative Value from Visibility to Sovereign Ownership
The core argument driving the 2026 summit is that while African cultural exports—such as Afrobeats and Nollywood—enjoy unprecedented global popularity, the continent retains very little of the actual financial wealth generated by these assets. Because local copyright registries are often disconnected from formal financial institutions, creators frequently sell their master recordings and digital distribution rights early to international media conglomerates to secure operating cash.
To address this issue, the NGX Group is working on corporate finance mechanisms designed to help local companies secure financing based on their intellectual property:
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Intellectual Property Valuation Audits: Partnering with specialized legal and financial firms to establish standardized metrics that value future royalty streams, turning intangible catalogs into recognized collateral for institutional bank loans.
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Creative Asset Securitization: Creating structured investment products, such as royalty-backed corporate bonds, that allow media studios to pool future streaming revenues to raise expansion capital from pension funds and institutional asset managers.
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Specialized Technology & Creative Listing Boards: Developing flexible listing rules on the exchange that accommodate early-stage tech startups and creative agencies. These rules include alternative disclosure requirements and founder-friendly corporate setups, such as dual-class voting shares, to protect long-term creative control.
2. Harmonizing Cross-Sector Ecosystems to Build Regional Scale
Kwairanga emphasized that building a resilient creative economy requires close collaboration across multiple sectors rather than working in isolation. For African economies to replicate the success of foundational technology platforms like Safaricom’s M-Pesa, capital markets must actively coordinate with telecommunications companies, digital payment networks, and regional policymakers.
The table below outlines how different components must align under this unified economic framework:
| Sector Integration Axis | Operational Asset Deployment | Intended Economic Outcome |
| Finance & Capital Markets | Deploying venture capital, public equities listing boards, and specialized IP-backed credit lines. | Provides continuous, non-predatory funding options for high-growth tech and creative startups. |
| Technology & AI Infrastructure | Building native digital distribution networks and decentralized digital rights platforms. | Protects content creators against digital piracy and secures transparent, local data ownership. |
| Diaspora Capital Channels | Creating targeted remittance investment funds and diaspora-backed infrastructure bonds. | Diverts loose capital away from basic consumption toward funding productive, local commercial projects. |
| Public Policy & Enforcement | Modernizing copyright laws and standardizing regional trade rules under the AfCFTA framework. | Ensures secure cross-border trade and reliable royalty collection across African markets. |
3. Building the Exchange Infrastructure of the Future
Supporting this strategic shift, summit participants highlighted real-world examples of how creative financing models are already changing the continent’s business landscape. During the panel sessions, African entertainment executives noted that major development finance institutions, such as Afreximbank, are increasingly taking direct equity stakes in local creative platforms rather than issuing traditional loans—a move that treats intellectual property as true business collateral.
The NGX Group’s long-term plan aims to ensure that the stock exchange of the future is tightly connected with the digital networks, creative agencies, and innovative businesses driving Africa’s growth. By building a robust, transparent ecosystem that financializes intellectual property, Nigeria can transform its immense cultural influence into a predictable source of export revenue, high-value employment, and sustainable economic wealth across Sub-Saharan Africa.
