Is the global creative economy Africa-friendly?

Recently I have started to feel excluded as an African creative, and not in the way Western artists call their tours ‘world tours’ but only include North America, Europe, Australia and some Asian countries kind of way, more like in ways I could earn from my creative and freelance work in the global market.

I have heard a lot of negative stories from emerging African creatives and I have been warned by so many of them. One time a digital marketer told me when I was applying for a remote freelancing work, ‘Don’t bother, it’s not easy for a person from Africa, let alone Tanzania to get a job like that‘.

I didn’t take his comments personally but after just getting two responses from more than 30 applications I couldn’t help but feel like maybe there was some truth to what he said.

The UN named 2021 as the international year of creative economy for sustainable development. I wonder if they thought that included Africa, when it is even harder for bloggers to get donations on their blogs via WordPress since you are supposed to have Stripe, which is only available in 46 countries none of which is in Africa.

There are good platforms which African creatives can utilize to earn money like Patreon and Go Fund Me but they do not integrate with African payment systems, so again Africans can’t utilize them in their creative endeavours.

And let’s not talk about an online research platform that I took part in, in one of their researches that I was eligible and they paid me via PayPal which can not receive online payment to my country and hence I ended up taking part in that $30 research for free.

In this we can also include writing jobs that I have seen that require ‘native English speakers’ and mentioning countries like America, UK, Canada and Australia, forgetting that like Canada, many African countries have multiple official national languages and English is one of them. Mind you, the majority of African creatives use English as their medium of communication because they also aim at capturing the global market. So, this begs an honest question: What does it mean to be a native English speaker?

Let’s also talk about Google Ads, which to this day only accept applicants whose blogs are in several languages so my blog that is in both English and Swahili, a language that is spoken by more than 100 million people in the world, can’t have Google Ads because I’m posting in a language that’s not accepted by them and I don’t think in their list there’s any African language accepted. Just so you know, globally there are more Swahili speakers than Korean and Italian which are two of the languages accepted by Google Ads.

My blog that is in both English and Swahili, a language that is spoken by more than 100 million people in the world, can’t have Google Ads.

I am looking forward to a day when African creativity is not just limited to Afrobeat, Bongo Flava, Nollywood and wooden sculptures and paintings but a day when it can expands further to people like me, digital creatives.

The creative economy could really be beneficial to African creatives especially if we also get an equal opportunity to benefit from the global ecosystem. I’m looking forward to a day where I’m easily accepted and the infrastructures favour me to earn from my work as an African.

I genuinely am writing this article to hear from others and hear recommendations of solutions. I know I write more from a writer’s perspective, and I know that this issue may or may not show up differently to other creatives. I would love to hear all experiences.

More importantly I would love to hear what needs to be done and who needs to do it.

Is it African infrastructures that needs to change or are these Western platforms are just created for Western creatives? If they are are, we need to create our own or they need to be inclusive. What needs to be done? Is this an opportunity where African creatives have to come up with opportunities that work for them in their setting or it is a problem that needs to be addressed globally?

Those are the questions for thoughts and change that I would love to pose by writing this article.

Photo by Marjan Blan | @marjanblan on Unsplash.