At the inaugural Creative Powerhouse Summit, organised by QEDNG on Tuesday, renowned filmmaker Kunle Afolayan emphasised the crucial role of business understanding in sustaining and growing Nigeria’s creative sector.
The Nigerian creative industry continues to grow, with experts projecting that it will be worth $100 billion by 2023. Afolayan, the filmmaker behind October 1 and Netflix hit Anikulapo, highlighted that creativity alone is not enough to thrive in today’s competitive global market. He said, “For you to keep the art and creativity going, the business side must also be well thought out.”
To drive home his point, Kunle Afolayan shared a pivotal moment from his career where he almost made a bad business de: “In 2011, we had just made Irapada and Figurine, and it was time to jump to a new project. We got approached by some people who had funds. They said, ‘We’ve been trying to do something like this, and this is an opportunity to buy into your company.’ At that time, with Figurine, we’d made a bit of a name,” he revealed.
“I told them to propose what they had in mind, and they came back with a proposal wanting to get 49% of the company’s shares. I really didn’t know about equity and all that, but I was like, okay, 49 and we still get 51. I said, Let me go and do my findings. And see, the thing is that you need to surround yourself with good people, good friends.
Afolayan recalled the support he received from friends and colleagues in the industry at the time: “As far back as then, some of the people that we took that decision together — some of them are in this room today. Mike was there, and others. We’ve been together since that day, and we’ve been supporting each other’s businesses.”
“I went back to them and told them I’m not doing. And they said, okay, do you want us to partner on a film project? I said, okay, it’s cool. We worked together and started work. While working on this project, we waited for funds from them. But till the project ended, we never got the funds.”
“We had no choice but to dissolve the project. The thing was that we couldn’t sue them also, because they were big people, so it was more like wasting your time doing that.”
Reflecting on the experience, Kunle Afolayan concluded: “Now look at where we are now, we have managed to build the company to where it is now.”
