Afreximbank commits $200 million as FG okays Creative Economy Devt Fund

•Tinubu and Musawa

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu yesterday approved the establishment of Cre­ative Economy Develop­ment Fund to pool resourc­es for those in the creative industry.

Minister of Art, Cul­ture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musa­wa, revealed this shortly after the meeting, which held at the Council Cham­bers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, reports Daily Independent.

Surprisingly, the Minis­try has gotten commitment from Afreximbank to the tune of $200 million to kick-start the Fund.

“FEC gave approval for the creation of a Creative Economy Development Fund. This is a special purpose vehicle that will allow members within the creative economy to have access to funding and use their IP as collateral in terms of monetisation.

“We identified very early on that the very basic struc­tures in order for us to real­ly tap into the potential of the creative economy was missing.

“So, we got to work in putting up those struc­tures. (Intellectual Proper­ty) IP policy is one of those very basic structures that was missing. We are work­ing together with the Min­istry of Industry, Trade and Investment and with the Ministry of Justice to ensure that we deliver IP policy, hopefully within maximum, at the very last phase, within the next two weeks,” she stated while briefing State House corre­spondents on the outcome of the meeting.

According to Musawa, the Intellectual Property will allow creatives to use it to get collateral, to get access to funding. “Again, one of the things that we identified was that mem­bers of the community, the creative community, cultur­al and creative community, have absolutely no access to funding”, the minister said.

She stated, “This is a special purpose vehicle that will give them funding that will be able to allow us to leverage funding that we’re getting. We already have commitment, for ex­ample, from Afreximbank that has committed to giv­ing us $200 million and a number of other sources.

“So this is a special purpose vehicle that will allow us to give this fund­ing to members within the community, and hopeful­ly we’ll be able to really tap into the potential and reach our targets of eco­nomic expansion, creative expansion, cultural, expan­sion of course job creation, specifically for younger de­mographic”.