“Posts can become portfolios. Content can become capital. But only if Africa owns it.”
By Prof. MarkAnthony Nze
Investigative Journalist | Public Intellectual | Global Governance Analyst | Health & Social Care Expert
Executive Summary
Africa’s most valuable resource today is not buried in the ground but flowing across screens. The continent has become a cultural engine: Afrobeats reverberates in Berlin clubs, Nollywood romances trend on Netflix, Kenyan TikTok dances cross continents in hours. What was once dismissed as pastime now constitutes a billion-dollar economy, projected to quintuple within a decade. Yet behind this boom lies a structural dilemma: Africa generates the content, but who captures the wealth?
The creator economy represents both opportunity and vulnerability. On one hand, it offers young Africans unprecedented tools to turn visibility into livelihood, influence into income. Diaspora networks amplify this momentum, wiring capital and validation into hometown feeds. Global brands flock to African creators, eager to ride waves of authenticity and cultural credibility. Digital platforms have transformed attention into currency, and Africa holds vast reserves.
On the other hand, the architecture of monetization is overwhelmingly external. Algorithms designed in Silicon Valley curate African stories for global consumption. Intellectual property regimes remain too weak to secure royalties. Taxation frameworks are fragmented, often capturing local startups more than multinational giants. Even diaspora patronage, a powerful engine, flows through foreign platforms that siphon value before it reaches creators. The result is a digital economy at risk of repeating the continent’s extractive history: production without ownership, creativity without capital retention.
This series argues that the future hinges on sovereignty. To transform cultural energy into enduring financial power, Africa must own its digital capital. That requires stronger intellectual property protections, harmonized digital taxation, and direct-to-creator monetization pipelines that minimize leakage. It requires scaling creative enterprises from fragile hustles into durable companies. And it requires investment in digital infrastructure—particularly in artificial intelligence—to ensure African languages, aesthetics, and datasets are visible within the global algorithmic order.
The stakes extend beyond economics. Culture has become diplomacy. Content defines how the world perceives Africa and how Africa perceives itself. If properly harnessed, this soft power can reshape geopolitics, shifting the continent from object of narrative to author of it.
From posts to portfolios, from likes to leverage, the challenge is clear: Africa must not only create but also own. If it succeeds, it will script a financial destiny in which culture is no longer extracted but capitalized, no longer borrowed but sovereign.
Part 1: The Digital Gold Rush
Attention has replaced oil as Africa’s most valuable resource — but who controls the wells?
It is not cocoa or cobalt that Africa is exporting at breakneck speed in 2025. It is attention. A generation of creators—armed with TikTok edits, YouTube vlogs, and Instagram reels—has become the continent’s most visible new export sector. Unlike oil or gold, however, this resource is weightless and infinitely renewable, flowing across borders in seconds. Yet, as with Africa’s earlier commodity booms, the central question remains: who owns the wells?
The numbers tell part of the story. According to Coherent Market Insights (2025), Africa’s creator economy is valued at US$ 5.10 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach US$ 29.84 billion by 2032, a near six-fold increase over just seven years. That trajectory would make content creation one of the fastest-growing sectors in Africa’s economy—outpacing many traditional industries.
But the data points obscure as much as they reveal. Behind the aggregate figures are hustles as fragile as they are innovative: a Nigerian YouTuber shooting skits with a borrowed camera, a Kenyan gamer livestreaming from a patchy internet connection, a South African TikToker negotiating her first brand deal while still living in her parents’ home. These creators embody what the Press Council of South Africa (2025) has described as the “digital natives of influence”—young Africans who convert cultural energy into economic opportunity.
1.1 The Rise of Attention Entrepreneurs
The creator boom did not emerge from nowhere. It was seeded by Africa’s demographic youth bulge, broadband expansion, and the ubiquity of cheap smartphones. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube became classrooms and marketplaces rolled into one, where young Africans learned to tell stories, build communities, and attract micro-payments.
Grace Ashiru (2025) notes that local solutions are increasingly central to this transformation. Startups in Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town are designing tools—payment gateways, analytics dashboards, micro-sponsorship platforms—that help creators bypass some of the bottlenecks of Silicon Valley’s monetization systems. This is not just a story of foreign platforms dictating the terms of trade; it is also about African entrepreneurs embedding themselves into the value chain of creativity.
1.2 The Paradox of Value Capture
Still, the paradox of value capture looms. As The Media Online (2025) points out, Africa’s creator economy is the next global marketing frontier, but much of the surplus generated continues to flow back to the headquarters of U.S. and Chinese tech giants. A Tanzanian comedian may command millions of views, but the advertising revenue is routed through algorithms written in California or Shenzhen.
The Guardian (2025) illustrates the precariousness of this arrangement: creators spend long hours producing content, but monetization remains inconsistent, often dependent on opaque platform policies. Many supplement platform income with brand sponsorships or diaspora donations, but these revenue streams are fragile, vulnerable to economic downturns and algorithmic shifts.
This makes Africa’s attention economy eerily similar to its natural resource sectors: enormous productive capacity, minimal control over pricing, and a dependence on external infrastructure. The difference, of course, is that this new export is intangible—yet its leakage patterns look strikingly familiar.
1.3 Informal Hustles, Formal Economies
The scale of this activity demands recognition beyond anecdote. The African Association of Entrepreneurs (2025) argues that the influencer economy now constitutes a significant avenue for jobs and incomes, particularly in urban centers where youth unemployment remains high. Content creation, once dismissed as play, now sustains families, funds education, and builds small businesses.
Here, the informal and formal economies intersect. A TikTok dancer in Kampala may earn small sums directly from viewers, but she is also part of larger advertising campaigns, tourist promotion strategies, and global brand pipelines. Content monetization is not a peripheral hustle anymore—it is stitching itself into the macroeconomic fabric.
Yet governments and regulators remain slow to respond. Few have developed coherent policies for taxation, intellectual property, or digital labor rights. This policy lag leaves creators vulnerable to exploitation, while states miss out on a share of a growing industry.
1.4 Beyond Entertainment
To call this phenomenon “entertainment” is to underestimate its significance. The creator economy is becoming a vector of soft power, projecting African culture globally at a scale unthinkable two decades ago. Afrobeats, Nollywood skits, Ghanaian food vlogs—all contribute to reshaping perceptions of Africa, not through government campaigns but through millions of individual uploads.
As Ashiru (2025) observes, these creators are not merely consumers of foreign platforms; they are agents of redefinition, using digital tools to rewrite Africa’s role in global flows of influence. And as the Press Council of South Africa (2025) underlines, these digital natives of influence are beginning to occupy the same cultural space once reserved for musicians, filmmakers, or athletes.
The gold rush metaphor is apt—but unlike past booms, this rush is not limited by physical deposits. Attention is infinite, but the institutions that govern its monetization are not. Unless Africa builds its own wells—platforms, payment systems, intellectual property regimes—the continent risks replaying the story of oil: abundance without sovereignty.
Conclusion: The Wells of the Future
The digital gold rush is here, but it is unevenly distributed. A handful of creators strike it big; many toil unseen. Platforms extract more value than they distribute. Governments hover at the edges, unsure whether to tax, regulate, or promote.
What is clear is that attention is no longer trivial. It is a resource, and Africa has it in abundance. The question, as Coherent Market Insights (2025) frames in cold projections, is not whether the creator economy will grow—it will—but whether Africa can shape the terms of its growth.
If the continent can build the wells—platforms, policies, and protections—then this gold rush could be the first in its history to enrich not just outsiders, but its own people.
Part 2: Platform Capitalism and African Creativity
Who owns the clicks? The algorithm as gatekeeper of African stories.
2.1 The Algorithm as Invisible Regulator
Africa’s creator economy does not exist in a vacuum. It lives within code. Each TikTok video, Nollywood skit, Afrobeats track, or Kenyan fashion vlog is filtered, ranked, and distributed by proprietary algorithms. These are not neutral tools. They are economic governors, designed in California, Shenzhen, or Dublin, deciding which African stories surface and which sink into obscurity.
As Rieder et al. (2023) argue in their study of YouTube monetization, “platform affordances are not evenly distributed but shaped by opaque linking and ranking systems.” For African creators, this means success is often less about talent or effort than about deciphering platform logics. A musician in Accra might upload the year’s catchiest track, but unless the algorithm detects engagement spikes in “key markets,” the song may never travel beyond its home city.
The Globalization of African Music study by Ahmed (2025) makes this visible: Afrobeats artists who break through on Spotify or Apple Music often do so not because of organic spread, but because of algorithmic playlisting. Algorithms decide whether a Nigerian track lands in Global Hits or languishes in Regional Vibes. And with that decision comes revenue, tours, and global contracts—or their absence.
Here lies the paradox: Africa is producing an abundance of digital culture, but the distribution networks—and thus the profits—are regulated by platforms that treat African creativity as just another dataset.
2.2 The Political Economy of Platforms
The language of “platform capitalism” (Onuoha, 2022) is not metaphor. It describes an extractive regime remarkably similar to Africa’s earlier experiences with commodities. Just as colonial companies once exported raw minerals while controlling infrastructure and pricing, today’s digital platforms extract African attention and creativity, monetizing it through advertising markets controlled far outside the continent.
Consider digital taxation debates. Onuoha (2022) points out that African governments, searching for post-pandemic revenue, have turned toward taxing digital platforms. Uganda’s “social media tax” and Nigeria’s attempt at VAT on foreign tech giants illustrate both the opportunity and the trap: governments see platforms as cash cows, but without global leverage, they can only skim modest sums. The bulk of revenue remains locked in global headquarters.
This uneven political economy is compounded by data asymmetry. Platforms harvest African user behavior at massive scale but rarely share insights or datasets with local regulators or researchers. The result, as Tapo et al. (2024) observe, is a machine intelligence ecosystem where African languages and cultural patterns are often excluded from training datasets. Algorithms learn to privilege English, French, or globalized aesthetics, sidelining indigenous languages and local content. What is invisible to the dataset becomes invisible to the digital world.
The extraction here is twofold: the monetization of African attention and the erasure of African cultural codes within algorithmic infrastructures.
2.3 Fragile Revenue Streams
For creators themselves, platform capitalism produces both opportunity and precarity. Rieder et al. (2023) document how YouTube creators must strategically use “linking practices”—embedding cross-links, collaborations, and external promotions—to push past algorithmic gatekeeping. This labor is invisible but constant: creators must not only produce content but also game the system, studying analytics dashboards like Wall Street traders.
The economics are unstable. A YouTuber in Nairobi might earn $1,000 one month and $200 the next, depending on algorithmic shifts, advertiser demand, or policy changes. TikTok’s Creator Fund payouts fluctuate with engagement metrics set by opaque formulas. Instagram reels may receive millions of views without generating direct income, forcing creators to rely on brand sponsorships. As Ahmed (2025) notes in his streaming study, “the algorithm curates opportunities unevenly, often privileging content that aligns with global commercial tastes over local nuance.”
For Africa’s millions of micro-creators, this volatility is existential. Unlike creators in Los Angeles or Seoul, who may have access to venture capital, merchandising, or stable brand deals, African creators often lack secondary income streams. Their livelihoods rise and fall with the mood swings of global platforms.
Bettin et al. (2024) highlight one partial buffer: diaspora audiences. Diaspora engagement functions as a stabilizer, providing not only financial remittances (via Patreon, donations, or subscriptions) but also “social remittances”—networks, feedback, and amplification. Yet even this is mediated through platforms that take their cut. Diaspora-driven visibility on YouTube still depends on algorithmic recognition of traffic from London or New York.
The consequence is an economy of hustle, not stability. Creators become digital gig workers, perpetually adapting to platform shifts while carrying the emotional burden of visibility.
2.4 The Struggle for Digital Sovereignty
The deeper issue is sovereignty. Who owns Africa’s digital cultural capital? The question is not rhetorical. Intellectual property regimes remain weak, as Amike (2024) argues in her study of IP and sustainable development. Many African creators operate outside formal copyright systems, uploading content without legal protection. When global brands appropriate African memes, dances, or sounds, creators often lack the legal tools to demand royalties.
Platforms themselves enforce IP selectively, often favoring corporate claimants over individual creators. A Nigerian beatmaker can see his sound sampled by a Western influencer and monetized on Instagram, while his own claim is buried in bureaucracy. Without stronger local IP regimes, Africa risks losing not only revenue but also the ability to define ownership of its creative commons.
The sovereignty struggle is also technological. Tapo et al. (2024) stress that Africa’s underrepresentation in machine learning datasets has cultural consequences. Algorithms that cannot “read” Hausa or Zulu undervalue content in those languages. This is not just a technical bug—it is a structural exclusion that sidelines vast communities from the digital economy.
What would digital sovereignty look like? It would mean African-owned platforms, or at least African-controlled data infrastructures. It would mean IP laws that protect not only multinational publishers but also local creators. It would mean governments negotiating with platforms not as supplicants but as stakeholders.
2.5 Beyond Dependency: Toward African Platform Futures
There are precedents for breaking such dependency cycles. Just as mobile money (e.g., M-Pesa) leapfrogged traditional banking, Africa could innovate digital platforms that serve creators directly. Local startups already experiment with streaming apps, monetization tools, and payment gateways. The question is whether they can scale fast enough to compete with global incumbents.
Ahmed (2025) notes that streaming has already globalized African music, but mostly on terms set by Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. The challenge is whether Africa can develop platforms where Afrobeats is not just content but infrastructure—where curation, revenue, and IP enforcement serve African creators first.
Onuoha (2022) reminds us that taxation debates are about more than revenue—they are about leverage. If governments treat platforms solely as tax bases, they miss the larger opportunity: to shape the rules of engagement. Without continental strategies, individual countries remain vulnerable to platform lobbying, capital flight, and regulatory arbitrage.
In other words, the struggle for Africa’s creator economy is not just about who gets paid—it is about who sets the terms of culture in the digital age.
Conclusion: The Gatekeepers of Story
The story of platform capitalism in Africa is not one of absence, but of imbalance. The continent is alive with creativity, yet the gatekeepers of visibility and monetization remain external. Algorithms decide what travels; platforms capture value; creators scramble for stability.
The stakes are not trivial. What Africans watch, dance to, and learn from is mediated by foreign code. What the world sees of Africa is shaped by playlists curated thousands of miles away. The continent’s digital future cannot be built on dependency alone.
If sovereignty over oil and minerals defined the politics of the 20th century, sovereignty over data, algorithms, and cultural capital will define the 21st. The wells of attention have been discovered. The question is whether Africa can own the pipes.
Part 3. From Remittances to Revenue Streams
How diaspora dollars fuel Africa’s online content economy.
3.1 Diaspora as Audience, Diaspora as Investor
For much of the 20th century, Africa’s diaspora was framed primarily as a source of remittances—the quiet lifeline of billions wired each year from London, New York, or Dubai to Lagos, Accra, and Nairobi. These transfers were mostly invisible in global economic analysis, treated as private support rather than systemic capital. Today, the diaspora is still wiring money home—but the circuits have changed. The flows are not only familial but also digital, powering Africa’s content economy.
According to TechPoint Africa (2025), Africa’s creator economy has already surpassed the billion-dollar mark, and diasporic audiences play an outsized role in this growth. A Nigerian comedian on YouTube often has more viewers in Toronto or Houston than in Abuja. A Kenyan podcaster’s Patreon subscriptions might come from Berlin rather than Nairobi. Diaspora, once the anchor of traditional remittances, now functions as a distributed investment base for Africa’s digital creators.
This pattern aligns with empirical evidence in Piras (2023), who shows that remittances can seed enterprise creation across countries, but the effect depends on context and absorptive capacity. In Africa’s creator economy, the context is ripe: digital tools allow remittance flows to be repurposed not just for consumption but for business models. What once paid for school fees now funds cameras, microphones, and broadband packages—inputs for cultural entrepreneurship.
3.2 Digital Patronage and New Flows
Diaspora support is not limited to traditional remittances. Bettin et al. (2024) highlight the role of social remittances—ideas, practices, and networks that migrants transfer home. In the creator economy, social remittances materialize as branding advice, cross-border collaborations, or introductions to advertisers. A Ghanaian influencer may rely on a cousin in London not only to send money but to broker a sponsorship with a UK brand targeting African audiences.
Digital patronage platforms have institutionalized this process. Patreon, BuyMeACoffee, and YouTube’s “Join” features allow diaspora supporters to contribute small monthly sums. Individually, these look trivial; collectively, they provide a revenue base. TechPoint Africa (2025) reports that some African creators earn 40–60% of their support from diaspora patrons, a figure consistent with Ahmed’s (2025) finding that streaming platforms globalize African music primarily by mobilizing diasporic listening patterns.
Crucially, these new flows are reciprocal, not charitable. Diaspora supporters pay for value: entertainment, connection, identity affirmation. Unlike classical remittances, which are often framed as obligation, digital patronage feels like investment in a cultural commons.
3.3 Transnational Networks of Trust
Diaspora financing of creators is not only monetary—it is infrastructural. Journal WJARR (2025) on diaspora-driven brand strategy shows how diaspora actors amplify African content globally. When an Afrobeats song drops, Nigerian communities in London are often the first to flood it onto club playlists, radio shows, and TikTok trends. That early spike tells algorithms the song is globally relevant, pushing it into curated playlists where it reaches millions.
This is the invisible machinery of transnational trust. Diaspora audiences function as early adopters and validators, signaling to platforms and advertisers that African content is not just local but global. In economic terms, they reduce the “credibility gap” that African creators often face in monetization.
Andere (2024) provides micro-level detail: in her study of local content monetization strategies, she shows that creators often rely on hybrid models—small local sponsorships combined with diaspora-driven traffic. A Nairobi YouTuber may earn modest sums from local ads but receives the majority of his income from diaspora subscriptions and brand deals targeting African expats.
3.4 The Financial Infrastructure of Visibility
The larger implication is that diaspora functions as a financial infrastructure for visibility. Piras (2023) links remittances to new firm creation; Bettin et al. (2024) extend this to social remittances. In Africa’s digital economy, both forms converge: diaspora provides the seed capital (a ring light, a secondhand laptop) and the social validation (sharing links, boosting engagement) that allow creators to scale.
This convergence creates multiplier effects. A Nigerian skitmaker with a loyal diaspora following may attract global advertisers seeking entry into African markets. Diaspora engagement thus becomes a form of collateral: proof that an audience exists and that content resonates beyond borders.
Yet this infrastructure remains fragile. Unlike traditional remittances, which are relatively stable across economic cycles, digital patronage is discretionary. A recession in Europe or the U.S. can reduce diaspora spending on subscriptions, leaving creators vulnerable. Moreover, the mediation of these flows through platforms (Patreon, YouTube, Spotify) means that a significant share of value is extracted before it reaches the creator.
3.5 Diaspora, Identity, and the Politics of Belonging
Beyond economics, diaspora support carries a symbolic charge. Ahmed (2025) notes that diaspora streaming patterns often shape the global trajectory of African music. This is not simply about taste; it is about belonging. Diaspora audiences consume African content as a way of anchoring identity in host societies. By subscribing to a Ghanaian food vlogger or reposting a South African dance challenge, diaspora communities perform a politics of attachment.
This attachment feeds back into local economies. Bettin et al. (2024) argue that social remittances often carry “normative codes” about what is valued. In the creator economy, this can shape production: a Nigerian YouTuber might tailor content to diaspora nostalgia—street food tours, pidgin slang skits—because that audience is both financially reliable and emotionally invested.
Thus, diaspora not only funds creators but also influences content direction. The risk is homogenization: creators may privilege diaspora-friendly themes over experimental local ones. Yet the opportunity is global resonance: diaspora validation can make African culture legible to global audiences, opening pathways to mainstream recognition.
3.6 The Double-Edged Sword of Platform Dependency
While diaspora support is indispensable, it does not remove the problem of platform dependency. As Andere (2024) notes, creators’ local monetization strategies are often weak—advertisers pay less in African markets, and subscription culture is underdeveloped. This makes diaspora income even more critical, but also reinforces dependence on foreign platforms.
Platforms like YouTube and Spotify act as intermediaries, capturing a significant share of diaspora contributions. Diaspora dollars do not flow directly to creators; they pass through monetization systems that prioritize their own margins. In this sense, diaspora support, while vital, still operates within the broader architecture of platform capitalism analyzed in Part 2.
The challenge, then, is whether African ecosystems can design direct-to-creator pipelines that minimize leakage. Mobile money integration, African-owned patronage platforms, and blockchain solutions are being tested. But scale remains elusive. Without local equivalents to Patreon or Spotify, diaspora contributions will remain mediated—and taxed—by global platforms.
3.7 Toward a Diaspora-Driven Development Model
What emerges is a potential redefinition of development finance. Remittances have long been larger than aid flows in Africa. Piras (2023) and Bettin et al. (2024) show that when remittances are productively channeled, they seed enterprise creation. In the content economy, diaspora contributions are not just supplementary—they are primary capital.
Journal WJARR (2025) suggests that diaspora engagement can be formalized into brand strategy, turning scattered support into structured campaigns. Imagine a Lagos creator whose diaspora fans in London crowdfund his next production, then collectively promote it into trending status. This is more than fandom; it is decentralized venture capital, rooted in cultural solidarity.
If African policymakers recognize this, they might design frameworks to encourage diaspora investment in content creation: tax incentives for diaspora subscriptions, partnerships between diaspora networks and local production houses, or co-investment funds.
Such models could transform diaspora from passive remitters into active stakeholders in Africa’s digital economy.
Conclusion: From Private Transfers to Public Economies
Remittances have always blurred the line between private obligation and public impact. In Africa’s digital age, that blurring intensifies. Diaspora dollars no longer only pay school fees or build houses; they build YouTube channels, TikTok followings, and global brand partnerships.
TechPoint Africa (2025) calls the creator economy Africa’s billion-dollar frontier. But behind that frontier are countless small diaspora contributions—subscriptions, donations, shares—that function as both capital and validation. Diaspora has become investor, audience, and ambassador all at once.
The danger is that this system remains trapped within external platforms that siphon value. The opportunity is that Africa can reimagine diaspora support not as fragmented remittances but as coordinated development finance for the cultural economy.
If remittances once symbolized survival, diaspora patronage today symbolizes possibility. From Lagos to London, from Nairobi to New York, the circuit is clear: content flows out, capital flows back. The question is whether Africa will capture that cycle as a sustainable model—or allow it to remain a patchwork hustle at the mercy of platforms.
The gold rush of attention cannot be mined without diaspora. The next phase is ensuring that the revenue it generates belongs as much to Africa as to the platforms that mediate it.
Part 4: Regulation, Taxation, and the State’s Cut
When governments chase clicks: the politics of monetizing Africa’s internet.
4.1 The New Tax Frontier
Across African capitals, tax officials have discovered a new frontier: the internet. For decades, taxation in Africa was tied to physical presence—factories, import duties, payroll systems. But in a digital economy where wealth flows through algorithms, advertising clicks, and streaming royalties, traditional tax models falter. As creators earn on YouTube, as brands advertise through Instagram, and as diaspora money filters via Patreon, governments are asking: how do we tax this?
The Direct Digital Services Taxes (DSTs) introduced in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda reflect this shift. A 2024 MDPI paper on DSTs in Africa frames them as “a new canon of taxation,” designed to capture value from global platforms that profit heavily from African markets without significant local presence. The logic is clear: if Meta, Google, and Spotify generate revenue in Africa, then a share should flow back into public coffers.
Yet this ambition collides with complexity. How do you measure profit when value is created in Lagos but booked in Dublin? How do you tax a TikTok dance when the audience spans three continents? These are not rhetorical questions—they are the central dilemmas of Africa’s new fiscal politics.
4.2 Chasing the Platforms
Governments are not wrong to chase the platforms. ICTD’s Taxation of the Digitalised Economy: An African Study underscores that highly digitalised businesses exploit loopholes in nexus and profit attribution. They can generate billions from African users while declaring negligible taxable presence. The result: vast leakage of revenue at precisely the moment African states need resources for infrastructure, health, and education.
PwC’s Tax Policy Trends in Africa (2025) identifies digital taxation as one of the continent’s top fiscal priorities, noting that “digital compliance frameworks” are being rolled out in at least 15 jurisdictions. But ambition outpaces coordination. Without harmonization, platforms face a patchwork of DSTs, each with its own rules, rates, and thresholds. Obia (2025) argues this risks creating a hostile business environment, deterring investment and burdening smaller African creators who get caught in the regulatory crossfire.
Consider Kenya’s 1.5% DST, which initially targeted foreign platforms but ended up ensnaring local entrepreneurs selling through digital channels. The intention was to capture Netflix and Facebook; the result was also taxing small e-commerce startups. Such unintended consequences reveal the tension between revenue goals and growth objectives.
4.3 The State vs. the Creator
The deeper irony is that while governments claim to be taxing global tech giants, the burden often trickles down to local creators. Platforms pass compliance costs onto users and advertisers, squeezing margins. For a Nigerian YouTuber earning modest ad revenue, a DST applied to Google may translate into lower payouts. For an e-commerce entrepreneur in Nairobi, additional VAT rules can increase operational costs.
The VATUpdate commentary (2025) stresses that without a unified continental strategy, African states risk fragmenting their digital economies. Instead of taxing Silicon Valley, they may end up taxing their own citizens—those very micro-entrepreneurs and creators who represent the promise of the digital economy.
This raises a political question: is digital taxation a progressive redistribution of value, or a regressive levy on innovation?
4.4 Tools of Compliance
If taxation is to work, it must be enforceable. Okunogbe et al. (2023) emphasize the role of information technology in boosting compliance. In countries like Rwanda, e-filing systems and digital receipts have dramatically expanded tax bases. Extending such tools to the digital economy could help governments track transactions more effectively, ensuring that global platforms cannot hide behind opaque accounting.
Yet the technological arms race is uneven. Global firms employ advanced tax planning strategies, while many African revenue authorities struggle with limited resources. The result is a mismatch: African states attempt to tax digital giants with tools designed for the industrial age. Without investment in digital monitoring, audits, and data-sharing agreements, DSTs may remain symbolic rather than substantive.
4.5 The Global Chessboard
Africa’s digital taxation debates do not exist in isolation. The OECD’s “Two-Pillar Solution” on global digital taxation aims to redistribute taxing rights to market jurisdictions. But African negotiators often lack leverage in shaping these frameworks. Obia (2025) warns that without regional alignment, Africa risks being sidelined, accepting deals that deliver minimal revenue compared to the profits extracted.
Here the contrast is sharp: Europe and the U.S. fight over digital tax rights, while African states struggle even to measure the scale of taxable value. ICTD stresses the need for African-specific solutions—regional cooperation through the African Union or AfCFTA to negotiate as a bloc, establish common rates, and prevent the race-to-the-bottom where countries undercut each other for platform investment.
4.6 Taxation as Sovereignty
Digital taxation is about more than money. It is about sovereignty. Who governs Africa’s digital economy—the platforms or the states? MDPI (2024) frames DSTs as an assertion of fiscal sovereignty, a signal that African states will not allow global firms to monetize local attention without contributing to the public purse.
But sovereignty must be credible. If DSTs scare off investors or suffocate local startups, they risk undermining the very digital ecosystem that governments seek to nurture. PwC (2025) highlights the delicate balance: revenue authorities must “maximize collection without stifling growth.” This is the tightrope of Africa’s digital future.
4.7 Toward Smarter Strategies
The way forward may lie in smarter, not heavier, taxation. VATUpdate (2025) argues for harmonisation and strategy: aligning digital taxes across borders, coordinating enforcement, and distinguishing between global giants and local innovators.
Some proposals include:
- Tiered taxation models: exempting micro-creators or startups while applying higher rates to multinationals.
- Revenue-sharing agreements: obliging platforms to allocate a portion of local ad revenue directly to national treasuries.
- Continental negotiation: leveraging AfCFTA to bargain collectively with global platforms, as Europe has done.
- Investment-for-tax swaps: allowing platforms to offset part of their tax liability by investing in local infrastructure, training, or data centers.
These strategies would align taxation not only with revenue goals but also with developmental priorities.
Conclusion: The State’s Cut and the People’s Burden
The pursuit of digital taxes is a sign of Africa’s maturity: governments recognize that the digital economy is not peripheral but central to growth. Yet ambition risks turning into self-sabotage if policies are fragmented, enforcement is weak, and the burden falls on the very citizens who drive the digital economy.
The gold rush of attention cannot remain untaxed. But the politics of taxation will decide whether this becomes a story of redistribution or regression. As ICTD reminds us, taxation is not merely fiscal—it is developmental. The question is whether African states can design systems that extract value from platforms without crushing the creativity that fuels them.
If Africa gets it right, digital taxation could fund infrastructure, education, and health—transforming clicks into clinics. If it gets it wrong, it could suffocate its most promising industry before it fully matures. The state’s cut must not come at the expense of the creator’s future.
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Part 5: Content as Soft Power
From Afrobeats to Nollywood: how culture monetization shapes geopolitics.
5.1 Africa’s New Diplomatic Currency
Diplomacy was once the realm of treaties, summits, and speeches at the UN General Assembly. Today, it also takes the form of Afrobeats tracks blasting in London clubs, Nollywood films streamed in São Paulo apartments, and South African dance challenges circulating across TikTok. In a world saturated by content, cultural production is not just entertainment—it is power.
TechPoint Africa (2025) notes that Africa’s creator economy has crossed the billion-dollar threshold, but its significance extends beyond revenue. The export of African music, film, and fashion is shaping perceptions of the continent globally, giving Africa a visibility it has rarely enjoyed on its own terms. Where once Africa’s international image was mediated by aid campaigns and news of conflict, today it is increasingly filtered through Burna Boy lyrics and Nollywood rom-coms.
This is soft power: the ability to influence without coercion, to attract rather than compel. And in the 2020s, Africa is discovering that content is its most potent diplomatic currency.
5.2 Afrobeats and the Algorithm of Global Reach
Few case studies illustrate this shift more vividly than Afrobeats. Ahmed (2025) documents how streaming platforms have globalized African music, placing Nigerian tracks alongside global hits on curated playlists. Algorithms amplify beats from Lagos to Los Angeles, ensuring that what once circulated informally now occupies formal spaces in global markets.
Streaming has become both a distribution network and a geopolitical lever. When Wizkid tops a Billboard chart, it signals more than personal success. It is a reframing of Africa in global cultural hierarchies, repositioning the continent as exporter rather than perpetual importer.
But there is a catch. As Ahmed emphasizes, algorithms both enable and constrain. African artists gain unprecedented reach, yet they remain dependent on platforms headquartered in the West. Their global success is mediated through Spotify playlists and Apple editorial teams. Africa owns the sound but not always the infrastructure.
5.3 Nollywood as Narrative Power
If music supplies rhythm, Nollywood provides narrative. Nigeria’s film industry is the second largest in the world by volume, churning out thousands of films annually. But in recent years, global streaming giants have taken notice. Netflix and Amazon Prime are investing heavily in Nollywood productions, betting that African stories can attract global audiences.
The Press Council of South Africa (2025) highlights how Africa’s “content entrepreneurs” are becoming central players in the global influence economy. Nollywood films no longer only serve domestic or diaspora markets; they now circulate as instruments of global storytelling. In doing so, they challenge stereotypes of Africa as a site of deficit, offering instead narratives of love, ambition, conflict, and comedy on African terms.
This is not trivial. As El Louadi (2024) argues, cultural heritage and representation in the digital age are central to the preservation of identity. Nollywood, by digitizing and globalizing African narratives, anchors the continent’s cultural sovereignty in an age where AI and global platforms risk homogenizing representation.
5.4 Intellectual Property and the Geopolitics of Culture
But cultural influence depends on ownership. Amike (2024) underscores that intellectual property (IP) is a critical tool for sustainable development in Africa, particularly when it comes to cultural exports. Without robust IP regimes, African creators risk losing control over their content, watching others monetize their heritage.
This challenge is not hypothetical. From TikTok dance trends originating in Lagos but monetized by influencers in Los Angeles, to traditional textiles reproduced by global fast fashion chains, Africa often supplies the creativity while others capture the value. The gap between influence and income is stark.
IP law, therefore, becomes geopolitical. Protecting African content is not just about ensuring royalties for individual artists; it is about ensuring that Africa retains agency in shaping its global image. As Amike notes, “sustainable cultural development requires a balance between global dissemination and local ownership.”
5.5 Soft Power in the Global Marketplace
The Media Online (2025) frames Africa’s creator economy as the next global marketing frontier. Multinational brands increasingly seek partnerships with African artists and influencers, recognizing that cultural resonance translates into consumer trust. Afrobeats stars are signed as ambassadors for fashion labels; Nollywood actors appear in global advertising campaigns.
This is soft power monetized. Africa’s cultural exports do not only influence global tastes; they also drive global commerce. In doing so, they position African creators as diplomats of a new kind—ambassadors of both identity and consumption.
Yet this frontier is double-edged. If Africa becomes merely a supplier of “cool,” stripped of ownership, it risks reproducing old dependencies under new packaging. To convert cultural exports into enduring soft power, Africa must align monetization with representation, ensuring that influence translates into bargaining power.
5.6 Content, AI, and the Battle for Representation
Artificial intelligence adds a new dimension. El Louadi (2024) warns that AI systems, trained on biased datasets, risk erasing African cultural forms by underrepresenting them. If AI-generated music defaults to Western tonalities, or AI-generated scripts exclude African idioms, the continent’s soft power gains could be undermined by algorithmic invisibility.
At the same time, AI offers tools for preservation. Digitizing oral histories, archiving traditional music, and using machine learning for translation can amplify African cultural heritage. The question is not whether AI will shape Africa’s soft power—it already does—but whether African stakeholders can shape AI.
If they cannot, then Africa’s newfound cultural influence may become hostage to the same external infrastructures that govern its digital economy more broadly.
5.7 The Diplomacy of Culture
Soft power does not exist in a vacuum; it has geopolitical consequences. TechPoint Africa (2025) notes that the creator economy contributes directly to Africa’s global perception as a site of innovation rather than dependency. This matters in diplomacy: countries that project cultural vitality often gain leverage in political and economic negotiations.
Consider South Korea’s K-pop strategy, where cultural exports became instruments of geopolitical influence. Africa is not pursuing a centralized model, but the cumulative effect of Afrobeats, Nollywood, and influencer content is similar: a repositioning of the continent as a producer of global culture.
The Press Council of South Africa (2025) suggests that content entrepreneurs are not only entertainers but also “strategic actors in Africa’s influence economy.” By exporting joy, creativity, and identity, they recalibrate Africa’s place in the world system.
Conclusion: Owning the Narrative
The rise of African content as soft power is not merely a cultural shift—it is a geopolitical realignment. Music, film, and digital content are reshaping Africa’s image abroad, offering tools of attraction and influence that rival traditional diplomacy.
But attraction without ownership is fragile. If Africa’s cultural exports remain governed by external platforms and weak IP regimes, then soft power may dissipate into cultural dependency. If, however, Africa secures the legal, technological, and financial infrastructures to protect and project its creativity, then it may achieve what few expected: global influence rooted not in natural resources or geopolitical leverage, but in rhythm, narrative, and representation.
As Ahmed (2025) reminds us, streaming has already made African beats global. As Amike (2024) insists, IP law must secure their ownership. As El Louadi (2024) warns, AI must not erase their heritage. And as the Press Council of South Africa (2025) observes, content entrepreneurs are already rising as diplomats of the digital age.
The wells of attention may be infinite, but only sovereignty can ensure that their waters sustain Africa’s future.
Part 6: The Future of African Digital Capital
From posts to portfolios: can Africa own its content economy? Without ownership, content wealth leaks abroad. With it, Africa could script a new financial destiny.
6.1 The Question of Ownership
Africa’s creator economy is no longer marginal. Coherent Market Insights (2025) values it at US$ 5.10 billion in 2025, with projections of nearly US$ 30 billion by 2032. The stakes are enormous. Yet the central question persists: who owns this economy?
Ownership determines whether revenue stays within African systems or bleeds outward. Andere (2024) makes this clear: local content monetization strategies—ads sold locally, sponsorships negotiated with African brands, subscription models linked to mobile money—keep value circulating within African markets. By contrast, reliance on foreign platforms like YouTube or Spotify often means revenue is booked offshore, taxed elsewhere, and repatriated into global profit pools.
Without ownership, Africa risks replaying a familiar story: producing the resource while others capture the rent. With ownership, Africa could transform posts into portfolios, turning cultural energy into durable capital.
6.2 Intellectual Property as Capital
Amike (2024) argues that intellectual property (IP) is not simply a legal formality—it is capital. For Africa’s creative and media industries, IP regimes determine whether songs, scripts, and visual content become assets with compounding value or remain vulnerable to appropriation.
In the absence of strong IP enforcement, African creators risk seeing their content monetized abroad without royalties. Nollywood plots, Afrobeats rhythms, or Ghanaian dance trends may circulate globally, but without proper registration and protection, the creators may never see proportional returns. Strengthening IP law—streamlined registration systems, affordable access, effective enforcement—becomes essential to retaining digital capital.
IP is also geopolitical. As Africa negotiates with global platforms, ownership of content rights gives it bargaining power. Without IP sovereignty, the continent remains a supplier of raw cultural energy rather than an owner of monetizable assets.
6.3 Taxation and Value Retention
The fiscal dimension of digital capital cannot be ignored. ICTD’s Taxation of the Digitalised Economy shows how profit attribution in highly digitalised businesses systematically disadvantages Africa. Global platforms extract immense value from African markets yet declare minimal taxable presence.
This erodes state capacity. Without tax revenue from digital businesses, governments cannot reinvest in broadband, creative hubs, or educational pipelines. Digital capital flows out, leaving underfunded ecosystems behind.
The solution is twofold: harmonized continental tax regimes to prevent regulatory arbitrage, and smart frameworks that distinguish between taxing multinational giants and nurturing local startups. Taxation, in this context, is not only fiscal—it is developmental, ensuring that the wealth generated by Africa’s digital economy funds Africa’s future.
6.4 Building Sustainable Creative Enterprises
Individual creators are vulnerable to platform volatility. Sustainability requires enterprises—production companies, agencies, and media collectives that aggregate talent, pool resources, and negotiate power. ResearchGate’s (2025) study on entrepreneurial success in Africa’s creative industries highlights strategies that work: vertical integration (owning production and distribution), diversification of revenue streams (live events, merchandising, licensing), and partnerships that prioritize local control.
Such enterprises convert fragile hustles into durable businesses. They also change bargaining positions: a collective of Kenyan filmmakers negotiating as a production house wields more leverage than individuals appealing to YouTube’s algorithm.
This institutionalization of creativity is critical. Posts must become portfolios, and portfolios must become enterprises. Only then does African digital capital acquire longevity.
6.5 Algorithms, AI, and Digital Infrastructure
Capital in the 21st century is not only financial—it is computational. Tapo et al. (2024) show that African languages and cultural datasets are systematically underrepresented in machine intelligence. This exclusion has material consequences: algorithms that fail to “see” Swahili or Hausa undervalue content in those languages, limiting monetization and visibility.
Ownership of datasets and AI tools thus becomes central to Africa’s digital future. If African stakeholders do not control the infrastructures that curate visibility, they risk losing not only revenue but also representational power. An African content economy governed by foreign algorithms may be vibrant yet perpetually subordinate.
Conversely, investment in African AI—translation systems, recommendation engines, cultural archives—would embed sovereignty into the infrastructure of attention. Owning the pipes is as crucial as owning the wells.
6.6 Toward Portfolios, Not Just Posts
The long-term challenge is transformation. Creators must move from day-to-day hustles—posts, likes, and fleeting virality—to portfolios: assets, contracts, IP, enterprises. Governments must shift from piecemeal DSTs to comprehensive digital strategies that integrate taxation, IP, and infrastructure. Investors must look beyond sponsorships to equity stakes in African platforms and creative companies.
This transformation is not abstract. Andere (2024) shows how local monetization strategies already demonstrate models of retention. ResearchGate (2025) documents entrepreneurs who are scaling from content to companies. Amike (2024) outlines IP as the legal spine of sustainable cultural capital. ICTD insists that taxation determines whether value is reinvested locally or extracted abroad. Tapo et al. (2024) remind us that digital infrastructure—the invisible architecture of algorithms—shapes visibility and thus revenue.
The convergence of these insights points to a singular imperative: Africa must own its digital capital.
Conclusion: The Script of a Financial Destiny
The arc of Africa’s creator economy is clear: rapid growth, global influence, fragile ownership. CoherentMI’s (2025) projections confirm the scale; the question is who benefits.
If Africa remains dependent on foreign platforms, weak IP regimes, and fragmented taxation, then its digital boom will echo its extractive past: wealth generated locally, capital retained elsewhere. But if Africa strengthens IP, harmonizes taxation, builds sustainable enterprises, and invests in its own digital infrastructure, then content will become more than entertainment—it will become capital.
From posts to portfolios, Africa has the chance to script a new financial destiny. The story is not only about creators and their followers; it is about whether a continent can convert attention into sovereignty, creativity into equity, and culture into capital that endures.
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