Culture as capital

A successful production leaves several different things behind. There may be income for its creators, work for suppliers, recovery of capital, and rights that will earn for years. There may also be a company better equipped to make the next production. These outcomes do not necessarily occur together. A film can employ a local crew while most subsequent licensing income belongs elsewhere. A catalogue sale can release useful capital without financing another recording. A production company can retain its copyrights and still lack the resources to use them well.

For African economies and the diaspora, this is where the investment question becomes consequential. Cultural activity can build enterprises, intellectual property and specialist skills, while opening routes to paying markets. Finance may enable that development, yet the volume of capital raised and the price assigned to existing rights are measures of exchange, not self-evident measures of progress; the deeper analytical question is what capabilities, choices and distributions of power have changed.

There is a credible case for developing investment markets around cultural assets. Music rights already attract specialised structures, as WIPO’s research on music finance documents.¹ A production loan, an equity stake in a studio and an interest in future royalties nevertheless expose their holders to different costs, rights and risks. They cannot be treated as one homogeneous financial exposure, and the WIPO research does not supply a representative return for African cultural investments.

Financial claims become economically important when their terms help people and enterprises undertake worthwhile activity, manage risk or gain credible commercial alternatives. In more liquid markets, investment in a new production can create local economic value before royalties and other post-production income are received. To understand their contribution, we need to follow what the capital enables, who bears the cost and what the people and enterprises involved retain. Actual transactions allow those questions to be tested.

This article is analytical commentary, not an offer, investment recommendation or legal opinion. Evidence was reviewed to 17 October 2026. Historical figures retain their observation dates and source currencies; any conversion or illustration is identified. Proposed arrangements are not AMARI investment commitments.

Capability, claims and markets

Productive capability, financial assets and investment markets are distinct and connected.

Consider a studio. Its ability to secure and deliver work depends on staff skills, production routines, equipment and supplier relationships. Some of these resources or inputs can be sold separately. Others have value because people know how to work together.^3,4 A company does not own its employees, and the relationships that sustain its work are often difficult to value separately. Yet their contribution to future production belongs in any economic or commercial assessment.

The works a studio produces can also be assets. International and national-accounting methods recognise entertainment, literary and artistic originals as intellectual-property products capable of providing services over several years.²

Productive capability allows a studio to create work and earn income. Ownership and contracts determine who is entitled to that income. An investor may acquire a financial claim on part of the studio’s value or future receipts, rather than acquiring its productive capability. A shareholder has a claim on the company’s residual value, a lender has a right to repayment, and a rights investor may own a copyright, a licence or an agreed share of receipts. These claims can be created before the income is earned. Their value depends on the rights granted, the expected income, the associated costs and risks, and the price paid.

When these claims are created and exchanged repeatedly, they form part of an investment market. Such a market includes the investors, enterprises, advisers and processes used to assess, issue, hold and transfer claims. It may be private, small or difficult to trade in. Clear reporting and consistent contracts can support participation by making claims easier to understand and compare, but they cannot make an unviable enterprise, project or income stream investable. Figure 1 summarises the distinction between productive capability, financial claims and the markets in which those claims are used.

Once these objects are separated, growth acquires several meanings. Trading (the buying and selling of existing financial claims, such as shares, loans or rights to future income) can improve liquidity by making those claims easier to sell without increasing production. More productions can be completed without leaving a durable enterprise, while a business can build useful capabilities that remain difficult for outside investors to assess. The development objective is to connect these activities where that connection creates value (this may be an opportunity for catalytic capital in the future).

This analysis asks three questions. First, does finance allow more production to take place? Second, does it help create an investment market that works in practice? Third, how is the value created shared among the people and organisations involved? The following three propositions may help assess these questions. Each sets out the conditions under which the claim would hold:

Production to a lasting enterprise

The first proposition requires us to look beyond a single release. Original work incurs development costs before demand is known. If it succeeds, repeated licensing can spread that initial expenditure across audiences, territories and periods without reproducing the original at the same cost. Further earnings still require marketing, localisation, distribution and continued exploitation. Even an established work must compete with new work for attention.

Those economics help explain the attraction of rights ownership, but higher receipts have several possible causes. Licensing income may grow through better distribution, a larger audience or a price increase, without the enterprise producing more real output per hour. A film’s budget, an artist’s audience and a catalogue’s market price each describe something commercially relevant. None is a substitute for examining productive efficiency.

To understand continuity, it helps to follow the enterprise from one production to the next. Project-by-project funding may allow a company to assemble a team for each commission while leaving it unable to retain staff between them. Financing development staff, better equipment utilisation or the working capital needed for overlapping projects could change what the company is able to undertake. The benefit would have to appear in better delivery, additional viable work, lower recurring costs or stronger earnings. Keeping an underused studio open serves little purpose if demand cannot support its services.

Following capability also takes us beyond the boundaries of one company. A technician who leaves may weaken that firm while strengthening another local business. Departure abroad can reduce domestic experience, yet may later support collaboration or purchased services. The assessment changes with the unit being examined: a firm, a city’s production network or the national economy. Staff retention is useful to observe, but insufficient on its own to show whether capability has accumulated. Commercial reach can extend across those boundaries too. A local business can earn income from abroad by selling services or licensing its work to an overseas buyer. The benefit retained in the local economy depends on the cost of imported goods and services, fees, financing costs and who owns the later income. Cultural exports may help an economy rely less on commodities, depending on their scale and financial viability. However, demand for these exports can still change with advertising budgets, household spending, platform investment and exchange rates. Dependence on one buyer or one type of cultural product can therefore create a new form of concentration risk. The diversity of buyers and products also matters.

Within the domestic economy, workers and suppliers may also carry skills into advertising, design, software and live production. Such spillovers would matter if other enterprises could use the people, routines or technology developed through cultural work. They remain mechanisms to investigate, not multipliers to insert into a forecast. Assessment must also consider whether the new activity displaces work that would otherwise have occurred.

Taken together, these possibilities show why finance is only one part of an industrial strategy. UNESCO’s mapping of African film places it alongside skills, infrastructure, institutions and distribution.⁵ Where equipment sits idle because electricity is unreliable, credit for more equipment may deepen the problem. Where a capable firm cannot bridge a credible buyer’s payment delay, working capital could be decisive. The useful intervention depends on what is preventing worthwhile work.

A sale of rights can form part of this approach. For example, the owner of a catalogue may sell the right to receive part of its future income. The owner could use the money to fund a skilled production team, repay expensive debt or reduce personal financial risk. The buyer may also be able to market and manage the work more effectively. In this way, selling rights can support the wider financing of a creative business. Its value to development depends on whether the sale creates a better outcome than the realistic alternatives, after taking account of the rights and future income the owner gives up.

The market

Testing these possibilities requires evidence of the activity already taking place. Public measures offer a partial view, beginning with the collection system. CISAC reports approximately EUR13.97 billion of worldwide authors’ society collections in 2024, including EUR90 million in Africa. Africa’s reported world share is 0.6%; South Africa accounts for 52.6% of the African total. Figure 2 compares regions using the same report, period and currency.^6,7

The figures describe gross collections through participating societies. Payments through labels, distributors, direct licences, studios and live businesses extend beyond that coverage, so the table is not a census of African cultural earnings. It also leaves the creators’ heritage and residence unidentified. Multi-territory licensing, reciprocal flows, exchange-rate translation and revisions affect the reported geography and comparisons over time.⁸

IFPI measures a different part of the industry from CISAC. It reports that recorded-music trade revenue in Sub-Saharan Africa reached US$120 million in 2025, an increase of 15.2%, with South Africa accounting for 78.1% of the regional total.¹⁰ These figures cannot be added to the CISAC figures to calculate the total market because they cover different years, regions and types of income.

For a producer or lender, the next question is whether the income shown in these records can be identified and paid to the person or business entitled to receive it. In 2024, SAMRO reported licence revenue of R683.8 million and a balance of R284.9 million linked to works that lacked complete documentation. This balance indicates a problem with records and distribution. It does not show the amount lost in that year or prove that all of the money will remain unpaid.¹¹ Before providing finance, a lender would need to identify the borrower’s income in the records, confirm its legal and payment status, and estimate when it is likely to be received. The lender must also confirm that the collecting body has the authority to collect and distribute the money. Nigeria’s copyright regulator states that COSON’s approval expired in May 2019 and that its application for renewal did not meet the required conditions, including an independent forensic audit.¹² The finding concerns one organisation at one time and should not be applied to every Nigerian collection body today, so each transaction needs its own checks.

Screen producers face a related uncertainty in the businesses that buy their work. CANAL+ reports that Showmax was discontinued at the end of April 2026; Netflix announced new South African productions and partnerships in September.^13,14 These contrasting decisions show particular buyers changing strategy; they are not a count or concentration measure for African screen buyers. Their significance for a producer lies in the contract: the commission, payment date, rights retained and consequences of a change in the buyer’s plans.

The demand question begins with the payer. Cinema ticket sales reach a producer only after cinema, distribution and other contractual deductions. Broadcasters and streaming services may pay licence fees or commissions, with net prices and retained rights usually settled in private contracts. Advertisers and sponsors purchase specified access or services, while ticket buyers and paying subscribers face different affordability constraints. UNESCO identifies piracy, limited exhibition infrastructure and uneven distribution as obstacles to monetising African screen output.⁵ These explain why audience reach may not translate into receipts, although they do not measure unmet demand in any country. Music streaming illustrates the same need to follow the payment arrangement. Spotify describes royalty distribution to rights holders through a streamshare calculation, rather than a fixed payment to every artist for each play. Labels, publishers and distributors then pay creators under their agreements.^10,54 Dividing IFPI’s industry revenue by a count of African streams would therefore give no reliable creator rate. Estimating a market-wide cash yield would require platform- and territory-level measures of paid demand, direct licensing receipts, cancellation rates, piracy losses and net creator income. Comparable public net contract prices remain insufficient for that calculation.

Although aggregate measures leave gaps, acquisitions provide direct evidence that businesses and rights are being traded. Sony’s purchase of Lusafrica and Africa Nostra concerns recording and publishing businesses with African repertoire. Warner’s full acquisition of Africori followed earlier investment and majority ownership.^15,16 The announcements do not show seller returns, legal and beneficial ownership or the residence of ultimate investors, and each must be established before these deals can show where value was retained.

These formal transactions are only one of many ways that producers finance their work. Film producers may use advances from distributors or commissioning buyers, pre-sales, support from marketing partners, their own savings, or help from family. Musicians may rely on advances from labels or distributors, income from touring and performances, brand partnerships, sponsorship, direct support from audiences, or private patrons. Each arrangement creates different obligations. A gift does not usually require repayment, while an advance may be repaid from future income. A profit-sharing agreement gives another party a share of earnings, and a sponsorship contract pays a fixed amount for agreed services or access. UNESCO describes similar production and distribution models in African film, together with the limits producers face when seeking finance.⁵ To understand how common these arrangements are, what they cost and what results they produce, reliable records from a wide range of transactions are needed. Any new financing facility should therefore be compared with the options producers already have, including the control and future income they may have to give up.

The evidence describes several cultural markets and financing channels at different levels of development. It leaves the stock of privately documented, financeable rights largely unresolved. Small society collections therefore justify investigating the data’s coverage, not declaring those rights absent or prescribing which form of finance must develop first. Once that limitation is recognised, the analysis can become more specific: which entitlement does an investor hold, and what kind of capital can sensibly be provided against it?

Investors and capital

The terms of the entitlement shape the investment. A company share gives its holder a different position from a named customer’s promise to pay. A ticket sold before a concert brings in cash subject to performance and possible refund obligations; it is not necessarily a receivable still available to pledge. Sponsorship agreements can include cancellation conditions, deliverables and offsets. A film, meanwhile, may receive commissions, advances and pre-sales before release.

Figure 3 distinguishes four exposures by the rights held and risks assumed. They can overlap; the classification is neither a compulsory sequence nor an exhaustive legal taxonomy.

Published finance programmes show how these differences work in practice. In Kenya, HEVA and NCBA have published plans for working-capital finance linked to contracts. The first published facility was KES20 million. The published terms described finance of up to 80% of confirmed orders, contracts or events, initially at a concessional interest rate of 9%.¹⁸ These are advertised terms; they do not show an applicant’s total cost, the amount lent or the facility’s losses.

NEXIM’s creative and entertainment loan scheme offers another form of finance, with loan periods of up to seven years. Applicants must provide business and financial information, evidence of marketing or distribution arrangements and, where relevant, a valuation of intellectual property proposed as collateral.¹⁹ Its eligibility rules differ from HEVA’s proposed contract-linked products. The published rules do not show approval rates or returns.

An actual contract shows that finance can include further costs. The original filed 2X Blind agreement sets out six planned funding tranches totalling US$4.622 million and three scheduled repayments totalling US$5.165 million. Some additional charges are redacted in the filed agreement, and a reserve may be refunded if certain conditions are met. The visible payment schedule therefore does not show the borrower’s full final cost. The annualised figure in the reference note is a calculation based on stated conditions, not an observed return to the lender.¹⁷

Following the money after it is collected also shows who is paid first. Legion M’s disclosure for My Dead Friend Zoe states that certain fees, costs, reserves and higher-priority obligations must be paid before investors receive the remaining money. It reports that US$813,248 was paid to investors in 2025. At 30 June 2026, US$444,404 was held in the collection account. It is not a reported investor distribution; the filing also records a gain from the contractual expiration of investor obligations in 2025. The stated total amount financed does not match the listed components, so it cannot safely be used to calculate a recovery percentage.²⁰ This example shows that money collected is not always the same as money available to investors.

An accepted invoice still requires a separate examination of security. The financier must establish the financed party’s entitlement, any assignment or other security, prior claims, set-off rights and conditions yet to be performed. Control over payment may reduce diversion, but it cannot ensure that the payer remains solvent or that the borrower earns the payment.

Nor does a guarantee create revenue. It reallocates specified losses to another balance sheet. Coverage exclusions, claim procedures, guarantor capacity and the behaviour encouraged by protection shape its value. A guarantor’s involvement may improve due diligence, although that effect must be established separately. A well-protected lender can consequently finance a commercially weak project because someone else absorbs the shortfall. Examining only the lender’s position would miss the continuing cost of that weakness.

From cultural use to a collectible entitlement

When finance depends on future income, it is important to understand how the payment is created and how it reaches the person entitled to receive it. Cultural income can follow different routes. For example, a collecting society may license performance rights, a distributor may collect income from recordings, or a producer may receive a licence fee directly. These arrangements all involve permission, identification, contracts and payment, but the steps may occur in a different order and may involve different organisations.

The first step is to identify the relevant legal right. Unlicensed use may break copyright law or require a payment set by law, while some uses are allowed under legal exceptions. Approval for an organisation to collect payments is separate from permission for someone to use a work. The relevant right, law and contract determine what applies.²¹ Figure 4 lists the checks needed to understand whether a payment can be collected, without assuming that every payment follows the same legal or administrative process.

Following these checks helps distinguish problems that can otherwise look like missing income. A late distribution creates a timing problem; an irrecoverable debt creates a loss. An administration fee pays for a service, though its level or associated conflicts may be objectionable. An earlier rights sale changes who is entitled to receive income. Calling all four “leakage” would obscure both the cause and the appropriate response, as well as risk adding unlike amounts into one loss estimate.

Records can support this diagnosis by helping establish ownership, match usage, reconcile deductions and trace payment histories. They may also give a holder information needed to pursue an entitlement or assess another commercial option. Their commercial benefit must justify the cost of producing and maintaining them, unless a separate public purpose warrants support. A common reporting service can spread fixed costs; a poorly designed one can add a fee without changing collections or lending decisions.

Whether such a service can operate depends on who has reason to participate. Adner’s adoption-chain analysis asks whether each indispensable participant expects enough benefit to join. Digital cinema provides an example: studio-paid virtual print fees under contracts with studios and distributors helped finance cinema conversion, an arrangement also described in company filings.^22,23 Applied here, the question is who gains from shared records or distribution, and how that gain could support payment for the service. A new intermediary is only one possible answer.

A buyer might support standard payment confirmations to maintain a reliable supply of productions. A lender might finance verification to lower assessment costs or losses. Where benefits extend beyond any one participant, a public body might support interoperable records. A sustainable arrangement needs a revenue model and rules for access: the ability to charge, exclude, cooperate or fund a public good must be examined before concluding that shared benefit prevents anyone from paying. Those access rules also determine whether a rights holder can take the information to another provider. Administrative design therefore leads directly to questions of commercial choice.

Ownership, distribution and alternatives

Control of a scarce route to market can affect both the value created and its division. A distributor may introduce a work to audiences its creator could not reach, while negotiating exclusivity, deductions or data restrictions that make changing providers costly. The creator’s feasible alternatives matter: self-release, retention, another intermediary or a different licence may offer quite different terms.

Parker, Van Alstyne and Choudary explain that platforms can replace some intermediaries while creating new ones. They argue that platforms can lower transaction costs and allow more people to participate, while also gaining significant control over access and data.⁵⁷ A commercial assessment must therefore consider both the service the platform provides and the power this gives the platform.

The level of power depends on the work being offered. A popular catalogue may be able to negotiate with several distributors, while a distributor with good systems but little attractive content may earn little. Owning distribution is therefore not always more valuable than owning the work itself. Demand, available alternatives, contract terms and continued investment all affect the value of each position. Market concentration, foreign ownership and poor governance are separate issues that must also be examined. A creator may keep the copyright but grant a long-term exclusive licence that allows the licensee to recover a wide range of costs. A minority investor may have the right to approve or block budgets and future financing. A buyer may also increase income by promoting, restoring or distributing the work internationally. When both the creator and distributor must continue contributing to success, the contract should give both sides a reason to do so. Full control by one party and complete independence are not always the best options.

For ownership to provide a real alternative, the owner may need access to information as well as legal ownership. An overseas intermediary may provide useful records through strong audit and data-transfer terms, while a local intermediary may restrict access to them. The main protection is the ability to obtain, check and transfer the information needed to choose another provider or commercial option. A provider’s nationality does not determine whether information will be accessible or how much value the provider will retain. Figure 5 explains how the relevant payments should be assessed.

A fee of 25 from a payment of 100 is not necessarily 25 of economic surplus. The intermediary may pay staff, suppliers and taxes before earning a residual profit. A subsequent shareholder distribution comes from that residual; it adds no further slice to the original 100. The development account therefore needs to follow costs and receipts through the arrangement. Creator income, intermediary margin and investor dividends cannot be added as though each were an independent gain.

Better contractual terms can nonetheless improve a creator’s position without increasing output. Earlier payment, less downside exposure for a household or a credible exit option may each have private value. These private gains are distinct from additional national production or a public claim for subsidy. As financing becomes repeatable, that distinction helps identify what market development achieves.

How investment markets can develop

A market can deepen as financing becomes repeatable on terms that participants can assess. A studio, an export commission, a privately documented catalogue or a group of service businesses could each provide an entry point. The second proposition concerns whether transparent costs, losses and economic rights can support those repeated decisions. A new wrapper or exchange listing cannot supply them on its own. Figure 6 sets out several routes, with different requirements for what must persist.

Repeat contracts and accounts can give an enterprise an investable record. That route fails if capital expands an unprofitable operation or if the capabilities financed leave before the business can use them. Receivables finance addresses a different problem by shortening a payment gap, though it may merely replace an existing lender. A rights acquisition can begin wherever a seller and buyer agree on the value of future income. A seasoned collection record helps assessment but is not a universal prerequisite; the effect on new production depends on what buyer and seller subsequently do.

Specialist services may make it cheaper and easier to finance smaller claims repeatedly. An administrator can spread costs across several rights owners, while an aggregator can combine investments into an amount large enough for an institution to consider. However, this scale can also spread errors across many investments, increase dependence on one platform and give the record-keeper greater control over access. Clear rights to correct records, conduct audits and leave the service should therefore develop alongside these benefits. Borrowing in local currency can reduce currency risk when income is also received locally. Foreign-currency finance may be more suitable when it matches a reliable export contract. However, imported costs, currency-conversion rules, transfer delays and hedging costs can change either assessment. Matching the loan currency reduces one type of risk, but inflation, demand and counterparty risk still need to be considered separately.

A market’s ability to finance future work also interacts with investors’ ability to sell. An existing security usually pays its seller rather than its issuer when traded. Yet a credible resale market can make investors more willing to subscribe to future issues. The reverse distinction also needs care: a fund buying existing rights may later finance new work, while a primary share issue may repay debt instead of supporting production. The use of proceeds has to be traced. “Primary” cannot stand in for new productive investment, or “secondary” for economically useless trading.

Being able to trade an investment does not guarantee that it will be easy to buy or sell. A listing only allows trading (under set rules). An active market also needs willing buyers, fair pricing, reliable valuations, enough available investments, effective settlement systems and support from market makers. If a fund allows investors to withdraw money regularly while holding rights that are difficult to sell, it must explain how it will meet those withdrawals without unfairly affecting the investors who remain. Any promise of access to money or easy trading must be supported by a system that can deliver it.

Repeated transactions may leave something useful for later participants: payment histories, tested contracts and specialist experience that reduce the cost of assessment. A market can, in this sense, make one participant’s experience available to others. It can also grow by bidding up the same claims. New issuance, higher valuations and more managers do not distinguish these paths. Institutional precedents are useful when they show which arrangements were built, what activity followed and who bore the cost.

Institutional precedents in Africa and elsewhere

African institutions provide operating examples of project development, guarantees, pooled funds, rights investment and asset recycling. Figure 7 separates their records by vehicle and transaction. A commitment, a project investment and a realised return offer different evidence of how a market develops.

FEDA’s 2024 report recorded a US$150 million commitment to the Africa Film Fund, with disbursement described as prospective at that reporting date. A 2026 announcement identified CANEX Creations’ participation alongside MBO Capital in financing Clarissa, whose worldwide distribution was acquired by NEON. In July, another announcement named One Street Studios as co-general partner of the Pan-African Film Fund, with an ambition to mobilise up to US$1 billion.^26,27,28 That release states that the fund was launched in May 2025, so the two names appear to describe one vehicle. These establish a commitment, a disclosed project investment and organisational development linked to a fundraising target. The resulting investor returns remain unestablished.

Africa50’s disclosures are useful because they show how some of their investments can be assessed. However, its project-finance return, project-development multiple and acceleration-fund size measure different things. A gross internal rate of return is usually stated as an annual rate. It is not the gain made in one year, and it is not the investor’s final return after fund costs. An investment multiple does not show how long the investment was held, while fund size does not show how much money was actually invested in projects.^30,31

The Senegambia Bridge arrangement is especially relevant as an example of capital recycling. Africa50 reported a first payment of US$15.5 million as part of a US$100 million programme. The IMF’s account from late 2023 describes a concession lasting up to 25 years. It may end earlier if the investor reaches the expected return. The IMF describes a government share of 12.5% of equity dividends and a restriction on a competing route until traffic reaches a sustained profitability level. The final signed concession has not been reviewed for this article.^32,33

In this arrangement, future economic rights are exchanged for funding now. Its value for development depends on the full cost of the concession, the quality of the service, how risks are shared and how the released money is used. Protecting the project’s income by limiting competing infrastructure may also reduce the government’s future choices. This loss of flexibility should be treated as a cost of the arrangement, even if no payment is required at the start.

A cultural rights owner makes a related exchange when selling or financing future receipts. Demand, costs and enforceable rights require assessment in both cases, though an operating bridge is a poor proxy for an untested film. The comparison has a further limit: infrastructure also receives investment before operating revenue begins. Mature collections cannot therefore be imposed as a universal precondition for finance.

Credit enhancement changes a different part of a transaction. The OECD reports that, by December 2024, InfraCredit had guaranteed 24 Nigerian infrastructure transactions, helped raise more than NGN200 billion and attracted over 21 Nigerian institutional investors.²⁹ These guarantees support financial obligations that these institutions are allowed to hold. The figures show the amount of reported investment, but they do not show how much would have been financed without the guarantees or whether a particular cultural business would qualify.

The possible use for cultural businesses is therefore limited. The main question is whether an eligible cultural business could issue debt that meets investors’ requirements after specific risks are shared at a reasonable cost. A guarantee cannot support a business with inadequate operating income forever. It may also be unnecessary when a financially reliable business can already borrow on normal commercial terms. Australia’s experience also shows how investment structures can develop alongside a national savings system. Macquarie’s history states that A$155 million in publicly listed shares was raised for construction of the Hills Motorway in 1994, two years after compulsory superannuation began in 1992.^34,35 The two developments occurred close together, but the timing does not show how much either caused, and the example is not a policy model to copy.

Moullakis and Wright record public tax concessions attached to infrastructure bonds and multiple layers of fees in early vehicles. Murray and Frijters argue that some partnership guarantees and obligations escaped the conventional account of public borrowing; they also recount an approximately A$25 million Queensland public-servant superannuation investment that was largely lost in Airport Link.^55,56 These are attributed historical and critical accounts, not an independent audit or sector-wide cost estimate. They show why the growth of an investment category must be assessed separately from the gains to its public and household investors.

European examples bring the comparison back to cultural businesses. The European Commission reports that the reviewed facility provided 9,458 loans to 7,117 businesses, with total financing of EUR1.818 billion. IFCIC states that its guarantees cover 50–70% of a loan, depending on its purpose, and charge an annual fee of 0.5–0.7% of the loan amount.^36,37 These figures record activity and published terms, not the extra output the programmes created, and African transactions would need their own assessment of eligibility and institutions.

These examples show that financial claims, risk-sharing arrangements and investor access can be developed through deliberate planning. However, a well-designed institution can make an investment possible without making its expected return attractive. The next question is therefore what the investor is buying, how much it costs and what losses the investor could face.

Returns and risks for investors

An institution’s ability to mobilise capital tells an investor only part of what they need to know. A useful cultural-investment category must offer an intelligible exposure at a price and on terms appropriate to the investor. It need not outperform every conventional asset class. Its appeal may lie in income, growth, duration, diversification or access to opportunities that would otherwise be difficult to assess, after accounting for losses, costs and the time capital remains committed.

The public evidence does not provide one typical average return for film, television and music investments. Instead, it reports different measures, including loan repayments, portfolio values, returns on company shares, fund distributions and government recoveries. These measures are not directly comparable. A lender, a rights owner and a fund shareholder may invest in the same cultural activity but receive different payments and face different losses. Treating their results as the same would hide the differences an investor needs to understand.

Korea’s public-fund record provides evidence of losses from a clearly defined group of investments. A National Assembly Budget Office table lists thirteen culture-account funds closed between 2021 and August 2024. The detailed figures show government contributions of KRW135.8 billion and recoveries of KRW87.039 billion, equal to 64.1% of the amount contributed. Eleven funds returned less than the original amount invested. Approximate figures of US$107 million contributed and US$70 million recovered use exchange rates from each fund’s closing year to show the scale only. They are not directly comparable investment returns measured on the same date. A separate film fund reported a government internal rate of return of −4.05%.^38,9 They are government results for one window of closures, not private partners’ returns or an industry benchmark, and the cultural results need their own assessment.

Diversification theory cannot replace evidence about actual returns. In a simplified market model, investors do not require extra payment for risks that can be removed by holding a varied portfolio. The capital asset pricing model makes this claim under several assumptions, and its practical limits are well documented. It does not prove that cultural assets are low-risk or that their returns move differently from other markets.^39,40

For a real investment portfolio, the main question is which risks are shared across the investments. Different works may depend on the same consumer demand, platforms, currencies, legal systems or refinancing conditions. Combining many works may reduce the risk linked to one title, but it does not remove these common risks. Investors also need enough separately priced investments to build a varied portfolio at a reasonable cost. An investor who cannot do this may reasonably ask for a higher return because the investment is concentrated and difficult to sell, even if a fully diversified investor would not.

The payment required for taking risk should also be separated from the cost of expected losses. A lender may charge more because it expects that some principal will not be repaid, because arranging and enforcing the loan is expensive, or because its money will be committed for a long period. Payment for losses that are more likely when other investments are also performing poorly is a separate cost. Better information may reduce assessment costs or change the estimate of risk. Stronger enforcement may reduce expected losses, while a guarantee transfers certain losses to another party. Any claim that finance can be cheaper should clearly identify which of these costs will fall.

Investment vehicles introduce further differences between the performance of cultural work and the return to its investor. MUSQ provides exposure to music-industry companies. Betashares’ Global Royalties ETF holds royalty-related companies across several industries. Shareholders own interests in businesses with their own costs, liabilities, management decisions and valuations, rather than a direct allocation to every underlying copyright.^41,42 Their fund returns must be understood through those holdings and structures. A short-period performance ranking supplies no African cultural-rights premium.

Africa50’s reported gross internal rate of return must be interpreted carefully. It is a reported investment return, not an extra amount that can simply be added to a government bond yield. A development premium, a higher acquisition price and payment for holding an investment that is difficult to sell are different concepts. A fair comparison would need to use the same currencies and time periods and account for borrowing, the timing of cash flows and costs paid by the investor. The disclosure does not provide a standard “Africa50 premium” that can be applied to cultural investments.³⁰

An institution entering the sector must choose an investment structure that matches the work it can manage. Direct ownership gives more control but requires specialist administration. A fund combines investments and expertise, but it also adds management fees, valuation decisions and possible conflicts over how money is allocated. Asset-backed debt can set a clear order for payments, but its protection depends on the quality of the asset pool, reserves, servicing and enforcement. Reports should clearly separate the fund’s gross return on assets, the investor’s net return after costs and the cash actually paid to investors.⁴³

The investment must also suit the investor’s responsibilities. Pension funds manage retirement savings and have different rules, limits on concentrated investments, cash needs, minimum investment amounts and ability to carry out detailed checks. A royalty that lasts for many years is not automatically suitable for them. Founders, strategic companies or specialist equity investors may be better placed to fund early-stage work before a pension fund can take part. Institutions may invest later, or invest in a separate portfolio of mature assets. There is no rule that institutions must invest before individuals. A real decision depends on the investor’s mandate, liabilities, obligations, need for available cash and individual circumstances.

The need to understand the claim is just as important for retail participation. Jukebox’s 2025 US filing describes Royalty Shares as unsecured limited issuer obligations, with no ownership in the company, trust or underlying music portfolio.⁴⁴ That structure introduces issuer and transfer risks distinct from direct copyright ownership. A regulated offering process can exist alongside unattractive pricing or investment loss. Wider participation requires clear disclosure of what is acquired and what could be lost. Being part of the diaspora may shape an investor’s interest, but it does not mean every investor can take the same level of risk. Experienced institutions and business owners may be able to invest in assets that are difficult to sell, while many households may not be able to afford that risk. Cultural knowledge can help an investor understand an audience or business partner, but legal rights and currency risks still need separate assessment. Personal connection should never replace clear information, a proper suitability assessment or an honest explanation of possible losses. Small investors should not be expected to absorb the first losses simply to make an institution’s investment appear safer.

For all investors, any link to new production must be assessed separately. Buying an existing ETF unit may improve access to the market and help establish prices, but it does not pay a creator directly. A more active market may reduce future financing costs, but that possible benefit is different from money reaching a new production.⁴⁵ This connects the investment and development questions: a product may be suitable for an investor while doing little to solve the financing problem faced by a cultural business.

Choosing the intervention

Choosing an intervention begins with that constraint. Weak demand and costly credit can affect the same company. Better finance may create a gain that an intermediary captures, while a public guarantee may enable additional work at a loss to its guarantor. Financing friction, commercial risk, market power and public allocation can therefore operate together. A useful diagnosis identifies how each affects the decision, rather than selecting one explanation in advance.

The historical UK credit study offers evidence of a possible financing friction in a particular setting. Its “Other Creative Content” category, covering publishing, video, film, photography, radio and television, faced a reported 12.5 percentage-point assessment disadvantage after the study’s controls.⁴⁶ The finding does not establish causality, and unobserved risk may explain part of it; it is a reason to examine the assessment process, not a measure of what an African applicant faces today.

Two hypothetical interventions show why the distinction matters. Suppose a verification service helps catalogue owners obtain lower borrowing quotes. Few borrow because they do not need capital at the offered price. Information has improved, but additional production may not follow. The service could still justify its cost through cheaper refinancing, reduced administration or better bargaining options. The benefit would need to be demonstrated in those terms.

Now consider a producer commissioned by a credible buyer, unable to fund delivery because verifying the accepted obligation and directing payment costs too much for the transaction size. Standard confirmation and shared collection arrangements allow a lender to finance it. If delivery would otherwise have been impossible and the full cost is below the gain, the intervention has relaxed a consequential constraint. Completion alone cannot settle the comparison: alternative finance, displaced activity and actual buyer payment still matter. Figure 8 applies this method to a wider set of interventions and objectives.

A Kenyan illustration

Consider a fictional independent Kenyan television producer that has delivered a commissioned programme to a non-resident broadcaster. The broadcaster has accepted delivery in writing and owes US$300,000 in 120 days under a US-dollar licence agreement. The producer needs liquidity while considering a further production.

The lender would need to verify assignment rights, tax treatment, any set-off, licence conditions, priority and whether the collection account can receive the payment under the governing documents.

The IFCIC terms are a comparison only: its European guarantee would not cover this Kenyan borrower, and its rules for claims and recoveries are not assumed to apply. No guarantor has agreed to cover any loss, and the expected loss is an assumption, not evidence about Kenyan default rates. Under these assumptions, a fee of about US$362 would not, by itself, cover the guarantor’s US$1,980 share of the expected loss, its capital costs or its administration costs. Reducing the lender’s exposure therefore shifts part of the cost elsewhere in the transaction rather than removing it.

Ownership and legal authority would also remain essential conditions of this fictional arrangement. The producer would keep ownership of the underlying work, except for the licence expressly granted to the broadcaster. If the programme included a traditional song held collectively, the lender’s conditions before financing would require a clear process for identifying who has authority, documented permissions and agreed terms for sharing benefits before any collection rights could be assigned. The broadcaster’s acceptance of the programme would not settle a dispute about authority. Rights over creative approval, edits, distribution territories and later transfers should be stated clearly in the relevant agreements rather than assumed from the loan.

The immediate benefit is earlier access to cash. However, the US$74,110 remaining after payment is not necessarily profit, and the US$196,638 advance is not new GDP, because the producer still has expenses and liabilities. Measuring the value added within Kenya would require a separate examination of wages, payments to resident suppliers, imported services and actual production costs. To show that the finance created additional activity, the analysis would also need to establish that the earlier access to cash enabled worthwhile work that would not otherwise have taken place. The borrower, lender, guarantor, creators and resident economy therefore each have a different financial and economic account of the same transaction. Published IFCIC terms: ³⁷.

This example suits a producer with a clearly identified gap between completing the work and receiving payment. Other businesses may need different forms of support. A mature portfolio of rights may be suitable for specialist purchase or lending. A business with regular production-service invoices may be better served by ordinary invoice finance. A studio developing its own work may need patient equity that can absorb the risk of failed projects. Where the main problem is weak access to paying audiences, investment in distribution may be more useful than another loan programme. Cultural work valued mainly for preservation or participation may be better supported directly, without requiring it to produce an investment return.

These choices belong to particular businesses and activities rather than country rankings. South Africa’s larger reported society collections make that channel worth examining there; they establish neither the best catalogue transactions nor an absence of verified private rights elsewhere. A Kenyan export commission, a Nigerian label and a Ghanaian live business can need different financing even under broadly similar macroeconomic conditions.

Assessment must therefore identify the activity, legal entity, payer, right and governing jurisdiction. Current collecting authority, where applicable, sits alongside transfer and conversion conditions, taxes, access to records, investor rules and practical enforcement. Statutory permission to remit earnings leaves the timing and cost of actual payment open. An exchange restriction, conversely, must be checked for scope before it is assumed to prohibit all royalties. These details determine which proposed mechanism is feasible.

Some useful functions may remain underfunded because their benefits extend beyond the first paying customer. Cooperation or public support could address that problem without requiring a monopoly registry. An administrator might be viable through fees, a jointly funded standard might spread costs, or wider benefits might justify a public service. Whatever the provider, contestability, interoperability and a right to challenge errors remain important to the people relying on it.

Where the choice remains uncertain, a pilot should be designed around the later decision it could change. That requires specifying what improvement is sought, what result would count against the proposal and how eligible non-participants or alternatives will be compared. Selecting unusually easy borrowers, concealing support costs or measuring only completed projects could improve reported repayment without demonstrating a scalable model. Clemen and Reilly’s decision analysis gives a stricter test for learning: information is worth collecting when it can change a real subsequent decision and its expected benefit exceeds the cost, delay and harm of obtaining it.⁵⁹ The value of the exercise lies in being able to choose differently afterwards, including choosing not to proceed.

Keeping or selling rights

For a rights owner, one of those choices is whether to keep the asset at all. A sale may provide cash, transfer downside risk or secure capabilities that cannot be purchased separately. Retention preserves control, future upside and the ability to license selectively. A partial sale or term-limited licence divides those advantages differently. Nationality alone offers no answer to the trade-off.

The UK Intellectual Property Office’s survey shows why services and commercial reach belong in that comparison. Respondents signed to major labels reported median 2019 music income of £51,816, against £12,944 among self-releasing respondents. Selection, scale and career differences prevent the gap from being attributed to contract form.⁴⁷ They do make clear why retained rights need to be considered alongside the resources available to exploit them.

A simple valuation makes the trade-off more concrete. Assume a catalogue generates US$1 million at the end of year one, declining by 5% annually for ten years. Administration costs 15% of receipts. There is no terminal value, tax, debt or change in exploitation under different ownership. A buyer valuing the expected net receipts at 12% would pay approximately US$4.036 million today. The seller receives that price in full and bears no subsequent revenue recourse.

At an 8% valuation rate, the owner would calculate a retention value of US$4.725 million. Required returns may reflect risk, opportunity cost, constraints or different beliefs; the difference does not prove that affordable local capital exists. In an integrated competitive market, different prices for identical risks and rights require an explanation. Figure 9 varies receipts and the valuation rate.

The scenarios show both sides of the exchange. If the owner uses an 8% valuation rate and receipts are 30% below the central estimate, keeping the rights is worth US$3.308 million, which is less than the fixed sale price. If the owner uses a 14% rate and receipts are 20% above the central estimate, keeping the rights is worth US$4.501 million, which is more than the sale price. The familiar crossover at 12% occurs only when both parties use the same central estimate of future cash flows. This result follows from the calculation; it is not a general rule about domestic ownership.

These scenarios show possible levels of receipts, not the probability of each outcome or a statistical range of confidence. Comparing the fixed sale price with the receipts later earned helps show, after the event, how much risk the sale transferred. Before making the decision, however, the owner must consider expected cash flows, their own circumstances and uncertainty on a consistent basis. If a forecast is already reduced to reflect a risk, and the discount rate is then increased again for the same risk without explanation, the comparison will count that uncertainty twice and become distorted.

The valuation considers only the owner’s financial claim. A national economic account must examine the related services and income separately. Administrators who are residents may earn fees, but the full fee is not necessarily domestic value added because some of it may be paid to suppliers or rights owners. A partial sale to another resident changes how cash and risk are shared within the resident economy. The transfer itself does not remove the risk or create new national income.

What the seller does with the cash is a separate decision. Reinvesting it, repaying debt, spending it or buying another asset can each provide legitimate private value. Releasing capital contributes to development only when the money enables worthwhile activity compared with what would otherwise have happened. New projects may succeed, but they may also lose more than the rights given up were worth. Setting aside the sale proceeds for production shows an intention to invest; it does not, by itself, prove that additional productive activity will result.

A rights sale can therefore complement enterprise finance without becoming the assumed centre of every cultural investment market. The comparison needs the rights surrendered, fees, changed incentives, risk transfer, subsequent investment and feasible alternatives. Once public support is proposed, a further question arises: whether the benefits extend far enough beyond the transaction to justify the public resources and risks involved.

Public support, market risks and cultural purpose

The strongest objection is that a cultural investment market could succeed financially for intermediaries while doing little for cultural production or resident welfare. Several vehicles might compete for a small set of documented catalogues, raise acquisition prices and earn fees while taking little responsibility for new work. Creators could receive cash but lose useful options. Public guarantees could support the resulting claims while their costs sit outside the headline investment return. A market designed to support development must be open to that possibility.

Soros’s account of reflexivity helps frame one risk: lending and collateral values can reinforce each other before reversing. Applied to catalogues, this is an analytical warning rather than a finding that a cultural bubble is under way.⁴⁸ Actual collections, borrowing, refinancing dependence, acquisition prices and new productive spending would need to be examined together. Rising asset prices alone leave the improvement in earning capacity unresolved.

When public support enters the arrangement, the distinction between visible activity and lasting benefit becomes a budget question. Maryland’s legislative review found eight state evaluations estimating tax receipts of US$0.03–0.31 for each dollar of film tax credit. These measure fiscal recovery, not complete welfare. Patrick Button’s study of Louisiana and New Mexico found evidence of more feature filming without a corresponding increase in television filming, industry employment or establishments.^49,50 More production in a location can therefore require a separate enquiry into the industry it leaves behind.

The UK evidence gives a different result within its own setting. Ipsos, Olsberg SPI and London Economics found positive effects from creative-industry reliefs on production and investment. Their evaluation combines surveys, interviews and modelling, with self-reported counterfactuals and assumptions used to expand them affecting interpretation.^51,52 Neither the UK nor US findings determines the outcome of an African programme. Read together, they show why an appraisal must distinguish production activity, tax receipts and long-term industrial development before choosing how to measure success.

That choice also determines the relevant alternative. Collection-system reform, direct grants, general enterprise support or infrastructure improvements may achieve more than a sector loan fund. The comparison has to respect actual budget constraints. Some funds cannot be used interchangeably, so an abstract choice between culture and electricity may bear little resemblance to the decision facing a public institution.

Consider a public decision-maker comparing a US$1 million cultural-credit pilot with a feasible electricity or general SME alternative. The first task is to establish which budget can legally support each option. Evaluation would then compare incremental resident income and other stated outcomes, full fiscal and contingent costs, timing, risks, the distribution of benefits and what would happen without funding. For cultural preservation, financial return may be the wrong primary measure, though public cost and credible alternatives still require scrutiny. No matched programme or infrastructure appraisal is available here, so this is a method of comparison, not a ranking of either investment.

Public guarantees need particular care in that appraisal. Some create contingent exposure without immediately appearing as debt, depending on the accounting framework and arrangement. Expected claims, administration, fees, capital requirements and losses beyond the planned buffer should all be disclosed. Eligibility also affects behaviour before default. Full protection can weaken screening unless lenders and managers retain meaningful accountability.

The purpose of support can also be cultural in its own right. Preservation, language, participation and artistic experimentation need not earn an investor return to matter. Choosing such an objective does not make the funding decision arbitrary: reasonable alternatives, costs and effects on creative choice still deserve examination. It also raises a question that a financial model cannot settle for the people concerned: who has authority to decide what is preserved, licensed or changed?

Where shared heritage or traditional cultural expressions are involved, this article adopts a precautionary governance principle. Relevant authority and competing claims should be identified, the consent required by law and by the proposed relationship established, and benefit arrangements made explicit. WIPO’s work explains the importance of these issues without supplying one legal rule for every jurisdiction.⁵³ Public or financial support should not give one body unjustified authority to speak for a community.

In the fictional Kenyan transaction, this could mean requiring proof of consent and limits on the rights pledged, or declining the claim while authority to license a traditional expression remains disputed. These safeguards may change funding cost, delivery time or whether the transaction can proceed at all. Their commercial cost should be explicit. Treating cultural authority as a financing condition makes its practical consequences visible without assuming that respect for it is costless.

Australia and Africa

From an African-Australian perspective, the allocation of capability, income and risk across borders is especially important to examine. Australia’s institutional investment history provides useful comparisons, but it should not become the standard by which African cultural work is valued. Kapferer and Bastien make a related methodological warning in their discussion of India’s luxury market: an outside observer’s expectations can distort the analysis of another market.⁵⁸ It encourages a more careful use of comparison, in which savings institutions and market design can be examined without making cultural value dependent on external recognition.

The commercial questions also apply to African Australians producing work within Australia. A well-established legal or financial system does not ensure that a creator holds the necessary rights, has bargaining power or can raise suitable capital. Comparing experiences may reveal differences in contracting, reporting and financing. Different works and people, however, do not form a natural experiment capable of isolating the effects of institutions or heritage.

I have followed these questions with more than professional interest. Over the past few years I have watched, with joy and excitement, African Australian artists tell stories from a perspective that is their own, and find paying audiences for them in Australia and abroad. Kalu Oji’s feature Pasa Faho, produced by Ivy Mutuku and Mimo Mukii, premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2025 and won Best International Feature at the Africa International Film Festival. Tig Terera’s Swift Street was selected for competition at Canneseries. Genesis Owusu’s Struggler was named Album of the Year at the 2023 ARIA Awards, Jerome Farah and Vv Pete were among the 2025 ARIA nominees, and Tigest Girma’s Immortal Dark became a New York Times bestseller. Their work sits alongside the photography and visual art of Daniel Temesgen, Karabo Tlokotsi, Lilah Benetti and Nkosi Ndlovu, and the screenwriting of Betiel Beyin and Leigh Lule. It sits alongside the music of Beckah Amani, Baro Sura, KYE, DEVAURA, Zafty, Voldy, IJALE, CD and Soli, the stage work of Chika Ikogwe, Effie Nkrumah and Tilahun Hailu, the design of Sandra Githinji and the performance of Ras-Samuel.

Their success shows that an African Australian perspective has commercial value as well as cultural distinction, in Australia and in international markets. It is also the reason the questions in this article matter to me. A premiere, an award or a place on a bestseller list shows that audiences and buyers want the work. Whether that work leaves its makers with rights that keep earning, an enterprise able to make the next production and a fair share of what it earns depends on the contracts, finance and ownership examined here. These artists have shown what African Australian work can achieve in the market. An investment market worth building would help them keep more of what they create. The same questions apply to work moving between Australia and Africa.

Two-way activity could take the form of touring, co-production, technical services, licences, investment or jointly owned businesses. These are channels to assess, not evidence of large existing investment flows. Even a single tour can combine fixed performance fees, ticket shares, sponsorship and later rights income, each with a different payer, cost structure and cancellation exposure. Figure 10 shows why those transactions need separate economic treatment before any cross-border benefit is claimed.

The accounting distinctions give the comparison a consistent basis. Production contributes to GDP where the producing unit is resident, through value added rather than gross receipts. GNI adjusts GDP for net primary income with the rest of the world, including dividends, interest and applicable reinvested foreign direct investment earnings. Loan advances and share acquisitions belong to the financial account, while household transfers affect disposable income separately.^24,25 Recording these entries correctly prevents financing, production and later income from being counted as the same gain.

The destination of a bank payment cannot do that work on its own. A foreign-owned enterprise can be resident and contribute local value added. Foreign investors may receive primary income, including attributable reinvested earnings even when no cash is distributed. A visiting performer’s fee needs classification by economic residence and by whether the relationship is employment or an independent service. Cultural identity, nationality, company residence and income entitlement can point to different places.

This leaves room for economic relationships in both directions. African investors may receive returns from Australian production, Australian firms may purchase African services, and resident creative businesses may reach audiences in either market. Skills can circulate without ownership changing. For each activity, the practical enquiry is what the parties supply, earn, own and risk. Its development contribution follows from those outcomes; involvement by an African-heritage person cannot establish an African economic gain by itself.

Testing the case

The development case examined here centres on additional, repeatable capability. Where demand is credible, finance may allow a producer to keep a team working, develop and exploit rights, reach buyers and complete projects that would otherwise not proceed. The terms must leave those undertaking the work a worthwhile share of the resulting value. A higher resale price for existing rights does not by itself establish additional productive capability, even when particular owners benefit.

Testing the three propositions requires more than counting funded titles or announced commitments. Production and enterprise outcomes must be compared with what owners would have done without the financing or sale. Market formation requires records of actual approvals, costs, repayments and investor or guarantor losses across repeated transactions. Value capture requires comparing creator and resident-enterprise returns under alternative rights, distribution and data-governance arrangements, allowing for services received and real buyer demand. The table below sets out the evidence that could change those assessments.

An empirical study could follow willing producers from their financing choice through delivery, cash collection and subsequent projects, including rejected and unsuccessful cases. It would record alternative offers, institutional risks, additional work and the skills or income-producing rights that remained. Its purpose should be to inform a specified later decision, not to produce a favourable repayment statistic.⁵⁹ Comparisons would need to account for pre-financing differences, follow effects on participants and other firms over a common period, and distinguish temporary funding from lasting productive or commercial capacity.

Evidence that could change the argument

These tests allow the findings to differ. A facility might repay its lenders while adding no production; an intervention might enable useful work while imposing losses that its public sponsor must justify. Better distribution could improve creator income even when ownership moves abroad. The three propositions are valuable because they can be challenged by such evidence. They give investment and public decisions a basis for comparison without presuming that every cultural project deserves finance.

Return to the production with which this article began. Income for its creators, work for suppliers, recovered capital, earning rights and an enterprise ready to produce again are connected outcomes, each requiring its own account. African cultural enterprises already create work and build capabilities. A deeper investment market could expand what they can undertake and improve their choices over ownership and distribution, on terms worthwhile to both those supplying capital and those producing the work. Its development contribution would become visible in the continuity between a completed production and the capacity to undertake another, with a worthwhile share of the resulting value retained by creators and resident businesses.

Notes and sources

References identify the evidence supporting retained factual claims and the original texts used for conceptual attributions. Institutional announcements and provider terms are identified as such. Model values are AMARI calculations from expressly hypothetical inputs. The statistical accounts are separate from the illustrative owner valuation.

1. 1Peter Tschmuck, Dennis Collopy and Christian Handke. IP Finance in the Music Industry. WIPO Economic Research Working Paper No. 98. 2026. Methodology and sections on financial investors, rights transactions and financing instruments. Qualitative cases and industry research; not a representative African investor-return series. Accessed 17 October 2026.
2. 2Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australian System of National Accounts: Concepts, Sources and Methods, edition 8. 2026. Chapter 10, gross fixed capital formation: entertainment, literary and artistic originals. National-accounts treatment is narrower than the article’s analytical concept of productive capability. Accessed 17 October 2026.
3. 3Ed Catmull. How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. September 2008. Harvard Business Review; sections on peer culture, communication and post-mortems. Practitioner account of organisational practices; not a comparative causal study of African production. Accessed 17 October 2026.
4. 4Edgar H. Schein. Organizational Culture and Leadership, 4th edition. 2010. Wiley publisher excerpt, chapter 1, “The Concept of Organizational Culture”. Supports the organisational distinction, not a cultural-sector performance claim. Accessed 17 October 2026.
5. 5UNESCO. The African Film Industry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth. 2021. Executive summary and strategic recommendations. A mapping of enabling conditions, not a causal estimate of the return to additional finance. Accessed 17 October 2026.
6. 6CISAC. Global Collections Report 2025. 2025; 2024 observations. Printed pp. 14–15, regional collections. Amounts in EUR million. Six rounded regional values sum to EUR13,972 million; the report states the global total as approximately EUR13.97 billion. Accessed 17 October 2026.
7. 7CISAC. Global Collections Report 2025: Africa. 2025; 2024 observations. Printed pp. 68–69. Africa: EUR90 million; South Africa: EUR47.5 million and a reported 52.6% share. Rounded published values need not reproduce shares calculated from unrounded data. Accessed 17 October 2026.
8. 8CISAC. Global Collections Report 2025: Methodology. 2025. Printed pp. 82–83. Gross society collections, before relevant deductions; reciprocal receipts are excluded to limit double counting. Coverage, multi-territory licensing and restatements affect interpretation. Accessed 17 October 2026.
9. 9Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Foreign Exchange Rates, G.5A: Annual. 6 January 2025. South Korean won per US dollar annual averages: 1,144.8911 (2021), 1,291.7796 (2022), 1,306.7637 (2023) and 1,363.4381 (2024). Applying each liquidation-year rate to the detailed government contribution and recovery rows in ³⁸ gives approximately US$106.97 million and US$69.62 million. These conversions indicate scale, not cash-flow returns valued at transaction dates. Accessed 17 October 2026.
10. 10IFPI. Global Music Report 2026: Global recorded music revenues grow 6.4% as record companies drive innovation. 18 March 2026. Regional results: Sub-Saharan Africa, 2025. US$120 million, 15.2% growth and South Africa’s 78.1% share concern recorded-music trade revenues, not CISAC society collections. Accessed 17 October 2026.
11. 11SAMRO. Integrated Report 2024: report highlights. 2024 reporting year. Financial highlights and undocumented works. R683.8 million licence revenue; R284.9 million undocumented works balance. The latter is a balance, not a measured annual loss or proof that all funds will remain unpaid. Accessed 17 October 2026.
12. 12Nigerian Copyright Commission. COSON is not approved to operate as a CMO. Undated statement concerning the 2019 approval lapse. Approval and renewal conditions. Used as a dated historical regulatory example, not a comprehensive statement of current Nigerian licensing status. Accessed 17 October 2026.
13. 13CANAL+. 2026 Half-Year Financial Report. July 2026. Business review: MultiChoice/Showmax; discontinuation at the end of April 2026. The closure is an operating-company disclosure, not a count of all African screen buyers. Accessed 17 October 2026.
14. 14Netflix. Netflix Marks 10 Years in South Africa with a Major Content Slate, New Production Partnerships. 8 September 2026. New content and production partnerships. Issuer announcement; does not disclose complete contract prices, ownership terms or producer profitability. Accessed 17 October 2026.
15. 15Sony Music Entertainment. Sony Music France and Sony Music Publishing France Announce the Acquisition of Lusafrica and Africa Nostra. 2 July 2025. Acquired recording and publishing businesses. African repertoire does not establish that the seller or former beneficial owners were African residents. Accessed 17 October 2026.
16. 16Warner Music Group. Warner Music Group completes its acquisition of Africori. 12 February 2025. Full acquisition following earlier investment and majority ownership. No acquisition price or investment return is inferred. Accessed 17 October 2026.
17. 17BuzzFeed, Inc. / 2X Blind Partners Inc. and BondIt LLC. Loan and Security Agreement, Exhibit 10.5. Effective 13 June 2025; filed with the June 2025 Form 10-Q. Sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.7 and 2.8: funding, repayment, charges and reserve. The visible schedule totals US$4.622 million in planned advances and US$5.165 million in scheduled repayments. ACT/365 XIRR is 12.9277% under scheduled dates only; redacted fees, reserve refunds, amendments and actual settlement are excluded. Accessed 17 October 2026.
18. 18HEVA Fund. HEVA × NCBA partnership. Launch described in December 2025; page accessed October 2026. Initial KES20 million facility, concessional 9% rate and up to 80% financing. Published facility terms are not an all-in borrower quote, loan-cohort performance or proof of universal access. Accessed 17 October 2026.
19. 19Nigeria Export-Import Bank. Nigerian Creative and Entertainment Industry Loan Scheme. Current product page accessed October 2026. Eligibility, required documentation and tenor. Terms up to seven years do not establish disbursement, approval rates or realised losses. Accessed 17 October 2026.
20. 20Legion M Entertainment, Inc. Form 1-SA for the six months ended 30 June 2026. 2026. Unaudited financial statements, note 5: My Dead Friend Zoe. US$813,248 paid to investors in 2025; US$444,404 in the collection account at June 2026 is not an investor distribution. The filing records a US$2,892,192 gain from the contractual expiration of investor obligations in 2025 and a US$164,590 future production obligation at June 2026. Stated financing total and listed components differ by US$60,000, so no recovery percentage is calculated. Accessed 17 October 2026.
21. 21WIPO. Understanding Copyright and Related Rights. 2016. Permissions, limitations and exceptions, non-voluntary licences, and enforcement. Unlicensed use is not synonymous with absence of liability. Applicable law and the actual right must be identified. Accessed 17 October 2026.
22. 22Ron Adner. The Wide Lens: frameworks and excerpt. First published 2012; the author’s companion cites the 2013 paperback edition. Chapter 3, adoption-chain risk; figure 3.3, p. 63 in that edition. The application to cultural finance is the author’s analysis. Technical dependencies and participants’ incentives are distinct. Accessed 17 October 2026.
23. 23Cinedigm Corp. Form 10-K for the year ended 31 March 2019. 2019. Digital cinema deployment business and virtual print fees. Filed example of studio payments under distributor and studio contracts supporting cinema conversion; not evidence that the same arrangement suits every cultural market. Accessed 17 October 2026.
24. 24Australian Bureau of Statistics. Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, Australia: Methodology. June 2026 reference period, released 1 September 2026. Residence, current and financial accounts, investment income and reinvested earnings. Accounting follows economic residence and transaction classification, not citizenship, bank-account location or only cash payment. Accessed 17 October 2026.
25. 25Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product: Methodology. June 2026 reference period, released 2 September 2026. GDP, GNI, gross disposable income and related measures. GNI adds net primary income from abroad to GDP; transfers affect disposable income separately. Figures in this article are not an estimate of national accounts. Accessed 17 October 2026.
26. 26Fund for Export Development in Africa. Annual Report 2024. 2024 reporting year. Printed p. 28, section 3.6 and CANEX description. US$150 million is FEDA HoldCo’s film-fund commitment. Operationalisation and disbursement were prospective in that report, not necessarily in October 2026. Accessed 17 October 2026.
27. 27Afreximbank / CANEX Creations Inc. CANEX Creations Inc. invests in feature film Clarissa, acquired for worldwide distribution by NEON. 19 February 2026. Afreximbank issuer press release. Investment announced alongside MBO Capital; amount, investment share and rights allocation are undisclosed. Announcement is not a bank-level cash verification. Accessed 17 October 2026.
28. 28One Street Studios / Afreximbank / FEDA. One Street Studios named co-general partner of the Pan-African Film Fund, aiming to mobilise up to US$1 billion. Issuer-supplied release dated and distributed 9 July 2026. Issuer-distributed announcement. Fundraising ambition and manager appointment are not a completed fund close or disbursement record. Accessed 17 October 2026.
29. 29OECD. InfraCredit: Making infrastructure projects in Nigeria more bankable through credit enhancement. 1 September 2025. Results to December 2024 and mechanism. Reports 24 transactions, more than NGN200 billion mobilised and over 21 domestic institutional investors. Programme results are not a causal comparison or a return series. PDF: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/07/blended-finance-case-studies_2dbe4d82/infracredit-making-infrastructure-projects-in-nigeria-more-bankable-through-credit-enhancement_f9bfb6d2/bdb679c6-en.pdf. Accessed 17 October 2026. PIDG also publishes a rounded lower-bound overview of more than 22 transactions and over US$120 million. Those differently expressed snapshots should not be combined or treated as conflicting precise counts; the OECD observation is dated to December 2024.
30. 30Africa50. Sustainability Report 2025. Published 2026; includes selected June 2026 information. Printed pp. 6 and 8 (PDF pp. 8 and 10). Project Finance: 10.4% average gross IRR and 38.4% capital returned. Project Development: 1.8× multiple. Acceleration Fund: about US$330 million in size by June 2026. These are different vehicles and measures; fund size is not deployment. Accessed 17 October 2026.
31. 31Africa50. Africa50 Infrastructure Acceleration Fund achieves first close, securing US$222.5 million primarily from African institutional investors. 9 January 2024 announcement of the first close on 29 December 2023. First close and investor participation. Commitments, not an investment-performance measure. Accessed 17 October 2026.
32. 32Africa50. Africa50 completes historic US$100 million asset-recycling programme with The Gambia. 15 October 2024. First disbursement announcement. The disclosed first instalment was US$15.5 million. The programme headline is not proof that US$100 million had been paid. Accessed 17 October 2026.
33. 33International Monetary Fund. The Gambia: Country Report No. 24/15. January 2024; staff report completed December 2023. Annex V, printed p. 57 (PDF p. 65). Describes the concession, a 12.5% government share of equity dividends and a competing-route restriction until traffic reaches a sustained profitability level. The executed concession was not independently inspected. Accessed 17 October 2026.
34. 34Macquarie Group. History. Company history, accessed October 2026. 1994 Hills Motorway entry. Company account records A$155 million of publicly listed equity raised for motorway construction. It establishes chronology, not the separate causal effect of savings policy or tax concessions. Accessed 17 October 2026.
35. 35AustralianSuper. Understanding the Superannuation Guarantee. 1 July 2026 update. Historical introduction on 1 July 1992. Used only for chronology, not current contribution rules or investment appetite. Accessed 17 October 2026.
36. 36European Commission. Evaluation on the interim evaluation of the Creative Europe programme 2021–2027 and final evaluation of the Creative Europe Programme 2014–2020. Commission staff working document SWD(2025) 418 final, 17 December 2025; implementation update at 31 December 2024. Printed pp. 59–60 (PDF pp. 63–64), Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility results. 9,458 loans to 7,117 SMEs, EUR1.818 billion of financing. Reported default and interest-rate reductions have definition and attribution limits; no loss-adjusted investor return is inferred. Accessed 17 October 2026.
37. 37IFCIC. Guarantee for European cinema and TV production. Terms accessed October 2026. Coverage and guarantee fee. Production/pre-production 55%; working capital 50%; development 70%. Fee 0.5–0.7% annually of loan amount, with an undrawn reduction. Programme eligibility applies. Accessed 17 October 2026.
38. 38Korean National Assembly Budget Office. 2025 Budget Analysis: committee volume covering Education and Culture, Sports and Tourism (translated description). October 2024. Printed pp. 153–154 (PDF pp. 167–168), fund-liquidation tables. AMARI recalculation of the detailed culture-account rows: KRW135.8 billion contributed; KRW87.039 billion recovered, 64.1%; 11 of 13 below principal. The 2021 summary contribution figure is KRW23 million below the sum of its detailed contribution rows; recovery rows agree. Government only; liquidation window, not origination vintage. Accessed 17 October 2026.
39. 39William F. Sharpe. Capital Asset Prices: A Theory of Market Equilibrium under Conditions of Risk. 1964. Journal of Finance 19(3), pp. 425–442. A conditional model of equilibrium pricing, not proof of the risk characteristics of cultural assets. Accessed 17 October 2026.
40. 40Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French. The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Theory and Evidence. 2004. Journal of Economic Perspectives 18(3), pp. 25–46. Documents the model’s assumptions and empirical limitations; no cultural risk premium is estimated. Accessed 17 October 2026.
41. 41MUSQ. MUSQ Global Music Industry ETF: fund information and performance. 30 September 2026 performance date. NAV performance and fund mandate. Listed-company exposure, not a direct royalty portfolio. Historical NAV performance is distinct from the return on underlying royalty rights. Accessed 17 October 2026.
42. 42Betashares. Global Royalties ETF: fund information. Accessed October 2026. Investment objective, holdings and risk information. Listed royalty-related companies across industries. Company equity differs from ownership of underlying royalty contracts. Accessed 17 October 2026.
43. 43Invest Europe. Investor Reporting Guidelines: Performance measurement and reporting. Online guidelines. Fund and portfolio investment performance. Distinguish gross/net, cash distributions, residual values, multiples and IRR. Accessed 17 October 2026.
44. 44Jukebox Hits Vol. 1 LLC. Annual Report on Form 1-K. Filed 2025. Overview; “No Security Interest”; “Transfer Restrictions”. Royalty Shares are unsecured limited issuer obligations, not ownership in the company, trust or underlying music portfolio. Accessed 17 October 2026.
45. 45US Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov. Updated Investor Bulletin: Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). 23 February 2023. ETF creation, redemption and secondary trading. Trading an existing unit is not a direct payment to a creator; primary capital and liquidity can nevertheless interact. Accessed 17 October 2026.
46. 46Stuart Fraser, for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Access to Finance for Creative Industry Businesses: Appendix 1, econometric analysis. 2011. “Other Creative Content” assessment-gap results, printed p. 70. The category includes publishing, video, film, photography, radio and TV. The 12.5 percentage-point conditional gap does not identify an African lending failure or remove unobserved-risk explanations. Accessed 17 October 2026.
47. 47UK Intellectual Property Office. Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Era: Executive summary. 23 September 2021. Survey findings, paras. 26–29. 2019 median reported music income: GBP51,816 for major-label respondents and GBP12,944 for self-releasing respondents. Selection, scale and other differences prevent causal attribution. Accessed 17 October 2026.
48. 48George Soros. Financial Markets: lecture transcript. 2009. Reflexivity, credit and collateral. Application to cultural-market formation is analytical, not a measured result. Accessed 17 October 2026.
49. 49Maryland Department of Legislative Services. Evaluation of the Film Production Activity Tax Credit Program. December 2025. Printed pp. 12–15; Exhibit 3.1, p. 13. Eight evaluations estimated US$0.03–0.31 of state revenue per dollar of credit. Fiscal recovery is not total economic welfare; methods and jurisdictions differ. Accessed 17 October 2026.
50. 50Patrick Button. Can Tax Incentives Create a Local Film Industry? Evidence from Louisiana and New Mexico. 2021. Journal of Urban Affairs 43(5), pp. 658–684; DOI 10.1080/07352166.2018.1530570. Synthetic-control evidence on two early-adopting US states; do not confuse with the separate 2019 national study. Accessed 17 October 2026.
51. 51Ipsos, Olsberg SPI and London Economics, for HM Revenue & Customs. Creative Industry Tax Reliefs Evaluation. Research Report 684. 17 November 2022. Evaluation and technical appendices. Positive UK production and investment findings use interviews, surveys and economic modelling; not experimental proof of the same outcomes elsewhere. Accessed 17 October 2026.
52. 52London Economics. The Creative Industry Tax Reliefs Evaluation. 2022. Evaluator summary of method and results. 164 surveyed claimants and 63 qualitative interviews; useful positive counterevidence with stated method limits. Accessed 17 October 2026.
53. 53WIPO. Traditional Cultural Expressions. Accessed October 2026. Nature of traditional cultural expressions and protection issues. The article’s consent, representation and benefit-sharing principles are normative, not a statement of uniform national law. Accessed 17 October 2026.
54. 54Spotify for Artists. Royalties Guide. Spotify platform explanation of streamshare, recording and publishing royalties, licensing intermediaries and the absence of a fixed per-stream royalty. Official provider account, not independent African net-income data. https://artists.spotify.com/en/royalties-guide (accessed 17 October 2026).
55. 55Joyce Moullakis and Chris Wright. The Millionaires’ Factory: The inside story of how Macquarie Bank became a global giant. Allen & Unwin, 2023, chapter 4. Participant-based history of the early infrastructure investment market, including tax concessions and fee structures. Used as an attributed historical account, not a causal estimate of infrastructure’s public benefit.
56. 56Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters. Game of Mates: How Favours Bleed the Nation. 2017, chapters 3 and 14. Critique of public-private partnership guarantees, discretionary protections and risks to public investors; the Airport Link superannuation-loss account appears in chapter 3. The authors’ account and calculations are not adopted as an independently audited Australian infrastructure-sector average.
57. 57Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary. Platform Revolution. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, chapters 4 and 6. Re-intermediation, transaction costs, platforms’ creation of value and division of surplus. This is a conceptual application, not an estimate of African platform margins.
58. 58Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien. The Luxury Strategy. Kogan Page, 2012 edition, chapter 5, discussion of India. Warning about geocentric readings of other markets. Analogy only; no evidence about African cultural investment.
59. 59Robert T. Clemen and Terence Reilly. Making Hard Decisions with DecisionTools. Third edition, Cengage Learning, published 2013, copyright 2014, chapter 12, especially the discussion of expected value of information. Applied to the design of an empirical finance pilot; it does not demonstrate pilot value absent a defined decision and costs.

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