Why the Creative Fund Exists and What Nigerian Creatives Stand to Gain

Nigeria's creative economy employs approximately 4.2 million people and contributes around $3 billion to the country’s GDP, making it the second-largest employer in the country after agriculture.

Nollywood alone accounts for over one million jobs, and both Afrobeats and Nigerian fashion have built genuine audiences across the world. Nigeria’s creative economy was projected to generate an additional 2.7 million jobs between 2025 to 2030, potentially bringing total employment in the creative economy to over 6.9 million.

And yet, for all that momentum, the sector keeps running into problems such as a shortage of local technical capacity that causes high-value production work to be outsourced to other countries, which ultimately drains both money and local talent out of the country.

The Gap is Structural

The problem in Nigeria's creative sector has never been about a lack of ideas or talents, as it is clear that Nigerian creatives are full of ideas. The real problem has always been structural.

The Nigerian Creative Ecosystem Growth and Innovation Initiative (NCEGII), a 2024 research program conducted by Tech4Dev on the state of Nigeria's creative innovation ecosystem found that over 80% of creative practitioners are self-taught, and fewer than 10% access formal financing. Beyond the numbers, the research also found that financial systems barely serve the needs of creative enterprises, especially as banks are usually unwilling to lend against intangible assets like intellectual property (IP).

What this means is that post-production infrastructure remains underdeveloped, specialized technical roles also remain understaffed, and there are little to no pathways to complete high-quality projects without sending technical work abroad. And when that outsourcing happens, the local industry loses value at the exact moment it should be retaining it.

This, in turn, creates a second problem. Mid-career creatives, people who are past entry-level but not yet in senior roles, get locked out of the kind of hands-on project experience that would actually move their careers forward. The fund targets both issues at the same time.

What is the Creative Fund?

Borne out of the need to fund local talent and reduce outsourcing, the UK-Nigeria Tech Hub Creative Fund is a direct response to the structural challenge plaguing the Nigerian creative industry.

An initiative of the UK Nigeria Tech Hub, funded by the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) under its Digital Access Programme (DAP), the Creative fund is a project designed to fund the technical production needs of creative projects in film, fashion, and music, while building the skills of local talents and mid-career professionals working within these industries.

Rather than running standalone training programs and sticking to funding alone, the Creative Fund will ensure capacity-building is embedded directly into active projects. The idea is to fund the technical work a project already needs and then use that same project as a structured learning environment for mid-career professionals.

This kind of support can take several forms depending on what a project needs, which includes:

• Subsidizing the cost of technical specialists already working on a project
• Funding the creation of digital tools and production resources
• Adding mid-career creatives to production teams in structured learning roles
• Organizing events that connect creative project owners with technical experts

What Funded Projects Are Expected to Give Back

For any project, receiving funding comes with a clear expectation. Projects are required to contribute to the broader Nigerian creative ecosystem in at least one concrete way. This could mean:

• Hosting a knowledge-sharing session
• Providing mentorship or apprenticeship placements
• Collaborating with community initiatives
• Offering pro-bono technical support to smaller projects

The goal of this give-back model is to ensure that the benefits of each funded project extend beyond that single project, with the aim of circulating knowledge and creating opportunities for others in the industry.

What the Fund Is Targeting

Across the program period, the Creative Fund wants to achieve all of these:

• High-potential creative projects in film, fashion, and music successfully delivered with critical technical needs supported
• Hands-on learning opportunities created through embedded mentorship, apprenticeships, and technical placements
• Projects adopting responsible AI or innovative practices in their production process or cycle

What Nigeria's Creative Industry Stands to Gain

The long-term goal for this Creative Fund is that if technical expertise, post-production capability, and innovation stay local, the Nigerian creative sector grows on its own terms. More value is retained within the country’s supply chains; more skilled professionals build sustainable careers in each of these industries, and the creative sector becomes less dependent on external resources to deliver competitive work.

For mid-career creatives specifically, and particularly for women and creatives outside Lagos who the same research identified as having the least access to structured opportunities in the industry, the fund creates a structured pathway to gain real project experience, build industry connections, and develop the technical skills that employers and production teams actually need. This is something that has been largely missing in Nigeria’s creative industry.

If you work in film, fashion, or music and are looking for this kind of opportunity, the Creative Fund offers a direct entry point to helping you bring your creative project to life. Applications are open here.