Digital content makers from across Africa gathered on Thursday at the African Creators Summit, calling for content creation to be recognized as full-time work rather than a side hustle.<\/p>\n
Under the 2026 theme, \u201cBuilding a Sustainable Ecosystem: Where Africa Trades Its SWAG,\u201d more than 2,500 digital creators from 15 countries came together to examine how Africa can turn its cultural capital into income.<\/p>\n
Participants focused on monetizing what they described as \u201cSWAG,\u201d an acronym for Sound, Walk, Attire, and Grubs, which they said form the cultural pillars behind the continent\u2019s growing global influence.<\/p>\n
Speakers said the fast-growing creator economy now functions like a full business ecosystem, employing production crews and helping many creators pay bills and build long-term careers.<\/p>\n
“I feel like it’s not something that you can just say, let me be doing this and also be doing content creation also. It’s not possible” said Ibikunle \u2018Frosh\u2019 Akorede, a content creator. “You have to put your whole mind, effort, you have to put everything into content creating. And if you look at it, anything that pays can be called a job.”<\/p>\n
Participants noted that while managing content across multiple platforms requires full commitment, some argue that the workload makes it difficult to combine creation with traditional 9-to-5 jobs.<\/p>\n
David Adeleke, a media and intelligence executive, believes that the ecosystem is changing very fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe within the next few years, you’re going to see more people who are doing this thing full-time as their main job. They will quit their 9 to 5s and focus on this because, again, this is like building a small business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Discussions at the summit also focused on sustainability within the industry, with speakers highlighting different levels of creators and the challenges of moving into top-earning brackets.<\/p>\n
The African creator economy has grown rapidly in recent years, driven by social media, video streaming, and increased mobile phone use across the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Digital content makers from across Africa gathered on Thursday at the African Creators Summit, calling for content creation to be recognized as full-time work rather than a side hustle. Under the 2026 theme, \u201cBuilding a Sustainable Ecosystem: Where Africa Trades Its SWAG,\u201d more than 2,500 digital creators from 15 countries came together to examine how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":63750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[1838,770,4795,7268,1954],"class_list":["post-63751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-instagram","tag-nigeria","tag-social-network","tag-the-world-of-work","tag-youtube"],"yoast_head":"\n