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Nigerian singer Tems wants to provide a route for African women to build careers in the global music industry through a professional development program she has launched, the Afrobeats star told Semafor.
The 30-year-old, whose real name is Temilade Openiyi, announced in August that applications were open for the Leading Vibe Initiative, a training program made up of workshops, resources, and mentorship for women aged 18 to 35 who want to pursue a career in the music industry.
Twenty women will be selected to take part in training in each stop on the singer’s African tour, which started in Lagos in July, arrived in Nairobi this week, and will head to Accra in the next few months. Participants will receive support with their projects — such as music mixing, legal representation, and funding for advertising — after the tour dates as part of the program, which is aimed at “artists, singers, and songwriters.”
“I envision LVI as a platform that builds a pipeline of women who are not just artists on stage, but also producers, songwriters, music executives, entertainment lawyers, and decision makers leading across the industry,” Tems said during an interview in Nairobi, where she performed this week. “It’s about building infrastructure and networks that help women thrive in the music industry and creative economy.”
The Grammy Award-winning Afrobeats singer said her career had taught her the importance of being “intentional about the business side” of the music industry. “From ownership of my masters, to building structures that support long-term growth, that mindset has pushed me to think about creating ecosystems, not just for myself but for others,” she said.
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Tems has partnered with French drinks company Hennessy for the training initiative, as well as Native Instruments, a German producer of software and hardware for computer-based music production.
In another venture beyond her singing career, Tems announced in February that she had bought a stake in San Diego FC, a professional football club that this year entered the Major League Soccer league in the US.
The View From Washington
In a report published in May, Landry Signé, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington DC, argued that rising mobile phone use and internet connectivity across Africa has transformed the way people interact with cultural and creative industries, particularly in the sub-sector of entertainment and music. He said Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa stand out on the continent as having “outsized E&M sectors, which are projected to grow at significantly faster rates than the rest of the world.”
He said entertainment and music revenues in Nigeria, home of the Afrobeats genre in which Tems is among the biggest stars, are projected to grow from $6.6 billion in 2022 to $12.9 billion in 2027. “From Nigeria to Senegal to South Africa, the growth of E&M sectors is proof of Africa’s potential to expand and strengthen existing markets to mutually benefit private business and society,” wrote Signé. He added that formalizing cultural and creative industries could “bring tremendous growth to sub-Saharan African economies” because they are currently concentrated in the informal economy.
Notable
- Banks and private investors should recalibrate their perceptions of risk to better support creative industries, wrote Tochi Louis, founder of a market intelligence platform, in TechCabal.
Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram