Memo

The Creative Economy Is a Very Expensive Vibe.

March 19, 2026 · Read on Substack

The Creative Economy feels like standing in a beautifully decorated waiting room for a train that isn’t coming…

The air is thick with ambition. Everyone is introducing themselves as a “CEO.” Everyone is pitching the next disruption. Everyone is draped in the aesthetic of success. And a truth has been sitting in my gut long enough that I need to say it out loud, because nobody else seems willing to kill the vibe. We gather in rooms buzzing with “creativity,” but look closer…

We are mistaking the performance of business for the business of business.

I know, because I did it too…we are lying to ourselves, and we are suffering from a collective hallucination.

I look at the Nigerian creative landscape and I don’t see an industry. I see a playground. A chaotic, unregulated, high-energy market where everyone wants to be the star but nobody wants to build the stage that will hold all the stars. And because nobody is building the stage, we are living in a permanent state of “potential” that never converts into power.

We celebrate the geniuses, the creators, the artists. But who is building the infrastructure? We have convinced ourselves that genius is enough. But genius without infrastructure is just fireworks…bright for a moment, and then gone, leaving nothing but smoke and memory. And there are a lot of people who came and left just like this in the industry.

Billions of Naira exchange hands in the shadows of this industry, yet almost none of it is captured, structured, or compounded into generational wealth. And nobody is panicking about the fact that we are building skyscrapers on sand. It is a quiet tragedy that is unfolding.

Let’s look at the numbers, because the numbers don’t care about your aesthetics.

The National Bureau of Statistics tells us the creative sector is the second-largest employer of labour in Nigeria, projected to reach $100 billion by 2030. That sounds like winning., right? But dig deeper. If this industry is worth billions, why are 90% of its participants one bad month away from bankruptcy? Why do we have musicians earning millions in streaming royalties who cannot access a corporate mortgage because they don’t have three years of audited tax returns? Where is the equity?

If you look at the trajectory of the global creative economy, Nigeria feels consistently, painfully, two years behind. We are operating behind the rest of the world…perpetually and eagerly accepting the backend of global culture. We have become the dumping ground for the exhausted alcohol brands. The discarded trend cycles. Their fashion cycles. The habits the West has already chewed up and spit out. We even accept their leftover culture, repackaged and handed to us as “the new rave.” We are so desperate to look like we are winning that we accept the scraps of global culture, package it, and call it innovation**.**

We are serving leftovers as a feast. And we applaud, because we have lost our conviction.

Here is the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to say at these industry events:

We have 500 CEOs for every 1 Institution. And that ratio is the reason we are poor.

Global capital is not looking for your genius. It is looking for your governance.

They are not looking for your viral video, your energy, your creative potential. They are looking for the boring, unsexy, difficult work that we refuse to do.

We are building personal brands that die when we die, instead of corporate structures that feed our children’s children. We are obsessed with the front end; the logo, the launch party, the press releases, while the operational infrastructure backend that actually holds weight is rotting or nonexistent.

Look at the creative agencies, the fashion houses, the production companies from the 90s. Where are they? Most are graveyards. Why? It certainly wasn’t because the talent ran out, but because there was no transfer of structure. No backend. No institution.

This is the pattern we keep repeating, and we keep being surprised by the result.

Where are the audit records? Where is the operational pedigree? Where is the HR structure that survives the founder? Can you show me a Valuation Report of your Intellectual Property that isn’t based on “potential” but on actual, historical data? Can you show three years of clean books stamped by a chartered accountant? Can you show Tax Clearance Certificates? Can you show me a Board of Directors?…and no, I don’t mean your manager, your brother, and your best friend from university. I mean independent, seasoned directors who have the legal authority to fire you if you act reckless. Do you have recorded history of compliance? Where is the succession plan?Where are your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)?

We are trying to pour the wine of global investment into the wineskin of hustle culture, and then we wonder why it spills.

The world is watching Africa right now. The digital economy is opening. Creative capital is the oil of this century. But if we do not build the vessels to hold this oil, it will spill…and it will be extracted by foreign entities that do have the structure, while we end up as employees in our own market. They will end up hiring the pioneers in this continent into a proper structured organization.

We need to stop patting ourselves on the back for being “Creative.” Everyone is creative! My grandmother is creative! Creativity is the baseline; it is the entry fee, not the differentiator. The differentiator is Order. The differentiator is Structure. The differentiator is the ability to take that raw, chaotic, beautiful genius you have and pour it into a rigid, boring, unsexy container called an “Institution” so that it can actually travel. You cannot export chaos. You can only export finished products, and right now, our “industry” is too disorganized to be exported at scale.

A people who do not value their own essence will always be impressed by someone else’s excess. If you want to know the mindset of a generation, look at what they let lead. We have let the “Shiny Object” lead, and in doing so, we have sacrificed our heritage. We have let the dopamine hit of social media validation replace the deep, slow work of legacy building

If everyone is willing to accept any deal, hire any team, and build any structure, then nobody is building for the next generation. We are constructing sandcastles that dissolve with the first wave of real economic pressure. We have lost the people who are willing to stand ten toes down on their values and say, “No, I will not take that deal because it dilutes the vision.” Instead, we have a generation of mercenaries who will sign anything for a check because they have no long-term strategy for dominion.

We scream for funding. We look at the Ministries and ask, “Where is the money?” We look at global investors and ask, “Why not us?” But let me speak the uncomfortable truth: have you looked at your “Company”? I mean, really looked at it? Do you think BlackRock, or Vanguard, or even serious local Venture Capital is looking to deploy millions of dollars into an entity that is essentially just a chaotic Instagram page with a bank account?

Do you truly believe the global capital flowing into Africa is looking for unregistered entities with no audit trails, no structured HR, and zero operational pedigree? Do you think they are looking to deploy money into the African Digital Economy on “Vibes”?

Where are the 500 Creative Entities in Nigeria that operate with the structural integrity of a Fortune 500 company? Show me…because we are focused on the immediate gratification while ignoring the bedrock of corporate structure. Wake Up!! This is the African curse. We build empires that die with us. We have “Big Men” and “Big Madams”, but we have no “Big Institutions.”

There is a phenomenal amount of work to be done. You cannot build a Fortune 500 equivalent on an “Inshallah” strategy. Investors seek heritage, pedigree, structural authority and global readiness. They seek businesses built to pass the test of time.

An Institution is built on the unglamorous bedrock of systems, laws, and process. It requires you to submit your ego to a structure. To hire people smarter than you. To spend money on lawyers, accountants, analysts and strategists before you spend money on videographers. It requires the humility to say: my talent is God-given, but my structure is man-made…and God will not do for me what He has given me the brain to build for myself.

We cannot afford to raise another generation of gig workers disguised as moguls.

The time for playing “shop” is over because the world is watching, and right now, they are laughing…they see a goldmine run by people who are content to sell the gold for pennies just to buy shiny mirrors.

We must be better. We must be deeper. We must be more boring, more structured, and more dangerous.

Because if we don’t build the institution, we will just be the entertainment for the people who actually own the world.

The masquerade is over. Take off the mask. And when you do, I’ll show you how to build what actually lasts.

Get the next memo first.