Africa’s creator economy is constrained not by a lack of talent or content, but by a weak and insufficient middle class that lacks the disposable income to pay for digital content, subscriptions, and creative products, forcing creators to seek revenue from diasporas or global markets instead of domestic audiences, writes Layo.

AFRICA’s creator economy isn’t short on talent, ambition, or cultural influence. Everywhere you look, creativity is spilling over. Lagos is printing trends, Nairobi is birthing digital studios, Accra is shaping global sound, Johannesburg is turning creators into micro-enterprises. The work is there, the hunger is there, the momentum is undeniable.

So why does it still feel like something isn’t clicking?

Why does every creator debate always circle back to the same roadblocks, low brand budgets, inconsistent income, weak platforms, poor IP enforcement, and limited pathways to scale?

Here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud, yet every industry operator knows at gut level.

Africa doesn’t have a creator economy problem, it has a middle-class problem. Until that shifts, everything else is decoration.

The Creator Economy Only Thrives When the Middle Class Can Pay for It

Globally, creator economies explode when people have disposable income.
They subscribe to newsletters, support artists on Patreon, buy digital products, pay for workshops, purchase merch, attend events, and sponsor creators directly.

In the US, over half of adults now pay creators directly through subscriptions or digital purchases. In South Korea and parts of Europe, digital content spending is considered a standard household expense.

But across Africa, that structure barely exists.

Africans love creativity, but love doesn’t pay creators. Consumption power does.

And consumption power doesn’t grow without a strong, confident middle class.

Africa’s Middle Class Isn’t Growing Fast Enough

Across the continent, the middle class is thinner than statistics imply. The African Development Bank once projected around 350 million Africans in the “middle class,” but a large portion of that group earns between $2 and $5 a day, which isn’t sustainable. Many of the people counted as “middle class” sit one emergency away from poverty.

Inflation keeps stripping purchasing power. In some African markets, food inflation has stayed above 20 percent. Currency depreciation continues to weaken earnings. Youth unemployment makes upward mobility painfully slow.

And in Nigeria specifically, nearly half of citizens earn less than N50,000 a month, which is roughly $31.25. That amount can’t feed a family of two for a week, let alone support discretionary spending on courses, ebooks, subscriptions, or paid communities.

So when a creator offers a paid class or launches a digital product or subscription, the audience is interested, but the spending appetite doesn’t match the enthusiasm.

Creators aren’t failing.
The economic ladder is.

Brand Budgets Are Not the Problem, They’re a Symptom

When agencies reduce influencer spend, when brands prefer micro-creators, when campaign cycles shrink, everyone blames the brands.

But brands reflect the same structural issue. If their target customers have limited disposable income, budgets follow that reality.

Across many African markets, household consumption per capita has either stagnated or declined in real terms. When people can’t buy, brands can’t justify big marketing budgets.

So creators fight over the few high-value deals available, and the market feels overcrowded even though the continent has one of the world’s youngest populations.

Brands aren’t being stingy.
They’re being realistic in an economy where the average customer is struggling to stay afloat.

The Real Creator Economy Crisis Is Domestic Demand

Creators who make the most money in Africa usually do one of three things:

Sell to diaspora
Sell to global markets
Sell services to businesses instead of fans

Why?
Because domestic monetization is a dead end when the middle class is small and stretched thin.

This isn’t just an influencer issue. It affects filmmakers, designers, writers, musicians, storytellers, podcasters, SaaS builders, and digital educators.

You can build audience in Africa.
You can build influence.
But revenue?
That often has to come from elsewhere.

Not because Africans don’t value creativity, but because too many can’t afford to pay for it.

A Strong Middle Class Changes Everything

If Africa had a larger, financially confident middle class, you wouldn’t need huge brand deals to survive. You’d have:

• Paid newsletters that scale
• A thriving digital product ecosystem
• Large event industries
• High consumption creative communities
• Independent creators hiring teams
• Bigger domestic ad markets
• More profitable platforms
• Stronger licensing revenue
• A market for niche creative experiences
• Sustainable creative employment

The future of Africa’s creator economy will be determined not by how many creators emerge, but by how many consumers grow into stable spenders.

The Creator Economy Needs Economic Reform to Grow
If you ask policymakers how to support the creative sector, they list:

• training
• hubs
• funding
• regulations
• IP reform
• market access

All important.
None sufficient.

You can’t legislate creativity into a thriving economy if the population can’t afford to consume.

The conversation must widen. The creative sector needs to advocate for:

• inflation control
• youth employment
• SME growth
• digital infrastructure
• stable currency environments
• consumer credit systems
• stronger tax incentives for creative businesses

The future of creators depends on the economic health of their audience.

The Deeper Truth: Africa’s Creative Promise Is Outpacing Its Consumer Base

The continent is culturally rich and economically stretched.
Fast moving and slow growing.
Overflowing with talent and underpowered in consumption.

That gap is the real challenge.

Creators aren’t the problem.
Platforms aren’t the problem.
Brands aren’t the problem.

The market is the problem.

And until Africa builds a middle class big enough and confident enough to support the creative industries, creators will continue to rely on foreign revenue, diaspora markets, and brand deals that fluctuate with economic cycles.

So What Does This Mean for the Future?

Africa is not short on brilliance.
But brilliance without buyers is charity.
And creators don’t want charity, they want sustainability.

The continent’s creative superpower is undeniable.
Its cultural footprint is spreading fast.
But if Africa wants a robust creator economy, it must do more than celebrate talent, it must grow the consumers who can pay for it.

The creator economy is not broken.
It’s just sitting on top of a fragile economic pyramid.

Fix the base, and the entire structure rises.

And when it rises, the world won’t just enjoy African creativity, it will invest in it, buy from it, and rely on it.

That’s the future worth building.

The author, Layo, describes herself as “a curious mind exploring the crossroads of creativity and insight.”

Ghana stands out in west Africa as a nation that has not experienced terrorist attacks, even though it’s geographically close to countries that have. In Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria, extremist groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) have wreaked havoc.

This resilience is not accidental. It is the result of deliberate counter-terrorism strategies employed by Ghana’s security institutions.

Ghana’s counter-terrorism framework was set out in 2020. It has four pillars: prevent, pre-empt, protect, and respond. The idea is to coordinate multiple agencies, including the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Armed Forces and the National Intelligence Bureau.

These pillars guide strategies to address both immediate threats and underlying vulnerabilities. Poverty, religious radicalism and porous borders are common drivers of terrorism in west Africa.

I am an international security and global governance researcher. My co-author is a government and international studies scholar.

Four years ago we wrote a paper examining Ghana’s resilience against terrorist attacks. Our findings are still relevant given the increasing activities of terror groups in the west African region.

We wanted to identify what works as a potential model for other countries.

Using a qualitative methodology, we interviewed stakeholders — including police officers, members of the armed forces, Muslim community leaders, and immigration officials. We also analysed the national framework for preventing and countering violent extremism and terrorism.

Our findings showed that Ghana’s success is traceable to an approach that integrates community engagement with advanced border technology, inter-agency training, media collaboration and intelligence operations. And it addresses both immediate and underlying threats.

We argue that Ghana’s ability to balance prevention with security offers solutions for stability in a geopolitically volatile region.

Community engagement

One of the standout strategies is community engagement. This serves multiple purposes, from guiding people away from extremism to gathering intelligence.

The Ghana Police Service, for instance, engages Muslim-dominated communities, known as “Zongos”, to counter radical Islamic ideologies that could be exploited by terrorist groups.

By collaborating with local religious leaders, police make communities aware of the dangers of radicalisation. They foster trust and encourage residents to report suspicious activities. This approach also works in tackling illegal arms circulation.

Ghana has an estimated 2.3 million small arms in circulation – 1.1 million of them illegally possessed. The availability of so many weapons fuels terrorist activities across west Africa.

Community based de-radicalisation aligns with global best practices. In Norway, for instance, it was used to disengage youth from extremist groups.

Technology at borders

Ghana’s border control management is another part of its counter-terrorism strategy. Ghana Immigration Service uses advanced security software and integrated systems like the “Immigration 360” system, designed to fully automate passenger processing and data management.

The system manages records of fingerprints and other data to improve reporting and intelligence sharing between Ghana Immigration and other security agencies.

The technology makes it possible to quickly identity individuals on terrorist watchlists and detects concealed goods. This helps prevent illegal cross-border movements.

There are gaps in Ghana’s defences, however. The influx of migrants fleeing extremist violence in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2024 highlights the urgency of scaling up investments in the technology.

Training for preparedness

Ghana combats new and varying forms of terrorism by uncovering trends and training personnel to deal with them.

A notable example was the six-day joint training in 2022 involving the Ghana Immigration Service, Police Service, Customs, Economic and Organised Crime Office, and the National Intelligence Bureau.

The country also works with regional neighbours like Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin, and partners such as the United States, through initiatives like “Operation Epic Guardian”.

Media as a strategic partner

Terrorists rely on media to amplify fear and publicise their causes. Ghana’s security agencies counter this tactic by actively engaging media houses to report accurately.

The Ghana Armed Forces, for instance, works with media to debunk false reports, which can cause public panic and inadvertently aid terrorists.

The Ghana Police Service emphasises regular dialogue with media to ensure sensitive information is verified before publication, reducing the risk of tipping off suspects. However, media competition for viewers poses a challenge.

Surveillance and intelligence gathering

Surveillance and intelligence gathering is critical. Plainclothes armed forces and immigration personnel blend into communities to monitor potential threats. The approach has worked but is constrained by resources.

It can also risk human rights violations, such as wrongful profiling, and is less effective against multiple targets compared to technological solutions like facial recognition or CCTV.

Challenges and regional implications

Despite its successes, Ghana’s counter-terrorism framework faces challenges that could undermine its long-term efficacy:

• logistical and financial constraints
• the influx of migrants fleeing regional violence
• a lack of harmonised security cultures within the regional body, Ecowas.

In all, Ghana’s strategies offer lessons for west Africa, where terrorism is a growing threat.

Its community engagement model could be followed in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to counter radicalisation and arms proliferation, provided it avoids religious stereotyping.

Article by Paa Kwesi Wolseley Prah, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dublin City University; and Timothy Chanimbe, PhD Candidate, Hong Kong Baptist University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ghana has, for many years, been confronting the uncomfortable reality of how its school grooming policies clash with cultural identity.

A weeks ago, the viral video of a crying first-year student at Yaa Asantewaa Girls’ Senior High School, forced to cut her long hair before she could be admitted, ignited a nationwide conversation on autonomy, dignity, and the colonial hangovers embedded in the education system.

As public outrage intensifies, many Ghanaians are pointing to a global model worth studying closely: the CROWN Act, a sweeping U.S. civil rights law now adopted by 28 states, banning hair discrimination in workplaces and schools. While American and Ghanaian contexts differ, the underlying cultural struggle is identical — the policing of Black hair, especially on Black girls, through outdated, Eurocentric standards of “neatness.”

Here’s what Ghana can take away from the CROWN Act movement — and what meaningful reform could look like.

What Ghana Can Learn From the CROWN Act

1. Hair Is Not “Just Hair” — It’s Identity

The CROWN Act legally recognizes that hair texture and protective hairstyles such as locs, braids, twists, and afros are expressions of racial and cultural identity.

Ghana’s short-hair rules for girls — a policy designed during colonial administration — still treat African hair as something to be managed, tamed, or minimized. The U.S. experience shows that when governments acknowledge the cultural and psychological significance of natural hair, discrimination becomes easier to identify and eliminate.

2. Respect for Students Begins With Respect for Their Bodies

The Pennsylvania legislation stresses dignity in personal appearance as a civil right.
Ghana’s approach — forcing girls to shave their heads, sometimes in tears — sends the opposite message: compliance over consent.

The viral YAGSHS incident struck a nerve because many Ghanaians recognized the humiliation in that 30-second clip.

The CROWN Act reminds policymakers that rules meant to “discipline” should never strip children of bodily autonomy.

3. “Neatness” Standards Can Be Modernized Without Sacrificing Discipline

U.S. districts that have adopted CROWN Act protections haven’t descended into chaos. Schools still enforce hygiene and safety policies — they just can’t discriminate against natural hairstyles.

Ghana’s argument that long natural hair compromises “uniformity” or boarding supervision has been challenged by scholars like Emmanuel Antwi and Ginn Bonsu Assibey. Their research shows students can maintain locs, braids, or afros responsibly — if schools teach proper care rather than impose outdated punitive rules.

4. Outlawing Hair Discrimination Protects Mental Health

American advocates pushed the CROWN Act partly because children were being suspended, humiliated, or made to feel unfit for their own classrooms.

The psychological damage visible in the YAGSHS video — the sobbing, the pain — mirrors the emotional toll chronicled by U.S. researchers.

Protective legislation forces institutions to reckon with the long-term harm caused by seemingly “simple” grooming policies.

5. The Law Can Be A Tool for Cultural Restoration

The CROWN Act reframes the conversation: Black hair is not a deviation from norms — it is a norm.

Ghana, a Black African nation, still enforces appearance rules invented during colonial schooling systems. Fixing this is not just policy reform; it is cultural reclamation.

6. Parents and Students Deserve a Say in Grooming Rules

In the U.S., the CROWN Act passed because families, teachers, business leaders, and activists demanded it.

Ghana’s hair rules have persisted largely because students — minors with limited power — bear the consequences while most adults defend tradition. A modern approach would involve listening directly to girls, parents, and natural-hair experts.

7. Change Does Not Have to Be Radical — Just Respectful

The CROWN Act doesn’t force anyone to wear locs or braids. It simply protects the choice.
Ghana could adopt a similar principle:

• allow natural and Afro-centric hairstyles
• maintain reasonable hygiene rules
• remove discriminatory practices
  This would honor Ghanaian identity while keeping school environments orderly.

8. The Law Can Prevent Future Trauma

In the U.S., legislation has become a safety net.

A child cannot be forced to shave her locs. She cannot be suspended for her braids. The YAGSHS incident has shown Ghana what happens without such safeguards.

Creating a legal framework — even if not identical to the CROWN Act — could prevent future abuses of authority.

A Moment for Ghana to Rethink

Ghana has made strides before — the 2021 Achimota school ruling was a breakthrough. But the recurring nature of these controversies suggests the country is still negotiating the boundaries between culture, control, and education.

The viral haircut video of the visibly upset YAGSHS student has become more than a moment of outrage. It is a cultural mirror. And it raises a powerful question:

Why should the descendants of a people who fought for independence still be governed by colonial grooming rules?

The CROWN Act offers a blueprint — not a copy-paste solution, but a framework rooted in dignity, identity, and respect. Ghana has an opportunity to craft its own version, grounded in Afro-centric values and local realities.

The debate is no longer about hair. It is about the freedom to be whole, even in a school uniform.