Nigeria’s Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises programme is targeting the shortage of capital available to creative businesses as the Federal Government seeks to build a financing system around the country’s growing creative economy.

Speaking at the QEDNG Creative Powerhouse Summit 2.0 in Lagos on Tuesday, National Coordinator of iDICE, Ife Adebayo, said Nigeria had abundant creative talent but lacked the capital, skills, infrastructure and systems needed to turn that talent into sustainable businesses.

The iDICE Programme is an FG initiative implemented by the Bank of Industry to support the technology and creative sectors through skills development, enterprise support and access to finance.

Adebayo said the programme was designed to give creators a path from skills development to enterprise and financing, rather than treating government support as a one-off intervention.

The financing structure includes the iDICE Fund of Funds, which has a minimum target capitalisation of $`170.6 million.

The BOI appointed Kuramo Capital Management in July to manage the fund, with the FG providing an $85.3m anchor commitment through iDICE, while Kuramo was mandated to raise matching private capital.

The fund is expected to invest through venture-capital and micro-venture-capital funds focused on technology and creative businesses, rather than providing all the funding directly to individual companies.

Adebayo said iDICE was also in the final stages of onboarding a fund manager that would invest directly in creative-sector businesses.

The programme has a debt component as well. BOI has rolled out an iDICE Debt Fund and an Islamic Development Bank Murabaha Debt Fund, with a combined $110m earmarked for technology and creative-sector startups, according to the bank.

Adebayo said the financing options were intended to give creators a broader route to capital, including equity and debt.

“We have raw talent in abundance and trained, employable talent in shortage,” he said, identifying skills, capital and structure as major gaps in the sector.

He also said the programme was working with government stakeholders on an intellectual-property securitisation framework that could allow creative intellectual property to be assigned greater financial value.

“Genius, in Nigeria, has always been forced to freelance,” Adebayo said.

The push comes as Nigeria’s creative industries, including film, music, fashion and animation, attract growing international attention but continue to face challenges in accessing institutional finance, and protecting and commercialising intellectual property.

Adebayo said the country needed to stop treating creativity mainly as entertainment and build the financial and institutional infrastructure required to develop creative businesses.

He cited South Korea as an example of a country that turned cultural products into global exports through investment, infrastructure and deliberate policy. He, however, said Nigeria has similar cultural resources but has yet to build the structures needed to capture their full economic value.

The iDICE programme is also working on the skills side of the industry, as the BOI says it is establishing and revamping digital and creative hubs in 66 institutions, including universities and polytechnics, to strengthen the pipeline of talent into employment and enterprise.

The programme is co-financed by the FG, African Development Bank, Agence Française de Développement and Islamic Development Bank, with the BOI serving as the implementing agency.

According to Adebayo, the objective is to move Nigerian creators from informal and under-financed activities into businesses capable of attracting investment and generating greater economic value.

“If we financed them like an industry instead of admiring them like a hobby,” he said, Nigerian creators could build businesses capable of competing at a much larger scale.