I advise development finance institutions, funds, banks and governments on investing in the sector, building investment strategies, designing financial vehicles and instruments, and running technical assistance programs. That work has included Proparco's CREA Fund facility, IFC's creative industries strategy, Afreximbank's $1 billion film finance facility, and the program design behind iDICE in Nigeria. I wrote UNESCO's report on the African film and television industry, still the reference document for the sector.

I came to the finance question from the other side. Between 2008 and 2018 I built creative businesses in Nairobi and beyond: Buni Media, a studio that grew to eighty people and produced The XYZ Show in Kenya and Ogas At The Top in Nigeria; Buni.tv, one of the first African VOD platforms, which I grew to the second largest on the continent and sold to TRACE in 2016; and Restless Talent Management, the first international agency representing African film and television creators. I raised over $7M across those companies, when no investor had a model for them yet. 

Before all this, I was a television journalist working across three continents for CNN, Reuters TV, AFP TV and the BBC. Today I write HUSTLE & FLOW, a business newsletter on Africa's creative and sports economy read by more than 12,000 people.

Creative industries financing has moved a long way in six years. Three billion in capital has been unlocked. We now need stronger creative companies ready to absorb it. My book, Creative Cash Flow: Mastering Money, Business and Growth in the African Creative Economy, is about closing that gap, and it's the subject of most of my teaching and speaking.