Creativity Alone Is Not Enough In Today’s Competitive Market – Kunle Afolayan

Popular Nollywood filmmaker Kunle Afolayan has said that business understanding is key to sustaining and expanding Nigeria’s creative sector. He recently revealed that creativity alone is not enough in today’s competitive market.

Speaking during a panel discussion at the inaugural QEDNG Creative Powerhouse Summit held in Lagos, Afolayan shared that while collaboration is key in the Nollywood sector, creatives must be very careful.

According to him, he once got approached by people who wanted a partnership, and while he was initially open to the idea, the deal broke down when they proposed owning 49 percent of his company.

“I was listening to Nkiru while she was talking, and I could actually resonate with a lot of things.

While she was talking about the collaboration side of things, for me, I was whispering to a friend and I said ‘you need to be careful at the same time.’ For some of us who are driven by passion, but at the same time, we are very mindful of the fact that for you to keep the art and creativity going, the business side must also be well thought out.

We got approached by some people, and they had funds… they said they wanted to buy into Golden Effect and I said they should propose what they have in mind and they came back with this proposal of wanting to get 49% of the company’s shares,” he said.

The “Figurine” producer further noted that surrounding yourself with good people is key for creatives because their ideas and input will always come in handy.

Kunle concluded by saying that he eventually got back to the people, emphasising that he wasn’t interested in a partnership that will make him give up most of the rights to his company.

“Really, the honest truth is I really didn’t have details on how equity, shares and all those things work… you need to surround yourself with good people, you need to surround yourself with good friends.

As far back as that time… Mike is one of them, Seun Soyinka, all of us, we’ve been together since then.

So I went back to them saying ‘so you people want to take my company I’m not doing.’ And they said, okay.

Fast-forward… we did SPV for a film title… waiting for their funds… till we finished the movie project, the funds never came. At the end of the day, we had to dissolve this SPV… they are big people, you can’t fight them… so it was more like wasting your time doing that.

Now look at where we are now, we have managed to build a company, and the company gave birth to another company then another company. And consistency,” he added.