Africa’s creative economy gets boost with LSMi creative hub launch

With the goal of formalizing, scaling, and monetizing Africa’s rapidly growing creative economy, Lanre Shittu Motors (LSM) has partnered with Industry Nite to launch the LSMi Creative Hub, a transformative platform for creative infrastructure.

The hub aims to formalise and scale the continent’s rapidly growing creative sector by providing a collaborative infrastructure platform. It represents a strategic joint venture that shifts the sector from fragmented individual activity toward coordinated and consortium-led growth.

Located on T.F. Kuboye Road, Oniru, Lagos, it is positioned as a flagship model for how creative enterprises can aggregate assets, unlock value, and operate at scale.

Speaking about the strategic partnership, Matthew Ohio, chief promoter at LSMi Creative Hub, said that Africa’s creative economy is scaling rapidly, yet over 90 percent of creators in Nigeria remain informal—excluded from global royalties, licensing systems, and structured growth pathways.

To change this narrative, he said, “the LSMi creative hub is designed to solve this structural gap by building the physical and digital infrastructure required to formalize and scale the sector.”

According to him, the LSMi initiative is conceived as an experiential and digitally enabled creative district—bridging critical infrastructure gaps while converting informal creative activity into structured, investment-ready enterprises.

He added that the initiative responds directly to systemic constraints across the sector, including limited production infrastructure, weak commercialization pathways, and restricted access to global markets.

The hub is built on a unified value-chain model—create → showcase → commercialize—ensuring end-to-end support for creative talent and enterprises:

Its integrated model includes a state-of-the-art production center for IP formalization, a dynamic cultural venue for events and exhibitions, and a curated retail and hospitality district for structured commercial opportunities.

The partnership combines LSM’s industrial expertise with Industry Nite’s 16-year track record in cultural programming and artist development, having already generated over $10m in artist earnings and created 10,000 jobs.

The hub’s transparent governance and revenue-sharing model aims to attract institutional investment into Africa’s creative sector. It has also been positioned as a scalable platform for investment in Africa’s growing creative economy.

The launch of the LSMi creative hub aligns with a broader continental shift toward creative economy formalization under frameworks such as AfCFTA, where intellectual property, cultural exports, and digital services are increasingly recognized as drivers of economic growth-integrating production, distribution, and commerce within a single ecosystem.

The hub serves as a replicable model for creative industrialization across Africa—demonstrating how collaboration can unlock scale, efficiency, and long-term value.