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Creative Business Academy for Africa
About CBA for Africa
We are building the business behind African creativity. Not the next star — the executives, founders and operators who develop the star, release the work and make sure it pays.
Our story
Five years in the making. From Music to Music, Film & Fashion.
We began as the Music Business Academy — the training ground for the people who run the rooms behind African music. Over five years we trained 1,500+ managers, A&Rs, marketers and founders, and educated more than 12,000 creatives across the continent.
For 2027 we've become the Creative Business Academy for Africa. The mission is the same; the canvas is bigger. We now build the business of three industries at once — Music, Film & Fashion — because the discipline that turns talent into an enterprise is the same in every creative field.
The journey so far
1,500+ trained
Business professionals developed across five cohorts of the academy.
12,000+ educated
Creatives reached through open programmes, in four languages.
15+ businesses founded
Real companies started by our alumni across the continent.
Three Schools for 2027
Music, Film & Fashion — one academy, one ecosystem.
Our mission & belief
Talent is everywhere. The business is the difference.
Africa's creative economy is worth an estimated $58 billion — and growing faster than almost any sector on the continent. What it lacks is not talent. It is the business-literate people who can build enterprises around that talent.
The belief
Every great artist, director and designer stands on a business someone built. That business is a discipline — and it can be taught.
The gap
A $58B economy runs on managers, producers and operators who are rare across Africa. Demand for them far outstrips supply.
Our mission
To build a generation of business-literate creative professionals who turn African talent into lasting, exportable enterprise.
The model
The “2 + 3 + 5” academy
Ten months built to make you the operator, not the act. You specialise, you integrate, you execute — and you finish having run a real creative company end to end.
2 · Specialise
Two months of deep craft inside your School — Music, Film or Fashion — learning the business of your chosen industry.
3 · Integrate
Three months of the shared Integrated Core — ventures, finance, IP, reputation, data and pan-African trade across all three Schools.
5 · Execute
Five months running your company — develop the talent, release real work to real audiences, and present to the showcase stage.
Who runs it
Built by CIIFA and the Creative Talent Foundation.
CBA for Africa is delivered by CIIFA Limited — the Creative Industries Initiative for Africa — together with the Creative Talent Foundation, based in Lagos, Nigeria. Together they exist to build the infrastructure African creativity has always deserved.
The academy is Phase 1 of a wider "Creative Metropolis" vision — a long-term plan to build the institutions, enterprises and physical spaces that power the continent's creative economy. CBA is where it starts: with the people.
At a glance
CIIFA Limited
Creative Industries Initiative for Africa — the academy's parent institution.
Creative Talent Foundation
The non-profit arm widening access to creative business education.
Lagos, Nigeria
Pan-African and diaspora in reach; Lagos-based at heart.
Creative Metropolis
CBA is Phase 1 of a wider vision for African creative infrastructure.
Leadership
The people behind the academy.
CBA for Africa is led by operators who have spent their careers building the business of African creativity.
Godwin Tom
Founder & CEO
Founder of CIIFA and the driving force behind the academy. A veteran of the African music and creative industries, Godwin built CBA to close the gap he saw again and again: extraordinary talent, and too few people equipped to build the business around it.
Elizabeth Sobowale
Programme Director
Leads the design and delivery of the academy end to end — curriculum, faculty and the student experience. Elizabeth turns the CBA model into a working programme that runs across three Schools, twelve Houses and four languages.
Faculty & partners
Taught by the people who do the work.
Our faculty are practitioners, not lecturers — managers, producers, marketers, lawyers and founders working today across Music, Film & Fashion. You learn the business from the people currently running it.
Industry practitioners
Working executives and founders across the three Schools lead the core teaching — bringing live deals, real numbers and current playbooks into the room.
Global partners
Leading international companies — among them The Orchard and Sony Music — contribute masterclasses and connect students to the wider global industry.
Craft camps & workshops
Specialist practitioners run hands-on workshops and craft camps, so learning is applied to the real work students are shipping that year.
Talent is everywhere
Be the business behind it.
Registrations for the 2027 cohort are open. Ten months that change your career start here.