Interview Africa In colors-Raoul Rugamba « We want to write a success story telling the rise of African creative industry ecosystem »

Kigali will welcome, from March 26- 28th, 2020, the first edition of “Africa in colors festival” attracting more than 5,000 people from all across the globe, Experts, investors, and pioneers in the Creative industry, with one aim, position Africa on the global map in the creative industry, showcase and great business opportunities to African talents in the creative industry. Ambitions and explications with the founder, Raoul Rugamba.

Tell us about yourself, your background, your current activities … and finally what led you to become interested in the creative industry sector in Africa?

Thank you, my name is Raoul Rugamba, i am a Rwandan entrepreneur workind from Kiglai, Rwanda, and i am the founder of Hobe Agency, a creative communication and event management agency. I have started working in the creative industry via my uncle known as Judo, who owns Positive Production, in 2008 i think, and i was a sound and lighting technician. After that i was in charge of assisting Judo in his event deals, following up with clients, supplying equipment and all, and in 2015 i had an opportunity to venture in creative communication and opened my own company, Hobe Agency and since then we are involved in the branding of companies, launch of products/services, project development and corodination, creating new solutions, etc. And currently we are working on a new project called Africa in Colors.

That is why you will organize, in next March in Kigali, Africa in Colors. What is the idea ?

The idea come to us after realizing that we have a challenge on the African continent when it comes to being consistent, or sustainable, or generating revenues or creating more jobs in the creative industry, and we decided to challenge ourselves and create a platform that will tackle those questions in a more deeper way, and we decided to create Africa in Colors, a project aiming at creating sustainable and strong creative industry ecosystems across Africa, facilitating creative entrepreneurs trade and do business across the continent, Government institutions understand how the business works and the importance to make it a priority in a country, create a safe environment to investors to tap into this sector and for all of this coming together be a solution to creating jobs and wealth on the continent. So Africa in Colors Festival is a program of the Africa in Colors project where we call all of those key players in the creative industry to come together in one African country for a specific time, find solutions and live trade.

So more than a conference or an exhibition it is a platform dedicated to the creative industries in Africa that you create?

Yes, otherwise we would be investing in a normal festival, where after the festival we go back in the same environment/challenges, and at the end find ourselves missing an opportunity to impact the young generation, give something sustainable to our continent for the future.

If African creativity is no longer to be demonstrated, it only represents 5% of a market of a world market estimated at more than 2 billion dollars…

Small correction, our share as a a continent is less than 2%, and the global market is worth more than $2 trillions, and this is due first of all to the fact that, we, all of us, creative entrepreneurs, and other players in the creative industry, work as a unity on their own, in our corners somewhere, not having a platform of collaboration, where the public and private sectors sit together and discuss on their needs, what is doable and what is not doable, how does an environment that can grow this industry should look like,…etc, and once we have this, better on a regular basis, the growth of this industry and players in that industry will be unstoppable.

It is this ecosystem that you want to create by bringing together the artists but also public and private actors, investors …

A human being, most of the time, becomes what his/her environment is. Working with single entities will never change what we want to change, i twill never build what we want to build.

We want this platform to be a simulation of the healthy environment we want to build for creative industries ecosystems on the continent to grow and be a major contributor to the economy of our continent.

We are inviting all the stakeholders together and discuss straight forward what is doable and what is not. We want the stakeholders be able to draw lines and phases of how we move forward to building an environment that allows growth, talent showcase and job opportunities on the continent.

To conclude, concretely how the event will unfold, who will participate, in what format …

We are using a different approach from usual festivals, conferences we attend.

We want this festival to be practical as much as possible, generate businesses, showcase opportunities and talents as much as possible, have workshops as much as possible.
We want this festival be a living proof of the power of collaboration.

We want this festival be a testimony of endless opportunities generated when creative industry stakeholders comes together.

We want to write a success story telling the rise of a new journey to a succesful African creative industry ecosystem.

For more information : http://africaincolors.com