Communiqué 94: Africa’s most influential music business school enters its next act
As Africa’s creative industries come of age, the Music Business Academy for Africa is evolving to train the builders and entrepreneurs behind the continent’s next economic boom
Why this matters
The evolution of MBA Africa into a creative business academy signals a maturing of Africa’s creative industries — from raw talent to structured ecosystems that can scale and sustain themselves.
It highlights how education and training are becoming central to the creative economy, helping young Africans move from passion-driven work to enterprise-driven impact.
More broadly, it points to a new phase in Africa’s cultural growth — one where creatives aren’t just making art, but also building the infrastructure that will define the continent’s next global exports.
After seven years as a radio on-air personality, Wale Ozolua — now Manager, Content Operations and Artist Services at Audiomack — had developed an ear for music. For his next act, he wanted to understand the business.
He joined OneRPM, a digital distribution company that helps artists manage releases and reach audiences across various streaming platforms. On the radio, music was about the moment; the vibe and the emotions the sound evoked. At OneRPM, it was about the machinery behind the moment: rights, royalties, and reach.
Ozolua had instincts. Years in radio had sharpened his eye for talent and audience dynamics. But instinct wasn’t enough. He could see the gaps, the missing structure, the absence of a framework to translate his passion into professional mastery. He went in search of clarity and found the Music Business Academy for Africa.
Every industry needs a bridge between passion and professionalism. Filmmakers find it in film schools. Designers find it in fashion institutes and mentorship labs. Developers often find it in accelerators and coding boot camps. Each serves the same purpose: turning creative impulse into sustainable craft. For the last five years, the Music Business Academy for Africa (MBA Africa) has been that bridge, training a new generation of executives to understand the mechanics of the continent’s booming music industry.
Last week, in front of an audience of alumni and other academy stakeholders, the bridge was widened. MBA Africa officially transitioned into the Creative Business Academy for Africa (CBA Africa), expanding its mission beyond music to embrace the broader creative economy.
2. An act of faith
Starting a music business training programme in Africa can be an act of faith — or foolishness. Godwin Tom fell on the faith side of the spectrum. He had worked with some of the biggest names in Afrobeats, including Wizkid, Davido, and Waje, and had witnessed firsthand the genre’s global growth in the 2010s. But he also saw the problems. There were few systems, no formal training, and very little understanding of the business. He set out to fix this.
In 2017, Tom launched the Music Business Series with Godwin Tom (#MBSwithGT), a weekly X (formerly Twitter) series where he invited friends and colleagues from law, marketing, and management to share insights about the industry. The conversations drew people from across the continent, revealing that the lack of structured training for music executives was not just a Nigerian problem.
So he took the conversations on the road. Travelling from Lagos to Ibadan, Abuja, Accra, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, Tom hosted free sessions on the business of music. Everywhere he went, the message was the same: talented young Africans wanted to work in the industry but didn’t know how. To bridge that gap, he launched an internship programme. The first cohort had 32 participants. At the end of the programme, Tom hired two of them as interns and placed the rest in jobs across the industry. The programme continued like this until 2020, when the pandemic hit.
Stuck at home, Tom decided to build out a full-fledged music business school.
3. The architecture of a music business school
When Godwin Tom launched the Music Business Academy for Africa, it initially offered three modules: Management, Music and the Law, and Music Business Fundamentals. By 2021, it had doubled to six modules, with new courses like Music History, Marketing, and Events Management. Each addition filled a gap that Godwin Tom and his team noticed among students and professionals.
To give the programme more credibility, Tom invited Professor Carlos Chirinos-Espin from New York University, an expert in global music business education, to help expand and refine the structure. With Chirinos-Espin’s input, the curriculum expanded to nine courses, including “The Industries of the Music Business,” a class that helped students understand the wide range of careers available beyond performance, from publishing and licensing to touring, brand partnerships, and data analytics.
The academy’s growth has always been guided by one principle: stay vocational and stay relevant. Every year, it added new modules in response to fundamental industry gaps. Recently, MBA Africa introduced courses on “Mental Health for Creatives” and “HR for the Creative Industry” — areas that are often overlooked but are deeply needed. Students learnt how to establish personal boundaries, manage burnout, and develop systems that safeguard their emotional and psychological well-being.
Inside the programme, learning doesn’t stop at theory. Every student works in a team that simulates the structure of a real music company. Within these groups, everyone is assigned to roles, including A&R, PR, management, marketing, and leadership, which rotate throughout the year. The academy also throws unexpected “curveballs” to test adaptability. Sometimes, all team leaders are suddenly reassigned, forcing new leaders to emerge. The goal is to teach that leadership isn’t about titles but about dependability and initiative.
The ambition to build a world-class music business school for Africa has not come cheap. It comes with world-class expenses: faculty, production, artist camps, live concerts, studio sessions, and salaries for the 14+ staff who keep the programme running. Over the past five years, it has cost an estimated $1.5 million to organise (about $300,000 each year). To sustain it, MBA Africa has relied partly on sponsorships. YouTube and The Orchard serve as headline sponsors, each contributing a third of the total funds needed. The final third comes from student fees and Godwin Tom’s personal investment.
The programme has also launched the MBA Women’s Fund, created to help more women — a demographic that has historically been underrepresented in the industry — enrol in the programme. “For some women, the challenge isn’t interest; it’s permission, family pressure or lack of financial support”, Tom said to Communique. The fund removes at least one of those obstacles. Partners like Audiomack and Sterling Bank have contributed to the Women’s Fund, sponsoring tuition for dozens of women each year. Since 2020, the programme has trained over 1500 students.
4. Building beyond music
Now, MBA Africa is reaching beyond music because the skills it teaches are just as relevant across the wider creative industry. The academy has launched two new courses, “Film in Music” and “Fashion in Music,” which explore how these industries intersect and feed off each other. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Tom said to Communiqué. “It connects to film, fashion, tech, and culture. We want our students to see those links and use them.”
It’s a preliminary step towards a much larger goal: to eventually establish independent academies for different sectors, such as film, fashion, and gaming, all operating under the Creative Business Academy for Africa (CBA Africa).
In shaping this next chapter, the academy is drawing inspiration from global successes, such as Harvard Business School’s Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports course will be key to CBA Africa’s growth. Launched in 2008 by Professor Anita Elberse, the programme applies rigorous business thinking to creative industries, drawing stars like Ciara, Dwyane Wade, and LL Cool J. For CBA Africa, it’s a powerful example of what’s possible — a model for transforming Africa’s creative passion into structured, scalable business excellence.
From its beginnings as a small, music-focused training programme to its evolution into the Creative Business Academy for Africa, MBA Africa’s story mirrors the growth of the continent’s creative economy: ambitious, experimental, and determined to professionalise passion. Its next chapter is about scaling the model that worked for the music industry to the larger creative industry. Whether in music, film, fashion, or gaming, CBA Africa aims to train the next generation of executives who will build lasting creative enterprises. Like Harvard’s renowned entertainment business course, it aims to demonstrate that creativity and commerce can coexist.
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This is so visionary. Can't wait to see what it grows into