Communiqué 65: Do African creators need talent managers? Penzaarville thinks so

With a client roster that includes Layi Wasabi, Broda Shaggi, Tomike Adeoye, Tayo Aina and Diary of a Naija Girl, Penzaarville Africa wants to be the CAA for African content creators.

In case you (somehow 🙄) missed it, we have released the African Creative Economy Database. Learn more about it here.

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1. A game of chance

In 2021, Olayiwola Isaac was a final-year law student at Bowen University in southwest Nigeria. He spent a ton of his free time between lectures making skits. Then he made one about blocking his mother from viewing his WhatsApp status. It went viral and marked the beginning of an upward spiral. By the end of 2022, off the back of characters like The Professor, Isaac, now popularly known as Layi Wasabi, became a modest online sensation, with over 500k followers on Instagram and a client roster that included brands like Chicken Republic and Flutterwave.

But potential outpaced infrastructure. Layi Wasabi, with the help of a university friend, personally managed his brand and business—a common experience with many African content creators. According to the 2023 Selar African Creator Economy Report, only 24% of African content creators worked with a team of experts to support their work. The lack of experience showed. When Layi Wasabi, then based in Ibadan, a city just a few hours from Lagos, was booked for a shoot in Lekki, Lagos, the client did not arrange for his accommodation.

Enter Olufemi Oguntamu, CEO of Penzaarville Africa, a talent management agency with a reputation for turning viral fame into sustainable business. Earlier, Oguntamu had reached out to Layi Wasabi to ask for his rate card. But, the version he received was not properly designed—the first sign of poor management. Then, Oguntamu found out about the accommodation problem, and he decided to step in. He booked a room for Wasabi at the Lagos Continental Hotel and invited him to dinner.

Over dinner at Cilantro, a restaurant located in the upscale Victoria Island, Lagos, Oguntamu reviewed Layi Wasabi’s brand. “The conversation that we had felt like a lecture. So, you know, when someone is talking to you and you're like, oh yes, I realize this, I realize that. He's telling you where you have been, where you are as a brand, and where you should go,” Layi Wasabi told Communiqué.

Oguntamu also laid out Penzaarville’s value proposition to him: creative autonomy, a plan to scale his brand, and critically, a profit-sharing model that included Layi Wasabi’s existing manager.

A few weeks later, Layi Wasabi signed a management deal with Penzaarville Africa. Since then, the creator talent agency has added top content creators like lifestyle influencer Tomike Adeoye and travel YouTuber Tayo Aina to its client roster while consulting for many others, cementing its status as a prominent African creator management agency.