Nigeria’s creative sector is spending too much time overcoming infrastructure challenges and is losing valuable time, according to the State of Nigeria’s Creative Economy 2026 report.
The report, compiled by NECLive in partnership with Frontyard indicates that Nigeria’s creative industry is not facing a talent shortage; instead, creators are spending valuable time overcoming obstacles that limit innovation, exports, and business expansion.
NECLive researchers surveyed 377 creative professionals across advertising, film, music, fashion, gaming, publishing, photography, and digital content creation. They found that 83% of the respondents lose 10% of their weekly productive time to administrative work, the report stated. Another 19.5% of respondents lose more than half their week to administrative tasks.
However, the biggest daily challenges they face are unreliable electricity and internet connectivity. Power outages rank as the single biggest daily challenge above regulation, funding, and piracy combined.
Many creators spend more hours finding or solving power issues which drain productivity. The workday extends beyond producing content. Productive hours are spent organising online meetings, connecting with remote teams, and trying to meet deadlines.
Similarly, unreliable internet services also pose a significant hurdle as creatives shuffle between multiple providers who are often plagued by regular outages.
The report also showed that creators spend more hours on resolving payment disputes as it has become one of the biggest drains on productivity. The payment processing includes foreign exchange rates which fluctuate at any time is also a barrier to exporting creative work.
Additionally, NECLive found that subscription costs, not skills, remain the main obstacle to wider artificial intelligence adoption among Nigerian creatives. The creators have no issue using the available AI programs as they have the required knowledge and skills. But they describe the subscription costs as too expensive, making the AI programs’ usage unattractive.
Overall, the creatives expressed that access to capital and funding, alongside stable power and internet infrastructure, would double their output within the year. They added that systems and professional structures, as well as markets, communities, and networks, would also be major contributions.
Notably, the revelations come amid the Federal Government’s efforts to reform and strengthen the creative economy. It recently established four high-level committees to oversee policy, implementation, stakeholder engagement, and monitoring. The initiative targets a ₦100 billion contribution to GDP and two million jobs by 2030.
NECLive opined that while the target is ambitious, its accomplishment will rely on the implementation of several strategies. These include treating power and connectivity as creative economy infrastructure as well as launching a creative economy lending facility. The organization believes that building a standardised contracts and payments framework and a national creative talent pipeline could provide additional boosts.
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