By Teshome Wondimu, Founder and CEO of Selam

Early in my career, I understood something important.

African creativity has always been there. The talent, the energy, the music, the stories.

But across Africa and globally, the systems surrounding that creativity were not built to support it. Not the stages. Not the institutions. Not the rights protection. Not the investment.

That gap became the reason I started Selam. And every Africa Day, it is the gap I think about.

Over nearly thirty years, Selam has tried to help close it: through concerts and festivals, through artist networks across Africa, through policy work with the African Union, and through tools that help artists own and protect their work. Not because the problem is simple. Because every gap that exists is also an invitation to act.

Africa Day celebrates what African creativity has achieved. But achievement without infrastructure does not last.

This year, the African Union marks 63 years with the theme “Sixty-three Years of Unity, Integration and Development.” It is a moment to celebrate what has been built. It is also a moment to ask what still needs to be built.

Across the continent, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and creators are shaping global culture at an unprecedented scale. From Afrobeats to Amapiano, from Nollywood to the streets of Addis, Nairobi, and Dakar — African creativity is everywhere.

This is not accidental. It reflects the talent, resilience, and imagination of millions of young Africans.

But talent alone is never enough.

Creativity needs infrastructure. Stages. Institutions. Policies that protect artists. Rights that are actually enforced. And long-term investment that treats culture as the strategic sector it is.

That is where the real work begins.

In country after country across Africa, that infrastructure is still missing

Artists create. Platforms profit. But the systems that should translate creativity into sustainable livelihoods — copyright protection, fair contracts, institutional support — are often absent or too weak to matter.

And now comes artificial intelligence.

AI is already reshaping how music is discovered, distributed, and monetized globally, and African artists are rarely at the center of those decisions. This transformation is not coming. It is already here.

The question is not whether AI will change the cultural landscape. The question is who will benefit.

Will it strengthen African creators’ control over their work? Or will it deepen the divide between those who own the platforms and those who fill them with content?

These are not only cultural questions.

Who gets seen?

Who gets paid?

And who gets power over their own story?

These are democratic questions. Economic questions. Questions about whose future gets built, and by whom.

We do not have to accept the wrong answer.

Through the Connect for Culture Africa initiative, implemented together with the African Union Commission and partners across Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Tanzania, we have seen what becomes possible when governments treat culture as a strategic priority. Not as a luxury, not as an afterthought.

In 2023, all African Union member states made a landmark decision to fast-track the 1% commitment: allocating at least one percent of national budgets to arts, culture, heritage, and creative industries by 2030.

It is a commitment. Now it needs to become action.

But government commitment alone is not enough. Sustainable cultural infrastructure in Africa requires public and private investment to move together: governments setting the framework, and the private and commercial sectors stepping up to build within it. One without the other is not enough.

Africa is not lacking creativity.

The continent is already shaping global culture. The music, the stories, the visual languages — they are there, they are powerful, and they are reaching the world.

What Africa needs now is the infrastructure to match that creativity. Stronger copyright systems. Investment in independent cultural spaces. Protection of artistic freedom. Long-term support for the ecosystems where culture can grow sustainably.

Because the future of the continent will not only be shaped through economics and politics.

It will be shaped through stories, music, memory, and the freedom of people to imagine and create.

Culture is not peripheral to Africa’s future.

It is part of its foundation.