Afrobeats star D’banj’s CREAM gets Afreximbank investment

Nigerian music star Oladapo “D’banj” Oyebanjo has brought the African Export-Import Bank into his creator platform CREAM, after the lender’s creative-industry investment arm took an equity stake in the business.

CANEX Creations, an Afreximbank subsidiary, acquired the stake in a deal made public on Nov. 13. The size of the stake and the price were not disclosed. The deal is aimed at helping African creators turn music, film and other intellectual property into income.

The deal follows CANEX WKND 2026, the bank’s creative-economy gathering, which opened in Lagos this month. Kanayo Awani, an Afreximbank executive vice president, said the bank expected up to $1 billion in deals at this year’s edition, nearly double the roughly $540 million committed at the 2024 meeting in Algiers.

Afreximbank has committed about $2 billion to Africa’s creative and cultural industries across seven areas, including film, music and fashion. Equity investments are making up a growing share of that money.

Beyond music

D’banj, 46, rose to fame in the 2000s as one half of the Mo’ Hits Records partnership with producer Don Jazzy, and became one of the first Nigerian pop stars to break into the global market. His 2012 single “Oliver Twist” reached the UK Top 10, and he signed to Kanye West’s GOOD Music label in 2011.

He has since built a business portfolio beyond music and has spent the past few years promoting CREAM as a gateway for African creatives to reach funding and distribution, pitching it to investors in the U.S. and Kenya and at the Milken Institute.

The CANEX deal gives the platform an institutional backer at a time when lenders and development-finance groups are putting more money into Africa’s creative economy. The International Finance Corp. said this month it had channeled $1.6 billion into the sector over five years.