Data gap clouds creative sector

Namibia’s creative sector is increasingly recognised as part of the economy, but poor data and limited public funding make it difficult to determine its full economic contribution, the chairperson of the National Arts Council of Namibia has said.

Lot Ndamanomhata said the sector, commonly referred to as the “orange economy”, had been included in the Sixth National Development Plan (NDP6), but more work is needed to establish its size, composition and economic value.

“The creative sector in general is referred to as the orange economy,” Ndamanomhata said. “And the orange economy is starting to take centre stage in Namibia.”

However, he said the country lacked reliable data on the number of people working in the sector and the range of activities that make up the creative economy. “We don’t have good statistics, so we don’t have well-defined data as to how many creatives are within the sector,” he said.

Ndamanomhata said a creative-sector mapping exercise was under way to establish how many people and businesses operate across the industry. The latest census, he said, recorded about 133 000 artists, although he believed this was a conservative estimate.

He said the sector should not be judged only by major films or other large productions, arguing that its economic footprint extended to photographers, make-up artists, performers and other small operators.

“If you have a wedding, be it in the north, in Rundu, perhaps Otjiwarongo. Wherever you are, there are creative content creators,” he said. “They include make-up artists, photographers ... these are all creatives whose livelihood depends on this.”

Ndamanomhata said the National Arts Council had distributed more than N$18 million in grants and bursaries over the past several years, including support for people undertaking specialised training abroad.

He said the funding was intended not only to benefit recipients, but also to build skills that could eventually be transferred to others in Namibia.

However, the council has a budget of N$6.1 million for the current financial year. “The limited budget illustrates why better data is needed to support planning and investment in the sector. “Data, not semantics, is important,” he said. “We need data to help us plan better.”

Economist links creativity to wealth

Economist and Cirrus Capital founder Rowland Brown said the creative industries were directly linked to the wider economy because their activities involved the same transactions that generate economic output.

“In many ways I would look at the creative industry as the sort of soul and character of a country,” Brown said. “But the soul and character is dependent on the body, on a healthy body and healthy organs.”

Brown said economic activity ultimately came down to transactions between people and businesses. “When it comes to the creative industry and its role in the economy, it is the same,” he said. “It’s just a matter of transactions between different parties.”

He argued that rising productivity and wealth could create greater demand for creative goods, tourism and cultural experiences.

Technological advances, he said, had reduced the amount of human labour needed to meet necessities, allowing people in wealthier economies to devote more time and money to leisure and cultural activities.

“What do people do with surpluses? Well, often they’ll invest in art, they’ll invest in buildings, they’ll invest in great sculptures and such,” Brown said.

Yet, Namibia has yet to fully appreciate the economic foundations behind such spending. “What I think we’re not completely grasping in Namibia to the degree that we need to is that beauty, those beautiful sculptures that are commissioned, are commissioned downstream of surplus,” Brown said.

The discussion was moderated by Theopolina Kapani-Emvula.