When a Lagos studio licenses a format to Jakarta, or a Nairobi illustrator finds her largest client in São Paulo, an old assumption dies: that culture flows north. The Global South’s creative economies are discovering each other as markets, not merely as aesthetics, and the commercial structures they are building (distribution partnerships, co-production treaties, payment rails) look remarkably alike.
The lesson for policymakers is to treat creative exports like any other export sector: with trade missions, financing instruments and data. The lesson for operators is to pick one secondary market and go deep. The volume is real, the audiences are young, and the north is no longer the only audience that matters.