Afrigather Usually described by colleagues as enjoyable and easy-going, Ojoma Ochai takes her work severely. The inventive and digital economic system knowledgeable sits on the board of a number of corporations and initiatives, together with CcHub, the Professional Panel on Variety and Cultural Expressions, and BTrust. She considers herself to be intensely curious, and it’s this curiosity that has formed her skilled journey for the previous 20 years.
Ochai has spent the previous 20 years working between the inventive trade and the tech sector in Africa and has created an area for herself on the intersection of those two fields. Now, her work revolves round offering assist to tech startups which are constructing for the inventive trade.
Starting as an arts and administrative assistant in 2006, Ochai quickly moved up the ladder on the British Council, and in Might 2010, she grew to become director of arts in Nigeria and West Africa. By 2018, she was director of programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, the place she began engaged on inventive economic system initiatives throughout the continent. In line with Ochai, her background in tech made her notably interested in how know-how was impacting actions within the inventive sector and social house. So she delved deeper into exploring that, one analysis paper at a time.
This curiosity finally introduced her to the doorsteps of CcHub, the place she is happy about making rising tech mainstream, amongst different issues.
Ochai and two different Nigerians—Khalil Nur Khalil and Obi Nwosu— sit on the board of BTrust, a bitcoin non-profit arrange by Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay-Z to assist bitcoin improvement with a give attention to Africa and Asia.
She regards her work at BTrust as transformative, and the entry level into her journey into that house was curiosity. In 2017, whereas working on the British Council, she commissioned a research on how arts and tradition practitioners have been leveraging tech of their observe. Pushed by curiosity, Ochai dove head-first right into a analysis rabbit gap till she finally landed on essentially the most fascinating reply: bitcoin.
“I used to be fascinated by the chance in blockchain and bitcoin,” she shared. Earlier than then, she’d had minimal interplay with the digital forex, and though she’d purchased some in 2013, she had no sense that it was going to be an enormous factor. “In the event you’ve been within the inventive industries, you’ll know that there have been a number of points round licensing, royalties, funds, and cross-border remittances, and I acquired fascinated by the chance in blockchain [and consequently bitcoin] to resolve that,” she mentioned.
And so, when, in February 2021, Jack Dorsey put out a tweet searching for three board members for BTrust, she signed up.
The complete course of included 4 rounds of interviews and an essay, the place she hesitantly shared her theories on how the inventive economic system may leverage Bitcoin to develop. This impressed Dorsey as a result of, in November 2021, she was despatched a Google Meet hyperlink for the ultimate stage of the screening course of.
“I don’t suppose I knew it was the final stage,” she remembers. “I simply acquired on a Google Meet, and there I’m, on a name with Jack Dorsey. How is that this my life?”
That very same 12 months, Ochai left her job on the British Council to cofound the inventive economic system observe at CcHub. This pivotal resolution got here after she analyzed the inventive trade and digital economic system in about 94 international locations, which made her realise that it was getting harder to tell apart between the inventive trade and the digital economic system, as their worth chains have been intertwined.
Ochai already believes within the core goal and path the earlier management at CcHub had established: offering assist to founders constructing tech-based options for social impression.
“There gained’t be a dramatic shift in how the corporate runs,” she shared over a name on a Friday afternoon. “A lot of my effort will go in direction of staying on monitor reasonably than charting a wholly new course.”
She, nonetheless, shares that she will likely be constructing on the present basis to increase additional thematically and into extra international locations throughout the continent.
Increasing thematically implies that CcHub will likely be paying particular consideration to rising tech like blockchain, synthetic intelligence(AI) and clever automation (IA) with their major focus being the best way to mainstream it into the present work being achieved.
“If these rising applied sciences like AI, bitcoin or blockchain, are going to revolutionise the world, then we are able to’t simply have an interest spectators. We’ve got to be individuals,” she shared.
Presently, the corporate helps 24 startups throughout Nigeria and Kenya, with its major focus being edtech. It’s operating an accelerator for startups to obtain as much as $100,000 in non-dilutive capital and 6 months of acceleration. CcHub additionally has its eyes on the inventive trade and is backing early-stage startups like Nollydata which aggregates service suppliers in Nollywood, and Orange VFX, a visible results firm.
“We’re consuming, and it’s nice, however who on the continent helps the individuals constructing the tech for inventive industries?”
Outdoors of rising applied sciences and the inventive economic system, one other space Ochai is trying to convey mainstream is local weather and setting. She believes that builders within the ecosystem should take note of how points like local weather change can impression different outcomes like well being and the economic system and discover methods to innovate round that. CcHub can even be supporting founders in constructing options to adapt or mitigate the modifications presently occurring because of local weather change.
In December 2023, Ochai was named MD of CcHub following its founder and former CEO Bosun Tijani’s appointment as Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation and digital economic system. For twelve years, Tijani led CcHub from a small innovation centre in Yaba, Lagos, to turning into some of the noteworthy tech hubs on the continent, with centres in Kenya and Namibia. Now, Ochai, who shares that she has all the time been a CcHub fangirl, has stepped in to steer the corporate, with a workers energy of about 200.
Predictions for the inventive and digital economies
In line with Ochai, one in all her largest predictions for the digital economic system and inventive industries is the emergence of extra sturdy enterprise fashions for our content material trade, one thing fairly completely different from the linear enterprise fashions now we have now.
“You make content material, you stream it otherwise you take it to the cinema,” she shared. “[However], I really feel like we haven’t maximised the chance for the IP belongings that we’re producing in our content material trade.”
Mental theft continues to be an enormous drawback in Nigeria regardless of the IP laws out there. Nearly all of the inhabitants has remained ignorant of these laws, and this, coupled with the nation’s weak authorized system, has affected the growth of the inventive trade.
One other forecast she gave for the inventive economic system is the appearance of infrastructure funding or extra specialised providers across the inventive industries. Nigeria’s inventive trade employs some 4.1 million individuals and is projected to contribute $100 billion in 2023.
“We’ll see extra corporations construct for the inventive trade round assist like brokers, expertise managers, and different service suppliers. Take into consideration insurance coverage, or pensions—the entire issues that make an trade work.”
