Nkiru Balonwu is Founder & Creative Director of the Africa Soft Power Project and Founder & Chief Executive of the Africa Soft Power Group.
Summit host city
When the Africa Soft Power Project was launched in 2020 – against the backdrop of a world locked down and a continent whose creative industries had been abruptly paused – the founding conviction was clear if not yet fully tested: that Africa’s soft power and its economic prospects were more deeply connected than the mainstream conversation acknowledged,and that the right platform could help change that.
Six years on, and with the Summit now in its seventh edition, I look back on that conviction and find it not just intact, but vindicated, and considerably deepened.
The Africa Soft Power Summit convenes in Nairobi in May 2026, under the theme ‘Africa’s Compound Interest: Aligning Ecosystems of Finance, Creativity and Human Capital for Growth’. The theme reflects something we have watched happen in real time: the conversation has shifted from “why does African culture matter to the economy?” to “how do we build the structures that let it do what it is already capable of doing?” That shift has taken six years of consistent work. It is the work I am most proud of.
What has changed over those years is scope, not conviction. The Africa Soft Power Group – which brings together the Africa Soft Power Project, African Women on Board, and RDF Strategies, organisations that each predate the Summit – now works across a range of programmes that reflect how interconnected our founding agenda always was. The Climate Change Photo Essay Prize, now in its third edition, turns young African photographers into climate advocates and archivists. The Road to 100 Million Climate Soldiers is building climate literacy infrastructure across the continent. Project Yellow Card invests in the next generation of African leaders. The Human Capital & Governance Framework embeds accountability and decision discipline in African institutions.
These are not separate agendas. They are the same conviction – that Africa’s narrative must be shaped by Africa – seen from different angles and pursued across every dimension of the work.
The Summit has grown accordingly. From a small founding gathering to a convening that now draws delegates from more than forty countries, it has become a space where the strategic intent of African professionals and institutions around the world meets the momentum building on the continent. Heads of government, central bank executives, leading investors, creative pioneers, and diaspora voices – in genuine conversation, not parallel silos. That is what we set out to build, and it is what we are building.
My own journey has run alongside it, from years in media and tech, including as CEO of Spinlet, then Africa’s largest music streaming platform, to work that now encompasses strategic communications, reputation design, and advisory mandates with governments and leading institutions across the continent and globally. The thread through all of it is the same: African perspectives are not a regional interest. They are a global necessity, and the organisations that understand this earliest will be best positioned for what comes next.
As we gather in Nairobi for the seventh time, the compound interest is beginning to show. Welcome to ASP. Explore the site, engage with the work, and reach out, wherever in the world you may be.
Founder & Creative Director, Africa Soft Power · May 2026
Founder's Note - Nkiru Balonwu
Welcome to The Africa Soft Power Project (ASP), and welcome to the post-pandemic world of 2022, which sees our flagship Africa Soft Power Summit event taking place in the beautiful city of Kigali, Rwanda!
First founded in 2020, our goal at ASP is a simple one: to leverage the awesome (soft) power of the continent’s creative and cultural industries to propel economic growth at home, internationally, and by building bridges with wider communities around the world.
After working for many years in media tech, including as the MD of Spinlet, which at the time was Africa’s largest homegrown music streaming app, I began to realise the huge potential that these sectors had to offer, if only they could attract the right levels of engagement – and investment.
Today, we live in a world where African culture has gone mainstream, as exemplified earlier this year when Burna Boy had a packed-out Madison Square Garden eating out the palm of his hand! We want to celebrate that success, but also build on it, bringing more African creative and cultural pursuits into the mainstream, and helping to fuel the digital and knowledge economies of tomorrow on a global level.
A key part of ASP’s initial two year programme has been to establish May as ‘Africa Month’. There are already celebrations like Black History Month in February in the US, or October in the UK, and that’s great because they champion the diaspora community. But when we are thinking in terms of global blackness, the continent of Africa still gets left behind, and so we seek to paint a modern, accurate picture of what the continent is about today – and that cultural narrative of course, is best told by our creative industries!
The theme for this year’s Summit is: ‘Africa & the Global Community: The New Face of Collaboration’, and it couldn’t be more fitting. In the past we’ve we’ve welcomed speakers from Brazil, Columbia, UK, US, and right across the Caribbean to the Summit – and it’s clear from previous events that when you start to build bridges and collaborate, soft power really begins to shine.
As we take our first post-pandemic steps back into real-life networking, Rwanda couldn’t provide a more appropriate backdrop for celebrating African cultural and creative success. The newly formed NBA Africa/Basketball Africa League playoffs take place in town at the same time as the Summit, with key speakers from the organisation also joining the ASP programme.
As we leave lockdowns behind, we re-enter a very different physical world to the world we closed the door on in March 2020 – this represents a huge opportunity for change. For Africa, it’s not only about attracting greater investment from the Facebooks, Googles, and Disneys of this world (which we need to do), but also having greater confidence in ourselves and our own media tech sectors, and what they can bring to the world.
Now more than ever we invite you to explore our site, to engage with us, and create platforms for collaboration with the African creative and cultural sectors, wherever in the world you may be.
Yours truly,
Nkiru Balonwu
Africa Soft Power Series 24/05/22
Founder's Note - Nkiru Balonwu
Growing up, most of my heroes were American – I even had an American twang from watching too much MTV Base long before I stepped foot in the US. From Hollywood to brands like Apple and Nike, celebrities like Oprah, Beyonce, Kobe, and the Obamas, America continues to shine out to many as a beacon of positivity, precisely because of its diversity and soft power, and despite issues the country faces.
I am most passionate about two things: Africa and being an African woman, and over the past decade, I’ve been obsessed about using positive communications to propel both. At African Woman Board (AWB) the independent non-profit which I chair, we focus on advancing narratives to improve realities for African women and girls globally. And in my day job at RDF, we work regularly with businesses to help them redefine stories from and about the continent.
As CEO of Africa’s first music streaming app, Spinlet, I engaged firsthand with investors and tech industry veterans in places like San Francisco and Helsinki, where interest in African music had been ignited by artists like WizKid and Burna Boy and on separate occasions at Cannes and in Harlem, I was sought out by Japanese and German DJ’s with ‘African accents, who dreamed one day of hanging at ‘the shrine’.
As CEO of Africa’s first music streaming app, Spinlet, I engaged firsthand with investors and tech industry veterans in places like San Francisco and Helsinki, where interest in African music had been ignited by artists like WizKid and Burna Boy and on separate occasions at Cannes and in Harlem, I was sought out by Japanese and German DJ’s with ‘African accents, who dreamed one day of hanging at ‘the shrine’.
Music, art, film, fashion, and all creative mediums are unified by a common theme: their ability to powerfully communicate, and engage people through narrative. Beyond the creative sector, brands and businesses would do well to understand that there is a direct correlation between on-going stories of African success, and the continent’s ability to attract money, and increase individual country-level GDP.
Proudly African, I believe in our ability to change our prospects through our creative power; and as the African saying goes “Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” Whether we love Beyonce or we are precious, one thing we cannot deny, she’s got the world talking Black is King and that’s more than any man or woman has done – as a deliberate strategy. This is what The Africa Soft Power Project is about.
I created the Africa Soft Power Project because I am passionate about using Africa’s soft power to transform her trajectory. And I found a kindred spirit in the extraordinary Obi Asika who is equally passionate about Nigeria and the continent, even though he may just be a tad crazier about our “village” Onitsha, a town by the River Niger which was “discovered” by the Scottish explorer, Mungo Park. My team at RDF have been equally phenomenal and our partners have jumped in without asking questions because we are all united in the understanding that we cannot allow the world to keep telling destructive stories about black people.
Along with the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder has exposed the real underbelly of racial prejudice and injustice globally. But these terrible things can also be an opportunity for rebirth. How do we emancipate ourselves from mental slavery caused by centuries of being told we were less? How do we reverse the stereotype, redefine the narrative? How do we cease this moment in history to build a true bridge between Africa and our African Diaspora in Brazil, in Cuba, in Haiti, in Jamaica, in the UK, in Europe, in America and everywhere? How do we use Soft Power to transform Africa’s trajectory for the benefit of all black people? We are convinced that, ultimately, when Africa is king, black people everywhere are stronger.
Yours truly,
Nkiru Balonwu
Africa Soft Power Series 13/08/20