Asika: Potential of Africa’s event economy is huge

Afro Nation co-founder Obi Asika discussed his ambitions for the pioneering festival during Easol’s new masterclass series.

Since launching in 2019, Afro Nation has become the world’s biggest Afrobeats festival, spawning editions in Accra (Ghana), Miami (US), Detroit (US), Portimão (Portugal) and Balneario De Carolina (Puerto Rico). A Mexican edition had also been planned for September 2020, before the pandemic intervened.

Later this year, the festival will debut in Lagos, Nigeria – a country with “huge potential” according to Asika.

“Lagos is a huge one for us,” he said, during last week’s Creators in Session. “It’s been in the making – mentally, for me – for years. I feel like it opens up the whole continent and the whole country.

“There’s so much potential there – restaurants and clubs are packed – but large-scale events have been where things fall down. I’d love to prove the point that something large-scale can be done safely and in a quality way in Lagos because I think that would open up a lot of opportunities for everybody.”

“Lagos is a huge one for [Afro Nation]… it opens up the whole continent and the whole country”

Launching in Nigeria was also a personal goal for the British-Nigerian executive, who said that big agencies lacked knowledge about the market.

“In big agencies, I’d always hear conversations about promoters and they’d treat Nigeria a lot like Dubai or Saudi Arabia now where people ask for like three times the amount of money,” he said. “It really used to affect me, what I used to hear about it because obviously the promoters are not used to dealing with us. A lot of people made mistakes or didn’t understand how certain things work or certain deals work. I want to get respect for the continent.”

Outside of Africa, Asika said his sights are set on Brazil for further expansion of the Afro Nation brand. “We went to see [a location] and we love the idea. Once we’ve done Brazil, the loop will be closed. That, to me, will be an incredibly special show.”

In just four years, Afro Nation has achieved aggressive expansion but Asika, who is also the co-founder of Event Horizon and co-head of UTA’s UK office, said it wasn’t originally his intention.

“It wasn’t about doing a festival,” he explained. “It was about proving a point to the artist. As an agent, you’re trying to prove tickets. You take acts to certain levels to prove their worth and in the end, the big money made is at the festivals.

“I used to do Afro Nation for the artists, I don’t anymore…”

“We did some shows with Wizkid [who is represented by UTA] and we’d go back and say ‘He’s worth this now’ and I’d get knocked back. We got to the O2 arena [in London] with a show and that was basically Wiz’s headline show but we put a lineup underneath to make it a bigger ticket, like a festival, for the fans. Wiz came up with the name Afro Republic and I trademarked the whole thing. The partners were me, him and his manager.

“It was such a huge amount of work for me as an individual. You’re dealing with acts from different countries, who have not worked at these sorts of venues, and need visas etc. And then after the show, Wiz and his manager fell out and decided the brand was dead. I was so pissed off.”

Asika decided to call up SMADE, who promoted Afro Republic alongside Live Nation, and enlist him to help keep the idea alive. They would call the new incarnation Afro Nation.

“Then I called up Denis Desmond [head of Live Nation UK and Ireland] and told him about it. I asked if he wanted to be involved and he said ‘Yes, I’m going to buy it now’ and he did.”

The first edition of Afro Nation took place in Portimão’s Praia da Rocha beach in 2019, followed swiftly by an instalment in Ghana later that year.

“I’d rather not do [Afro Nation] than do it on the cheap”

“I don’t know how we got through [the Ghana edition] at times,” he said. “But it happened through the grit and determination of this team. I wanted to show the potential of the continent. That is a gift and a curse because it gets us into mad situations sometimes.

“Then we did Puerto Rico [in 2022] which was another challenging situation but it was a much easier location to do than Ghana. Pre-Covid, Puerto Rico was not a place that Americans visited much. But in Covid, a lot of Americans went because it was easier to get to. At the time we picked it, it was a perfect location because they needed events like ours – they don’t anymore.”

The Puerto Rico event didn’t return in 2023 but the Afro Nation team have kept busy with 2023 editions in Portugal and the US, alongside preparations for the Lagos debut. And while the brand has stayed the same, continuing to showcase Afrobeats hip-hop, R&B, amapiano, dancehall and reggae, Asika says the intention behind it has changed.

“I used to do Afro Nation for the artists, I don’t anymore… I do it for the customers,” he said. “For me, as a proud English person and a proud African who was often a minority, seeing the people who come to our show and what it means to them to be represented is why I’m so set on the quality of the brand. I’d rather not do it than do it on the cheap. I’d rather not do it for money.”

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