NCBA Creative Economy Support empowers musicians with funding, mentorship, and financial tools, turning talent into sustainable careers.
Kenya’s creative economy has become a significant part of the national output. However, too many artists never get off the starting block. Talent is visible across the music, digital storytelling and live performance industries but yet the leap from raw skill to sustainable work is so hard to make. It’s worth noting that the biggest barrier is structural as mst creators operate informally, they lack capital and are therefore unable to meet the traditional collaterals requirements that define commercial lending.
This gap has caused wasted potential for artists for years. These artists may have strong catalogues, engaged audiences and steady bookings but with no business profile , their prospects continue remaining limited.
NCBA has taken these realities seriously by building a model that studies creative income cycles on their own terms rather than comparing them to conventional employment.
The Elev8 Live collaboration between NCBA(as part of their ‘Change the Story’ sustainability commitments) and Motif Di Don finally provides rising musicians with a facility to produce, test and refine their craft. This platform allows recordings, performances and sessions to create a development pipeline that has never existed on this scale in the country. Musicians get mentorship, production guidance, financial education and professional environments where their ideas can mature.
Elev8 is also pragmatic. The bank has said that creative work has intellectual property value that can be assessed as part f an artists financial profile. It is a direction that follows the global shift towards treating masters, catalogues and licensing potential as real economic assets.
At the recent NCBA Creative Economy Summit, the bank and HEVA Fund launched financing products aimed at acknowledging project cycles and sporadic income streams. Such products include events financing, invoice discounting, working capital facilities, LPO financing and incubator support that offers early stage creative businesses a larger financial door. These options widen the financial doorway for artists who beforehand hand depended solely on personal savings or informal borrowing.
This shared risk model between NCBA and HEVA ensures that both institutions evaluate projects together, a growing confidence in the sectors commercial viability. This si ana acknowledgment that creative work generates value in ways that standard lending metrics often miss.
See also – NCBA HEVA Creative Financing Empowers Kenya’s Artists
NCBA’s approach go beyond credit. The bank has continued running financial literacy programs where musicians learn contract negotiation, planning of revenue streams, management of seasonal income and building of saving habits that support stability. These interventions address a long standing challenge where artists earn but struggle to maintain financial footing due to limited guidance.
By rooting these programs within Elev8 Live, NCBA connects talent development to financial empowerment resulting in one pipeline where artists gain not nly creative disciple but also business discipline, which improves their chances of turning short-term attention into a steady career.
Kenya hosts a deep pool of musicians who, with a proper platform, are able to not only compete locally but also globally. Many have only lacked capital to produce quality work or scale their ideas. NCBA’s investment recognises that creativity is not a side activity, but it is a profession with commercial value and the potential to support thousands of livelihoods. With the growth of Elev8 and as the financing suite reaches more artists, a new footing is gained within the sector. Musicians can now approach a financial institution that understands their reality and has created the instruments to respect the nature of creative income. This is the approach taken towards a nation where talent shall not be prejudiced by the absence of collateral but empowered through a system built for creative work.
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