The Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the Federal Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the British Council and the Tony Elumelu Foundation to develop the creative industry.
Mohammed spoke on Friday night in Lagos at the maiden edition of the Rasheed Gbadamosi Eko Art Expo organised by the Lagos State Government.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Art Expo was in memory of Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi who died in November 2016 and also to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the state coming up in May.
“The MoU with the British Council will enable us improve capacity building, and between February 28 and March 6, we are training festival managers drawn from 40 major festivals across the country,” NAN quoted the minister as saying at the forum.
“We have also been able to succeed in getting a grant to do a scoping of the cultural industry.
“With this, we know exactly which industry is prevalent well.”
He said with Tony Elumelu Foundation, the federal government would create, for the first time, a task force on creative economy.
“What we want is to transit from creative industry to creative economy and the task force is going to be co-chaired by somebody in the private sector.
“Today, most of our creative artistes, all they have is raw talents; they are very bad business people and they need to work with the private sector to create very workable business models, get new markets and new clientele,” the minister said.
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