Money and culture rarely find themselves around the same boardroom table when the management accounts are reviewed. Yet the marketplace offers enough proof that they belong together.
Consider Nando’s. Few companies have shown more clearly that art and commerce can strengthen each other. Its investment in art has travelled with the brand as it has grown across the world. As co-founder Robbie Brozin puts it: “South African creativity is one of our greatest untapped exports. For Nando’s, investing in artists has always been part of building global value, not separate from it.”
South African executives believe in growth, but are far more cautious when it comes to backing it.
The 2025 KPMG Africa CEO Outlook shows 63% of CEOs remain optimistic about growth. At the same time, the Reserve Bank’s September 2025 quarterly bulletin records R1.8-trillion held in cash deposits by nonfinancial companies as at July 2025.
The money exists; harder to find is the readiness to place some of it where new value is taking shape. Even if only a fraction of that cash can be put to work, the opportunity is still large.
The Creative Futures Africa Summit in October 2025 was convened inside that tension. Brought together by Business & Arts South Africa (Basa) and Jozi My Jozi (JMJ) alongside Andani.Africa, Creative Capital and others, it asked a question. If money is available, why does so little of it reach creative work in ways that help it last?
Ninel Musson of Creative Capital points to her earlier work with the late rapper AKA as proof that creativity can travel when the right support is in place. Through clearer rights, catalogue management and partnerships, his music became work that could earn and travel beyond South Africa’s borders.
This is not soft power. It is economics, not cultural policy.
A song, film, design archive or body of visual work does not depend on ports or rail to begin earning. It depends on rights, distribution and relationships. The International Finance Corporation puts the return at $2.50 for every $1 invested in the creative economy.
Joburg’s inner city offers an example of what happens when culture arrives before confidence.
Long before anyone had language for the creative economy, the Market Theatre complex, Constitution Hill and later the Maboneng precinct followed a recognisable pattern. Culture moved in. People followed. Spending followed them.
Sadie’s Bistro offers a more recent version of that story. Chef Julian Ribeiro opened his restaurant in the CBD, placing craft and money in the heart of Main Street. He did not wait for confidence. He helped create it.
That kind of renewal carries its own tension. It can create worth, while also pushing people out. JMJ’s focus on education and civic spaces suggests an effort to keep that from becoming the familiar outcome.
Art is not enough on its own. You must know how to position it
— Amogelang Pila Ditlhale
If JMJ shows what culture can do once money is in motion, Basa works earlier in the story. Basa CEO Beth Arendse argues that the problem isn’t capital availability, it’s understanding. Investors want measurable risk-adjusted returns. Artists resist reducing their work to cash flow projections. Neither side is wrong.
Amogelang Pila Ditlhale, a multidisciplinary artist from North West, chose not to sit still inside that gap. Through Basa’s Cultural Producers Programme, she built relationships that opened doors for her practice. “Art is not enough on its own. You must know how to position it,” she says.
When creative work is judged by only one kind of return, much of what it gives slips from view. Yet it carries economic, social and civic weight all at once. Lonwabo Mavuso of Andani.Africa returns to that point. Without dependable information, hesitation deepens.
Mammatli Thakhuli-Nzuza’s Creative Industries Marketing Stockvel shows another way through. In Sedibeng, she adapted the rotational savings model for the performing arts, bringing six independent producers together to pool resources and stage works. They tracked ticket sales and audience behaviour as they went. Data, in this case, did not strip the work of life. It helped the work stand.
Independent filmmaker Rae Human describes a similar turn. After delayed public funding, she and her peers launched the Roots Film Festival in the Western Cape, leaning into community screenings and private partnerships to rebuild local cinema culture. “Working with government can take the wind out of your sails,” she says. Instead of waiting, they created new conditions for the work to continue.
For those around the boardroom table, this is where the question sharpens. If money is sitting still while creative work keeps proving its worth, caution has become an alibi for inertia.
The next Creative Futures Africa Summit is in July. Before then, those with money to spare will have to decide whether they mean to keep watching or place some of it with artists, festivals and institutions already showing what can be built. At some point, hesitation becomes an answer.
Enslin is a Joburg-based CA (SA), writer and photographer whose work explores the intersections of culture, place and economic life
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