The Convene r of the African Music Festival (AMFEST), Kayode Adebayo, says the creative industry can only survive the effects of CO­VID-19 by embracing fresh ideas and strategies.

Adebayo disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan.

According to him, the industry has lost huge revenue to the COVID-19 ravaging the country.

” Entrepreneurs in the industry would have to de­vise means to keep them­selves afloat at this trying time.

“How they will be able to survive this time requires a lot of work, strategy as well as new and fresh ideas and some may take the option of educating themselves on other approaches to make ends meet.

“What has been lost in the creative industry is to the tune of multi billion dollars, especially as the pandemic came at the time when Africa was strongly becoming a force to reckon with at the international level.

“It came at a time when our music, fashion, food and arts have come to a place where demand for it has started to really grow and we became stakehold­ers that people want to reckon with on the global stage,” he said.

Adebayo, who is also the President of Kayode Ade­bayo Media Africa (KAM Africa), said the pandemic had impacted on the grow­ing creative industry, with people first considering basic needs of survival before secondary desires.

He, however, noted that some aspects of the cre­ative industry would ex­perience growth if technol­ogy was embraced.

” For instance, the fash­ion industry will continue to receive support from stakeholders.

” For example, the gov­ernment of Oyo State con­tracted sewing of face masks to practitioners in the industry.

“But industry practitio­ners must become inno­vative. What margin were they able to generate from the masks?

“It is not that they are able to create a product with high margins and sell it as high as they would before the advent of CO­VID-19,” he said.

He also said reports indi­cated that the music indus­try would suffer 30 percent loss in 2020, adding that ” this is because live music on stage is one of the high­est earning aspect of the music industry.”

“The live aspect of it which is one of the strong areas that Africa and Nige­ria in particular earn high from will shrink.

“This means no concerts, shows and social gather­ings to sing at for a good number of months,” Ade­bayo said.