Applications are invited for a 4-year funded PhD studentship on “Afro beats and Afro bytes: the global development of West Africa music and the role of digital and platform economies.”
The researcher will be based in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI), King’s College London and co-supervised by Professor Roberta Comunian (Professor of Creative Economies in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries) and Dr Eka Ikpe (Director of the African Leadership Centre and Reader in Development Economics in Africa).
This project seeks to understand how Afro-beats music producers in West Africa deploy productive forces (knowledge, technology, capital) and inputs to create social, economic and cultural value for domestic and global markets and how this influence socioeconomic change. Creative economies enable broader readings of value across economic, social and cultural spheres, presenting opportunities for conceptual innovation in this project. Current debates on global production such as with global value chains have tended to neglect ideas of lead firms in Africa due to narrow understandings of value. The project, therefore, aims to move beyond visions of Africa as resource-constrained to focus on creativity, ideas and innovation, including in sustainability, emerging across the continent.
Centring the creative economy makes a forward-looking intervention in considering economic, social and cultural development in Africa and globally. This rapidly growing sector with outputs outpacing other industries, is steered by digitisation, urbanisation, youth and South-South trade, and could reach 10% of GDP globally by 2030 (Buchkolz 2021; UNDP 2023). In Africa it is also prioritised as a key context for examining contemporary and future socioeconomic transformation (World Bank 2021; Africa Export Import Bank (Afrexim) 2021). This project seeks to understand how musicians and music producers in West Africa engage with digital technologies and platform economies to shape new social, economic and cultural development in domestic and global markets. The project engages with the theoretical framework of ‘lead firms from below’ to challenge, deepen and enrich debates on Global Value Chains/Production Networks in the music industry. It also explores how knowledge, technology and capital are deployed and intertwined across scales (urban, national and beyond). It will look specifically at the intermediary role played by digital platforms to consider how they might enable or hinder new business models in the creation, distribution and revenue generation/capture from creative content. The project moves beyond visions of Africa as resource-constrained to focus on creativity, ideas and innovation.
The key research question will be: What processes and platforms underpin creation, distribution and revenue generation for West African music producers in domestic and international markets?
The project is connected to the establishment of the new Africa Europe CoRE (Cluster of Research Excellence) on Creative Economies at King’s College London, with interdisciplinary collaborations being established across African partners. This project can also benefit from an established collaboration already in place with the University of Lagos (Nigeria).
Established in 1829, King's College London is a non-profit public higher education institution located in the urban setting of the metropolis of London (population range of over 5,000,000 inhabitants). Officially accredited and/or recognized by the Privy Council, King's College London (KCL) is a large (uniRank enrollment range: 25,000-29,999 students) coeducational higher education institution. King's College London (KCL) offers courses and programs leading to officially recognized higher education degrees such as bachelor degrees, master degrees, doctorate degrees in several areas of study. See the uniRank degree levels and areas of study matrix below for further details. International applicants are eligible to apply for enrollment.