A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Political Economy of the Nigerian Creative Arts Sector

The Nigerian creative arts sector operates within a specific political economy characterised by state arts funding insufficiency, private patronage concentration, international market asymmetries, intellectual property weakness, and informal sector dominance, yet no theoretical framework has been constructed to systematically explain the dynamics of this specific political economy and its implications for creative arts development. This study developed an original theoretical framework for the political economy of the Nigerian creative arts sector. A political economy theoretical methodology drawing on cultural industries theory, postcolonial political economy, and African capitalism studies was employed, supplemented by primary empirical grounding through structured interviews with 40 stakeholders across the value chain from artists and craft producers to gallery operators, festival organisers, arts administrators, policy makers, and collectors. Comparative political economy analysis examined the Nigerian arts sector against comparable creative economy frameworks from South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya, identifying both shared structural features and Nigeria-specific dynamics. The original Nigerian Creative Arts Political Economy Framework proposes five structural dynamics: concentration-periphery geography (the dominance of Lagos as creative economy capital and its extractive relationship with regional creative productivity), informal sector creative commons (the productive but unprotected informal creative economy that underpins formal sector output), patronage system dependency (the role of wealthy individual patronage in substituting for absent institutional funding), colonial aesthetic inheritance (the market premium on Western validation of Nigerian creative work), and digital disintermediation pressure (the transformative force of digital platforms on traditional arts market hierarchies). Expert review confirmed the framework's original theoretical contribution.