Thursday April 23 was International Creator Day. You would be forgiven for not knowing. It lacks institutional backing.
But its founder, Andrew Moore-Crispin, saw something vital: the power of creators to reshape economies.
Globally, creator ecosystems declared nearly R7.4-trillion in revenues over five years. This year alone, R4.99-trillion is projected.
Where is the Eastern Cape in this story? Nowhere close enough.
If we use the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index, we fall short on any of its four pillars: economic and institutional regime, education and human resources, innovation systems, as well as information and communication technology (ICT).
Respectfully, each pillar dictates focus areas that comprise:
- Institutions offering incentives and frameworks for knowledge use and entrepreneurship;
- Education to build a skilled population capable of creating and using knowledge;
- Innovation that connects firms, universities, and research centres to create and adapt knowledge; and
- ICT that enables knowledge creation, dissemination, and processing.
A priority for the Eastern Cape is the strengthening of the education and skills pillar, especially technical and digital literacy, alongside innovation systems that connect universities, start-ups, and industries.
ICT infrastructure is relatively advanced in urban areas but needs expansion into rural regions to fully unlock the knowledge economy’s potential.
Our dual-reality economy has world-class potential locked inside 42% unemployment and crumbling infrastructure.
But the creator economy isn’t a magic pill. It’s an opportunity to exploit what we have in abundance: intellectual assets.
Here is what most commentators, like myself, often miss: The Eastern Cape already had a functioning creator economy more than two centuries ago.
Enter project consultant Sibusiso Mnyanda. Through his curatorial research at Victory of the Word (VOW), and his work with the preservers and custodians of the Lovedale Press Legacy — in assistance with the Lovedale Press Trust — Mnyanda has systematically redesigned how we understand knowledge economies.
The Lovedale Press was established in 1823 in the Eastern Cape.
It was one of Africa’s first indigenous publishing houses.
It produced isiXhosa newspapers, school textbooks, and literary works.
It trained local writers, editors, and printers.
It created intellectual property — copyrights, trademarks, and a literary canon — that belonged to the Eastern Cape.
That is a creator economy, albeit not a digital one nor a Silicon Valley one. A real, grounded, asset-based creator economy.
Mnyanda’s contribution is not archival. It is a systematic design.
Through VOW, he is helping the Lovedale Press Trust digitise that legacy, license that intellectual property, and connect today’s Eastern Cape creators — heritage custodians, cultural practitioners, artists, innovators — to that lineage.
That is the knowledge historiography economy: recognising that creators have always been here.
At Ikhuba Afrika, we define creators broadly: heritage custodians, cultural practitioners, artists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and knowledge holders.
They turn ideas and traditions into intellectual property, enterprises, and community wealth.
Our embracing creators is not sentimental, it is strategic.
We seek to contribute to or create ecosystems that capacitate them with the knowledge and tools required to secure and manage their intellectual property.
The real question: will we finally stop our knowledge capital from leaving the province?
VOW’s work at Lovedale Press proves we already have the systematic design blueprint and the Lovedale Press legacy as our foundation.
Public institution support and political will is what is lacking.
International Creator Day is one day. Building a creator-led economy in the Eastern Cape is the work of a generation.
Partnering with VOW is a step in a million that Ikhuba Afrika has undertaken in achieving its vision of positioning the Eastern Cape as a hub for intellectual assets development and creator empowerment.
Through these collaborations is how we will build a creator‑led economy that is both rooted and future‑focused
The entity has at beneficiary level sets of coordinated initiatives designed to improve the province’s creation profile, strengthen intellectual asset management, and stimulate local creator-driven economies.
This ensures structured pathways from concept to commercial and cultural expression — “the mind to market movement”.
International Creator Day is more than a symbolic marker. It is a reminder of the Eastern Cape’s creator economy DNA.
The gaps exposed by the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index model point us to deep cracks that we have to mend.
In response, our collective actions should point us to address:
- Intellectual property rights, quality of regulatory controls, openness to trade, and corruption-free governance through our institutions;
- Incorporation of the many who are excluded from the digital opportunity owing to poor literacy levels and access to tertiary education;
- Inadequate research and development spending, registering of patents, sluggish collaboration networks, and non-existent venture capital that limit translation of ideas into industries;
- And while internet penetration, mobile subscriptions, broadband access, and ICT infrastructure have advanced in pockets, the digital divide still locks rural creators out of global markets.
Challenges highlighted here are not a verdict of failure. They are a call to action as our creators are already producing value.
What is missing is the systemic design to protect, scale, and circulate that value within the province.
We don’t have to go far to build the next generation economy.
Work at Lovedale Press Trust shows us how: digitise the legacy, license the intellectual property, and connect today’s creators to yesterday’s lineage. That is how we stop our knowledge capital from leaving.
Through these collaborations is how we will build a creator‑led economy that is both rooted and future‑focused.
Mncedi Thamsanqa Mgwigwi, co-founder: Ikhuba Afrika nonprofit organisation
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