By Adelia Saunders
In an exclusive interview with MediaGlobal’s Adelia Saunders, Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg, Chief of the Creative Economy and Industries Programme of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), discusses the development potential of creative economies and the findings in the Creative Economy Report 2008, launched in April 2008 at UNCTAD XII in Accra, Ghana.
MediaGlobal: The Creative Economy report highlights the potential for creative economies in developing countries, and it points to China, Brazil, India, and other countries of the South as benefiting from the creative industries. But the least developed of the developing countries are considerably behind, at least in terms of export profits. How can a creative economy exist in and benefit the world’s poorest countries?
Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg: I think this is why the creative economy is so important in our contemporary world, because for every single country there is something that can be highlighted through the creative economy. And what is important is that each country can do something different. Why? Because we are not only talking about ideas and creativity, but in these ideas and creativity you also have the reflection of your cultural heritage, of your cultural diversity.
We have very interesting examples, not only for the least developed countries, but also for the small island developing states. For instance, St. Lucia is a small island in the east Caribbean, and they have a jazz festival that they can only have in St. Lucia, because you have a mix of the traditional jazz, you have a mix of the Caribbean, so you have different influences [in] the music.
Each country can have one particular area of the creative industries in which they have a specialization, in which they have a tradition, in which they can be proud of. This is why we do believe that the creative economy is a feasible option for the least developed countries as well. Most of the poorest countries, their economies continue to be very dependent on one or two commodities. And we have been repeating to these countries that they have to diversify their economies, and they have been working hard to do so, but what are the constraints? The constraints are that they usually have a lack of a skilled labor force, they lack infrastructure, like roads, like transportation, and they have very low rates of foreign investment. So it’s not so easy to diversify the economy through the traditional development strategies.
When you talk about the creative industries and the creative economy, what is important is that the main inputs are creativity and ideas, particularly in the least developed countries, because they have so many constraints, they have to find ways of doing things that are consistent with their realities or with the resources that they have. And I think this is what the creative economy can capture — find[ing] in every single country what is the potential of the creative industries, and how you can really use this not only from the cultural perspective, but also from the economic and the social perspective. And it is this combination of the economic with the cultural and the social that really brings the creative economy as an option.
Q: Some economists have said that the development of the creative industries is slowed by that lack of infrastructure, which is needed to deliver creative products as well. How might countries of the South work together to build the infrastructure needed to deliver these products?
A: It’s a combination of things. At the national level it’s important to have in place the policies that will support the sector, and those policies should be multi-disciplinary. Because you cannot think of how you are going to strengthen creative capacities if you don’t have investments in place, if you don’t have entrepreneurial capacity. It’s also important to have a number of marketing strategies, training, access to key technologies [for entrepreneurs] to use and offer their products on the Internet.
In a number of developing countries, not only in Africa, this also happens in Latin America and Asia, we see a lot of the creative production is in the informal sector of the economy. And it’s very difficult to capture the amount of these products that are exported. So we don’t know exactly how those products really reach other markets. It’s important that you have policies in place that will assist governments in absorbing the informal sector into the formal sector. There is scope for cooperation not only at the North-South level, but also at the South-South level. And particularly in terms of the participation in exhibitions, in fairs, and cultural events.
It is very important to try to optimize the productive capacities in creative clusters, in which you usually have a big space, which can be shared by different artists, and you can invest in one medium — for instance equipment, and this equipment can be shared.
Q: In the report, the numbers listed for the remarkable rise in export profits from creative goods for developing countries primarily reflect trade in manufactured products like televisions and computers from China and other Asian countries. Do you see these figures as an accurate reflection of growth in the creative industries?
A: What we tried to [do] in the report was to bring together figures for trade. What I think we should keep in mind is that when we are talking about the creative industries, we are not talking about something new. What is new is the approach. All countries have always had music, dance, they’ve always had expressions of culture, they’ve always had a number of products that were expressions of culture. But what is new is the approach and I think this is why the report is a very important step in bringing together and trying to quantify, to have an indicator, of the impact of trade of creative products and services.
Through the report we have the first figures, for instance, for trade of art crafts and designs. And these two sectors are very important for developing countries. Not only from the point of view of the local production, but also because usually — a number of governments don’t realize — that even the market for art crafts is not a negligible market, and it has a quite important positive prospect for demand in the future, particularly because we are living in a moment in which you have more and more tourists traveling around the world. We have more leisure time for travel, and [people] will always be interested in buying art crafts or the specific products of different countries. So I think it’s very important for this report to show these figures.
But what is also very important, what we emphasize in this report, is that the numbers are important, but also very important is what the numbers are not able to capture. For instance, when you talk about the music industry, the figures that we present in the report, are underestimated. Why? Because we are talking about trade of CDs, but we know that today more important than the trade of CDs, is the trade of digitized products, which means the trade via Internet, via mobile telephone, that we cannot capture.
In the case of China — it’s a very interesting example of how they managed to make and bring together traditional products with modern products. We can see that in China they are trying to make this move from the “Made in China” to “Created in China.”
Q: What does it mean for a country to market its culture?
A: I don’t think we want to emphasize only the marketing aspects — and I think this is the whole point. When we presented the report, what we wanted to emphasize is the overall development dimension of the creative economy. We are not only thinking in terms of exports or trade, but we are also looking to aspects linked to culture, because what is important in the creative economy is that these goods not only have a commodity value but also a cultural value, and a symbolic value. When we look into the creative economy we are not looking exclusively from the economic point of view or exclusively from the cultural point of view. We are trying to see the balance between the economic, the cultural, the social and the technological aspects of all these products.
One of the main conclusions of the study is that there is no fix-all recipe, but that each country has to make some strategic choices and decide what is the creative sector that they should focus on, and what are the areas that they should really try to promote better, and how are the products [made that they will be] better placed in different markets.
When you talk about the emergence of the film industry in Nigeria, the “Nollywood” story shows how developing countries can be creative even if they’re too small to be engaged in the [world] market. Because what happens? You have a big country like Nigeria that has a big population that would like to see films about their own stories, that have the actors that they know. When you think of the Indian film industry [it’s] the same thing, it started because it was a reflection of the need and domestic demand for the film industry, and then they started to export.
So, we are not only looking to the exports and the trade. We look to all aspects in terms of bringing opportunities for the creation of jobs, of social inclusion, particularly for the youth and for the women. We emphasized the figures for trade because we want to sensitize the governments to the importance of the sector, but not only for trade. It’s for the development dimension altogether.
The message of the report is that we should really try to see the different aspects—in particular because you have linkages, at the market level, at the micro level, with technology [and] culture. We see the creative economy as a possible development strategy that can assist governments in trying to achieve their development goals.