Protect Africa's artists or their music will die

Five decades of US$2.3-trillion in aid has failed to help Africans. Life expectancy across Africa has fallen and average incomes are lower now than they were in the '60s, or about the same in South Africa.

As the financial crisis spreads, governments around the world want to seize control of the economy to save us all. Instead of treading down this well beaten ó and expensive ó path yet again, African governments must unleash the talents and abilities of their creators and entrepreneurs, including peasants, their manufacturers and their hugely popular but under-rewarded musicians.

Outside South Africa, most African legal systems fail to protect the intellectual property that musicians already produce, preventing this potential from flourishing. Creative sectors contribute more than 11% to GDP in the world's wealthiest countries. In Africa overall, they barely register 1%.

Senegal, for example, has been a trading hub for centuries, where different languages and ethnic groups have contributed to a rich culture throbbing with music.

But in spite of its popularity, this talent is not thriving in its homeland as it could and should because of Senegal's weak legal infrastructure. According to the World Bank's recent Africa Music Project, just 'a dozen' of more than 30000 musicians in Dakar achieve any success abroad.

Earning less than 800 a year, the average Senegalese musician is even poorer than the average Senegalese.

Senegal's problems are depressingly common. Apart from a few pockets of commercial success, talent is unrewarded. For every international celebrity such as Nigeria's King Sunny AdÈ or Mali's late Ali Farka TourÈ, thousands live in destitution at home.

Piracy is the most visible problem. In some West African countries, 90% of recorded music is pirated. No African country has restricted this trade to less than a destructive 25% of the market, even South Africa. While popular Western music is widely copied, local musicians suffer the most.

Sidiku Buari, former president of the Musicians' Union of Ghana, says: 'A musician will do his music and somebody else reframes it and gets all the money in his pocket.'

Piracy is only part of the failure of the rule of law: recording companies underpay musicians and renege on agreements, radio stations ignore licence fees for tunes they air, governments impose special taxes on live performances, and most royalty agencies are state-owned or politically influenced.

Ghanaian musician and activist Carlos Sakyi has accused the state Copyright Society of Ghana of stealing money owed to the artists it compulsorily represents: 'The sad news is that musicians have no idea what they are due, what is in the coffers for them, or how their monies are invested.'

In Malawi, 'the laxity of the law has aggravated the problem, thereby leaving the musicians with few options,' says the Daily Times's Clifton Kawanga, who has often criticised the Copyright Society of Malawi.

African musicians get the worst deal. High piracy and poor licensing arrangements are the symptoms, and the lack of copyright enforcement is the disease, caused by failed civil and criminal legal systems.

The failure to enforce copyright renders worthless the only assets that artists own, their songs. Making money from their craft remains a dream and the incentives to invest in musicians disappear.

This failure has destroyed once-celebrated music industries in West Africa and has damaged development in the remaining musical hot spots, even in South Africa.

Paradoxically, most commercial African music is recorded and produced in London and Paris.

But a surprising inspiration can be found in distant Nashville in the US. In what was the poorest area of the country, with malaria affecting 30% of the population, Appalachia was particularly vulnerable to the Great Depression of the '30s. But as in Africa today, the government of the day believed in spending its way out of the crisis and established a Tennessee Valley Authority to oversee major infrastructure projects.

Some of these projects led to new highways and dams, but the authority rarely met its grandiose promises and, after frittering away billions of taxpayers' dollars, the authority became synonymous with corruption and waste.

But Nashville found success anyway, thanks to something the politicians had overlooked: music.

Country music could never have succeeded without the region's rich musical heritage, but turning this barely known talent into a marketable product was thanks only to the existing legal conditions, and copyright in particular.

Copyright safeguarded the investment by Ralph Peer, the entrepreneur behind the pioneering Bristol Recording Sessions in 1927, which became known as the 'Big Bang' of modern country music. It safeguarded the rights of the Nashville musicians who recorded what became the first nationwide country hits ó and all who followed.

Johnny Cash called the Bristol Sessions 'the single most important event that ever took place in the history of music'.

Given the right conditions, some entrepreneurs in Africa have already shown they can do the same. After its music industry collapsed 15 years ago, Zambia bolstered its copyright law. With an eye for local talent, Chisha Folotiya then established Mondo Music Records in 1999, revitalising the industry.

Like Peer in Nashville, Folotiya has paved the way for others, unleashing what he calls an 'exponential growth in the amount of Zambian music being produced in the past seven years, and also in the consumption and the appreciation of it'.

Folotiya understands the potential. 'We want Zambian music to contribute towards the economic development of our country,' he says.

Africa's musicians are already better placed than Nashville's early folk singers to achieve commercial success because of the widespread adulation for their talent.

For example, John Collins of the School of Performing Arts in Ghana estimates the Ghanaian music industry alone could generate 53-million a year from foreign sales. Nigeria's information and communications minister, John Odey, predicts that his country's film, music and software sectors could be worth $4-billion annually.

They may be optimistic, but Zambia has 'registered success and that could offer free lessons to us', says Cliff Kawanga in Malawi ó but only if legal systems can enforce copyrights and contracts and repress piracy.

South Africa has long been a good example, although piracy is a rising danger. With huge talents such as the late Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Soweto Gospel Choir and many others, it has the continent's most developed music industry.

These talents could flourish because they are protected by a relatively strong legal system: according to the International Property Rights (IPR) Index, South's Africa IPR protection is 22nd out of 115 countries. This applies to most industries, from software to agricultural research and pharmaceuticals, as well as consumers' rights: you may not mind buying illegal CDs, but you do mind getting fake brake discs or medicines.

Protecting intellectual property rights are not the only condition for growth in Africa, but policymakers should be excited by how quickly humble country music found commercial success.

It now generates 6-billion annually for Nashville, spawning growth in other sectors, from tourism to healthcare.

Creators are also entrepreneurs, even if they are playing in beer halls. And, like every business, they need economic freedom with economic rights.

State-sponsored spending sprees did not lead to Nashville's country boom, but the state can lay the right foundations by upholding contract law, independent courts and law enforcement, which will allow entrepreneurs, artisans, workers, farmers and musicians to sow, reap, manufacture or sell successfully.

Without those foundations, the music dies.

Schultz is professor at Southern Illinois University School of Law, US. Van Gelder works at International Policy Network, a London-based development think-tank. Their study, Nashville in Africa, was launched in South Africa in November.