On Tuesday March 31, 2020 Creative Business Network held the first regional National Partner Call with National Partners from the African continent. For those of you who don’t know, we are a network consisting of startups, institutions, investors, governments and many other stakeholders, all including 75+ countries around the world. The representatives of each of these countries are called National Partners; they are the ones that help the startups directly, because they each know their respective markets.  

Partners from Botswana, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia, came together in a Zoom meeting, to discuss the opportunities that Creative Business Summit Africa could pose for the promotion of their creative and cultural industries and the effect it could have within their countries.  

The goal of these calls is for the National Partners to meet, connect and collaborate with each other. Being a part of the same region has its advantages: you understand better the challenges your peers are facing; your proximity gives you the impression, that it is possible to work closer together –I mean this both literally and figuratively; and you can apply for funding opportunities together to keep the good ideas and actions running.  

What are we trying to do?

When you have a global network, it is nearly impossible to bring all represented countries together under the same roof – that is why we are trying to bring them together by having them on the same conference call, at least one region at a time.  

What did I, as Global Network Manager, learn from this call?

Being a part of Creative Business Network means that we should find our voice during these uncertain times. Our partners in Africa, represent, in my opinion, the most resilient continent, and they proved that during our call. They taught me how we should come together – especially right now. It is important that we show the world that creativity has never been more important. And finally, we want to hear what our National Partners want to develop this year with their Creative Business Cup while looking forward to the next Creative Business event.

About the author: Diego Jaén is the Global Network Manager at Creative Business Network. He has an educational background in communication and political sciences. With more than 5 years of experience in the development of entrepreneurial programs in Central America, Latin America, multi-regional and global level, he has worked with international and governmental funds to support the creative and cultural industries. His professional focus for the past 8 years, has been for the development of educational programs, business competitions and business model and validation tools.