David Adeleke and the Business of Culture – THISDAYLIVE

Vanessa Obioha writes that media entrepreneur and founder of Communiqué, David Adeleke, remains relentless in his ambition to build a multimillion-dollar media company.

David Adeleke is on a roll.

In the past few months, he has unveiled one product after another to the thousands of subscribers who follow Communiqué, the newsletter he founded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Just this morning, I received a newsletter announcing Creative Capital, a video essay series exploring the people, companies and forces shaping Africa’s media and creative landscape.

According to him, “Creative Capital is an extension of what we’ve built over the past six years: longform, data-driven, narrative essays.”

In May, he launched the Communiqué’s Inner Circle, inviting readers to directly support the editorial work undertaken by him and his team.

In a few days’ time, he will be in London to host Communiqué IRL. It will be the first time the event is taking place outside the continent. Paris is expected to follow later in the year.

“We realised it’s time to build bridges where Africans in the diaspora who are actively shaping the creative economy can connect, share, and contribute to ongoing conversations,” he wrote in the newsletter announcing the event themed ‘Bridging the Gap between the U.K and Africa’s Creative Economy.’

It sometimes feels like only yesterday that Adeleke sat behind his laptop and started the Communiqué newsletter. Those early days, as he often describes them, were a labour of love. It was just him, his ideas and a laptop.

By late 2021, he began building a team. The first person he employed, he recalled, was a young woman named Sarah. The newsletter continued to grow, and by 2022, he had begun curating events to complement advertising revenue. The first edition of Creators Circle took place that year in partnership with Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB).

Today, however, Communiqué has transitioned into something much bigger. The newsletter is only one of several ways Adeleke engages his audience. The company has grown into a media and intelligence platform offering research, advisory, and community-building services focused on Africa’s culture and creative industries. Last year, Communiqué was among the partners that worked on the Nigeria Creator Economy Report 2025.

But Adeleke did not just arrive at the creative economy by accident. Trained in Mass Communication at Covenant University, he began his career as a business and technology journalist, working across various publications and holding editorial roles. Technology journalism, where he spent much of his early career, he admitted, never felt like home.

“I never really felt at home with tech,” he told me when we spoke in February. “I don’t know why. I don’t even think I was great at tech journalism, but I have always been a very good business journalist.”

What consistently captured his attention, however, was culture and the economic systems that sustained it. He became fascinated by questions of ownership, value creation and who ultimately profited from African creativity.

The more he examined the landscape, the more convinced he became that Africans were underestimating one of their most valuable assets. While the world consumed African music, film, fashion and digital content, he believed too few Africans were paying attention to the structures of ownership, investment and value creation behind them.

“I’m deeply embedded in the business of culture, and what I saw then was that other people were benefiting from our culture. Either we were blind to these opportunities, or we were lackadaisical about them.”

That realisation would eventually shape both his writing and his entrepreneurial ambitions.

He began channelling his business-reporting background into the culture and creative economy, using Communiqué as the platform for his emerging ideas. Rather than complain about the gap he observed, he wrote about the media industry, the creative sector and the emerging creator economy. At the time, the creator economy had not entered mainstream conversations.

One article in particular, ‘How to Think About Africa’s Creator Economy,’ published in 2021, was pivotal. It introduced many readers to the kind of work Communiqué was doing.

“It got me into a lot of conversations. I met some interesting people.”

The response was overwhelmingly positive, especially regarding the depth of research and intellectual rigour behind the work. Adeleke said those qualities have remained hallmarks of Communiqué’s reports and analysis.

As of last year, Nigeria’s creator economy was valued at $31.2 million and is projected to grow significantly in the coming years. While the sector’s potential is undeniable, Adeleke believes Nigerians have yet to fully benefit from its opportunities.

One challenge, he noted, is the shortage of local investment, with much of the funding in the sector coming from foreign sources.

“The problem is that we don’t have the luxury of investing in things that cannot guarantee immediate returns. Secondly, even when we have the means, we don’t always have access to the information and data required to make informed decisions. Simple questions like what companies are active in a particular sector or which country offers the best investment opportunities are not easily answerable.”

To bridge that knowledge gap, Adeleke said he and his team are working on a new product scheduled for release later this year or in early 2027. The product will help investors make more informed decisions about opportunities within the creative economy.

He also believes the sector requires greater international collaboration, which is one reason he is intentionally taking Communiqué IRL beyond the African continent.

Despite the challenges, the media entrepreneur is encouraged by the progress already made.

“We are seeing a lot more investor interest and activity. We are seeing local actors taking their destinies into their own hands. People are developing solutions to solve local problems.”

His ambition, however, remains larger than any single product, event or report. Adeleke wants to build a multimillion-dollar media company that changes lives.

“I want to build a company that changes people’s lives, makes other people rich and gives them a good life,” he said.

More specifically, he wants Communiqué to become a place where talented people can thrive.

“I want my employees to say in the next five or six years that their lives improved mentally and materially as a result of working with Communiqué.”

He is quick to acknowledge that he is not building that future alone. From the writers to the research and advisory teams, Adeleke credits the people around him for helping bring his vision to life.

Seventy years from now, he hopes to look back on a life in which every gift and opportunity entrusted to him was used to make a meaningful difference.
“I want people to say that I lived an impactful life.”