How Artists in Africa are Leveraging NFTs for a New Kind of Monetization

You might be wondering what all the rave is about Non-fungible token (NFT). The world wasn’t done soaking in the allure of cryptocurrencies before NFTs hit the art scene creating a major paradigm shift in the industry. Here in Africa, we are observing an emerging adoption of NFTs. 

Non-fungible means that it’s highly unique and irreplaceable. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are fungible because you can trade one for another and still have the same thing. However, trading an NFT will mean you get a different unique artwork in return. They are digital assets that represent art, photos, videos, in-game items, etc. You can read this full guide on how NFTs work. 

We’ve seen millions of dollars spent on NFTs, like when someone bought Beeple’s video for $6.6 million. There’s also the $390,000 purchase of a  50-second video by Grimes. 

Amid concerns surrounding the stability of NFTs, the digital asset promises better monetization of artworks for artists across the world. With NFTs artists can receive unlimited royalties on their artwork. It also stores a detailed history of the ownership of an art piece. 

NFTs in Africa

South Africa made the news for its effort in leveraging NFTs. Artists and museums in the African nation are looking to use NFTs to transform the buying and selling of artworks. Yesterday, South Africa-based marketplace Latitudes, made their first offering in the NFT space with their Made it to the Life Raft collection with features a series of silk scarves. 

However, this is not Africa’s first move towards NFTs. this month Nigeria’s contemporary art fair, Art X Lagos, held a special NFTs art sale in partnership with digital art marketplace, Superrare. The art fair features NFT artworks from African artists such as Youssef El Idrissi from Morrocco; Linda Dounia – a Lebanese-Senegalese mixed media artist; Rendani Nemakhavhani – South Africa, and Nigeria’s Jacon Osinachi who sold NFTs worth $75,000 dollars. 

Kenya has also begun exploring NFTs with award-winning photographer and filmmaker, Rich Allela who recently held an auction of his collection of NFTs artwork.

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