The team at Ckrowd.

Africa focused content streaming platform Ckrowd has secured US$60,000 pre-seed funding and US$100,000 export grant investment, respectively from an international angel investor group, as well as backing from the Export Expansion Facility Programme (EEFP) from the Nigerian government’s Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP) that it will use to expand.

According to the company, the investment will be used to disrupt the African and Afro-diaspora tech and content creation market and allow content creators to monetise their content and protect their content through structured IP and copyright infrastructure.

Ckrowd points to recent forecast by global consultancies which claim that the African creative sector possesses the buoyancy and potential to earn US$2.5-billion.

The company adds that this is the result of the continent’s young population and the many untapped opportunities.

At the same time, growth within this sector is being impeded by a lack of immediate revenue from produced local content, the disparity in remuneration with some of the Western content creators, the lack of understanding of cultural difference across African countries, and lack of intra-African content integration.

Ckrowd believes the export grant will all allow many storytellers and content creators to profit from revenue opportunities on the platform, while also providing an online portal where original, exclusive varieties of African content are well organised, can be accessed with ease and consumed as on demand short videos and live series.

“Ckrowd’s receipt of the grant as part of the EEFP is a testament of the importance of the tech entertainment industry and how important is to diversify African digital economies, by capitalising on many verticals, including culture, edutainment, information, and e-sports,” the company stated.

Sensing an opportunity, CEO Kayode Adebayo and his team launched Ckrowds as a technology service to export African local content for global consumption and position the technology to generate foreign exchange, revenue and create job opportunities for African youth.

Adebayo said: “This is a great win for African people. The Ckrowd platform, similarly to a large arena in the cloud, can broadcast live & short on demand video content and charges access fees on behalf of the creators of those content. This allows the platform to uniquely function as an EdTech, Media-Tech & Ad-Tech hybrid.We continue to welcome investments as we continue to grow partnerships across the continent and the African Diaspora. Our mission is to tell our stories, shine a light on the beauty of African culture and lifestyle, while delivering economic value to African creators, who have always and are pioneers and trailblazers in showcasing the beauty of our culture and our people. The platform pays 70% of total income on content to creators, which we believe it’s the highest pay-out on digital content to African Creators.”

Ckrowd plans to use its new capital to expand with new innovative technologies and strategies to get more customers, accelerate growth and intra-African creative industries.

It is also scouting for more talent, especially in product, R&D and engineering.