The African Creative Economy Conference is one of Arterial Network’s largest annual meetings. In continuity with the network’s vision and projects, it strives to help us cultural and creative practitioners organise ourselves more efficiently, as Africans and with our international partners, for the development of the continent and the promotion of its cultural heritage.

To promote creativity and to invest in creation is to believe in the connection that exists between African culture and development. Culture is a strong bearer of development. Our cultures, which constitute our pride in Africa, represent a major economic input for the continent; through music, cinema, literature and theatre, as well as architecture, photography, design, gastronomy and crafts.

Africa and its creative industries generate enthusiasm and interest from the rest of the world. However, the continent has arduous challenges to confront: it will have to efficiently reorganize itself before it can affirm its place in a world order where globalization has thus far been imposed from elsewhere.

Africa has to generate its own images and ensure its intrinsic development by professionalizing its cultural actors and by preserving its heritage, all the while offering it to Africans and to the rest of the world. This will be achieved by the logic and strategy of the ‘network’ and through a constructive cooperation with Africa’s cultural and economic partners.

After Nairobi, Dakar and Cape Town, Rabat is hosting the 4th African Creative Economy Conference from the 13th to the 15th of November 2014, with a thematic approach that will focus on the “How” of the creative industries, looking into their operational implementation: how do we organize ourselves and work together more succinctly for the well being of Africa and its people? Where is African creativity located and what economic advances is it generating for its inhabitants? What are the success stories from the continent, what failures and what strategies for the future…?

Many of these questions will lead our conference this year, and Arterial Network is putting forth a programme that will help us debate and formulate the responses and strategies, for members of the network, cultural and economic actors, private and public institutions, both African and international.

The city of Rabat and Morocco come as hosts after South Africa in 2013 and before Central Africa in 2015, as we embrace the entirety of our continent and gather Africans, from both the North and the South, rotating in a different region each year. Morocco is a bridge between Africa and Europe. Our continent can be, confidently, at the center of the world, with culture at the center of development. To that effect, Arterial Network is strongly lobbying to make sure that Culture will be inscribed as an essential instrument in the post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

As always, the event will be of particular interest to creative practitioners, government bodies and policy makers, academics, researchers, entrepreneurs, journalists and many others. The ACEC is an opportunity to interact with leading players in the field, and to engage with the processes that grown the creative sector in Africa.