Julius Kyazze wants governments, investors and even ordinary Africans to stop thinking of entertainment as a luxury. The entrepreneur behind Swangz Avenue believes the continent’s creative industry performs a role every bit as essential as healthcare and education because it restores people after work, fuels productivity and creates livelihoods for millions.
“What we do is an essential service,” Kyazze says. “People think we’re in the music business or the entertainment business. I don’t. I believe we’re in the reward industry.”
It is an unconventional argument from one of East Africa’s most influential entertainment executives, but one he has spent years refining as his businesses expanded from music into radio, live events, media, production and talent development.
His reasoning begins with a simple observation.
Every economy depends on productive people.
Doctors keep them healthy. Teachers prepare them for work. Employers rely on them to deliver results.
But after five or six days of work, Kyazze asks, how do those people recover?
“They have to rest,” he says. “You can’t work Monday to Monday.”
That period of rest, he argues, is where the creative economy quietly performs one of society’s most overlooked functions.
Whether someone listens to music on the drive home, attends a concert over the weekend, laughs at an online comedy sketch or spends an evening at a festival with friends, they are recharging mentally before returning to work.
“That’s the industry I’m in,” he says. “The industry that rewards your good work from Monday to Friday.”
It is a perspective that shifts entertainment from recreation to economic infrastructure.
Kyazze argues that a tired, stressed and emotionally exhausted society cannot remain productive for long.
In his view, the creative economy is not merely producing songs or events. It is helping sustain the workforce that drives every other sector.
The argument also challenges long-held perceptions that musicians, actors and content creators occupy the fringes of national development.
Instead, he says, they are participants in an industry that directly influences economic performance.
Yet despite that contribution, he believes governments and regulators have struggled to understand how the sector works.
Uganda’s creative economy, he says, continues to be approached largely through taxation rather than development.
Regulators often see revenue before they see opportunity.
“There is a disconnect,” Kyazze says, arguing that authorities should engage industry players to understand how creative businesses grow before imposing policies that could slow their expansion.
He believes the challenge extends beyond Uganda.
Across Africa, creative entrepreneurs frequently find themselves explaining their business models to banks, investors and policymakers who still regard entertainment as informal rather than industrial.
That misunderstanding, he argues, limits investment in infrastructure capable of transforming the sector into a major employer.
His own businesses have increasingly focused on building those foundations.
Beyond producing musicians, they now invest in training, production, media, live events and regional operations designed to help creatives earn sustainable incomes rather than temporary fame.
The objective is not simply to create stars.
It is to build careers.
Kyazze says Africa has no shortage of talent.
What it lacks are enough businesses capable of commercialising that talent, building systems around it and opening opportunities across borders.
He believes that gap represents one of the continent’s greatest economic opportunities.
The entrepreneur’s thinking also reflects a broader shift in how creative industries are being viewed worldwide.
Once dismissed as leisure sectors, film, music, gaming and digital content have become significant contributors to national economies, generating employment, exports and tourism while shaping cultural influence.
Kyazze believes Africa should position itself to benefit from that transformation rather than continue exporting its talent to better-developed markets.
His vision is ambitious.
He wants African creatives to build careers that allow them to tour, collaborate and grow businesses across the continent without depending on recognition from Europe or North America.
The infrastructure to achieve that future, he says, must be built by Africans themselves.
That means investing in education, production facilities, management, technology, financing and cross-border partnerships that allow creative businesses to scale.
It also means changing public attitudes.
For too long, he argues, parents have encouraged children to become doctors, lawyers and accountants while discouraging careers in music, film or digital content.
Yet those same families consume creative products every day.
They stream music, attend concerts, watch films, follow influencers and spend hours on social media engaging with content created by the very industry they often dismiss.
“Everyone consumes what we produce,” Kyazze says.
If Africa is serious about creating jobs for its rapidly growing youth population, he believes the creative economy deserves to be viewed not as entertainment on the sidelines of development but as an industry capable of standing alongside manufacturing, agriculture and technology.
For Kyazze, the challenge is no longer convincing audiences that African creatives are talented.
It is convincing policymakers that creativity itself is productive work—and that investing in the people who produce it may prove just as valuable as investing in the industries they help sustain.
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