When Doja Cat closed out her show at SunBet Arena in Pretoria, the crowd didn’t just erupt — they cheered her full name. Born with the South African name Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, the American superstar performed on the continent for the first time in her career, and the connection crystallized. A chant rippled through the stands: “Zandile! Zandile!” It wasn’t just a crowd cheering on an artist. It was a celebration.
Doja Cat headlined the third edition of Move Afrika, the concert series designed to build up Africa’s first pan-continental touring circuit and unlock a new generation of careers in the creative economy. But while the show was unforgettable, the most significant story of Move Afrika 2026 didn’t happen under the spotlights. It was unfolding behind the scenes.
From technical equipment sourced entirely from local vendors to former volunteers who had become full-time event production professionals, Move Afrika, now in its third year, is proving how world-class live music events can provide a powerful catalyst for building the kind of creative economy that Africa’s young, talented, and rapidly growing workforce urgently needs.
A Movement Three Years in the Making
Launched by Global Citizen in 2023 in partnership with Kendrick Lamar and pgLang, Move Afrika was built on a straightforward but ambitious idea: Africa deserves to be a permanent fixture on the global touring circuit for the world’s biggest artists. Not an occasional pitstop in Cape Town or Johannesburg on the way to other parts of the world, but a destination in its own right. Too often, major international artists’ global tours skip the continent altogether. Africa loses out in more ways than one: fewer large-scale international events, fewer visitors, and fewer opportunities to build brighter futures in the creative economy.
Three years on, though, Move Afrika’s efforts are bearing serious fruit. Move Afrika 2026 was made possible thanks to a team of partners, including pgLang, Major Tour Partner Cisco, the Rwanda Development Board, Big Concerts, and Heineken. Since its 2023 debut in Kigali — headlined by Kendrick Lamar himself — Move Afrika has generated more than 3,000 job opportunities across Kigali, Lagos, and now Pretoria. With each edition, the tour has expanded its footprint: from Kigali to Lagos in East Africa, and now to Southern Africa for the first time.
One of the most telling measures of that growth is the rate of local participation — or, how much of the talent bringing these shows to life comes from the cities themselves. At the inaugural Kigali show in 2023, 75% of crew and production roles were filled locally. By 2026, that figure will have reached nearly 100%.
HIGHLIGHT: Move Afrika has generated over 3,000 job opportunities across Kigali, Lagos, and Pretoria since 2023 — with local crew participation in Kigali growing from 75% to nearly 100%.
Building Kigali’s Creative Economy, Show by Show
Rwanda’s capital has become the anchor city of Move Afrika’s circuit — returning year after year for good reason. Kigali reflects the energy of the world’s youngest continent, where the median age is just 19.7 years, and where that energy is already building creative brands, launching production companies, directing films, and managing events.
This year’s Kigali edition, also featuring DJ IRAA and delivered in collaboration with global production company Done and Dusted and local partner Rwanda Events Group, was the most ambitious yet. Nearly 100% of the stage components were provided locally — including 880 LED panels — in one of the most technically complex productions ever staged in Rwanda. Audio and lighting fixtures were 98% locally sourced, while rigging was 95% local, installed alongside UK-based Unusual Rigging. Over 112 security personnel, trained through a bespoke program developed by the local firm Crowd Minders in partnership with the Cohort Security Group, managed the event to international standards.
Central to this year’s impact was the expansion of the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator partnership. Over three years, 120 young Rwandans aged 18 to 25 have participated in the program, gaining hands-on industry exposure across production, hospitality, logistics, ticketing, marketing, and event coordination. This year, the program took a significant step forward in partnership with the female-led enterprise The Financial Boutique, employing five youth ambassadors in paid roles, including project management, event assistance, and data capture, offering a blueprint for what sustained investment in young talent can produce.
South Africa Makes Its Move Afrika Debut
Pretoria helped take this model to another level. This edition of Move Afrika marked the first time the concert series touched down in Southern Africa — and it didn’t do so quietly. The show at SunBet Arena, co-produced by Kweku Mandela, who also played a central role in co-creating Move Afrika, and delivered in collaboration with South African partner Big Concerts and local vendor Mushroom Productions, featured additional performances by South African artist The Joy and musician and dancer Moonchild Sanelly. It was also executed entirely with local crew and equipment: a 100% South African production that demonstrated the country has the infrastructure, the talent, and the technical depth to stage a world-class international event.
HIGHLIGHT: Move Afrika: Pretoria was executed entirely with local crew and equipment: a 100% South African production that demonstrated the country has the infrastructure, the talent, and the technical depth to stage a world-class international event.
Equally headline-worthy was the launch of the Youth Technical Production Pathway for the South African leg of the tour — a new initiative developed in partnership with Gearhouse South Africa Group and the Gearhouse Kentse Mpahlwa Academy. Ten young people from Johannesburg and Pretoria, aged 18 to 26, received intensive hands-on training in lighting design, audio-visual systems, and stage rigging, then put those skills to work directly on the production of Doja Cat’s show.
The Youth Technical Production Pathway is designed to bridge the gap between job opportunities and the skills needed to access them, offering a structured, accredited route into careers that are too often closed to young people without established networks.
More Than Music: Health, Rights, and Human Dignity
Move Afrika has always understood that a creative economy can only thrive when the people building it are healthy, informed, and properly supported. In the lead-up to the Kigali concert, more than 300 young people gathered at BK Arena for a youth forum called “Your Health. Your Choice. Your Future.” Organized by Global Citizen in partnership with the Rwanda Development Board, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Youth and Arts, the Imbuto Foundation, and HDI Rwanda, the forum gave young people direct access to health professionals and the space to speak openly about sexual and reproductive health, consent, and relationships.
The connection forged between a thriving creative workforce and accessible health education was deliberate. Africa’s young population carries a disproportionate burden of preventable health challenges, including HIV, for which girls and young women aged 15–24 account for 3,100 new infections every week in sub-Saharan Africa alone. When young women lose access to healthcare, education is disrupted, and economies lose priceless talent. Move Afrika’s approach recognizes that investing in girls’ health is also an investment in the creative industries they are poised to lead. “Young people deserve access to accurate information, safe spaces to ask questions, and trusted support systems,” said Iphie Chuks-Adizue, Managing Director for Africa at Global Citizen. “By creating platforms like our youth forum, we are empowering young people with the knowledge and confidence they need to make informed decisions about their health, relationships, and future.”
The Bigger Picture: Africa’s Creative Economy Is Waiting for No One
The African Development Bank has identified cultural and creative industries as a major engine of economic diversification across the continent. Africa’s film and audiovisual sector alone has the potential to create over 20 million jobs and generate $20 billion in annual revenue. The raw material is already there: young people who are producing albums, launching fashion labels, directing films, building digital platforms, and managing events. What Move Afrika is helping to supply is the infrastructure, the training pathways, and the proof that these industries can operate at a world-class scale.
Jean-Guy Afrika, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, puts it plainly: “This partnership supports our vision of Rwanda as a premier destination for live entertainment — one that creates jobs for young people, unlocks new economic opportunities, and delivers lasting benefits for Rwanda and the continent.”
That ambition is grounded in a clear-eyed view of what the creative economy needs to scale: policy and financial tools that recognize creativity as an asset; investment in skills training at every level of production; infrastructure that supports studios, venues, and digital platforms; and the consistent presence that enables trust and local ownership to compound over time. Move Afrika is designed to deliver across those fronts as a real, job-creating, career-building force taking shape across the continent.
The Circuit Keeps Growing
In Pretoria, as Doja Cat performed her hits to a crowd that sang every word back, she told the audience something that stayed with the room: “For a place I’ve never been to, it feels like I’ve been here before.” She added, “I want to say thank you to everyone here tonight. This is bigger than us, it's bigger than me.” For the trainees working behind the scenes, for those preparing for their own creative professional careers, for the 300 young people who walked into a health forum and walked out better equipped for their futures — that line captured the night’s mood and mission perfectly.
In the future, Move Afrika has set an ambitious target: five African cities annually, each concert fully produced by skilled, local teams. That’s because Move Afrika is not a charity concert. It’s a long-term economic development project that happens to feature some of the best nights out on the continent. And with each edition, the foundation it is building — in skills, in careers, in local production capacity, in health and well-being — grows stronger. As Doja Cat herself put it in the run-up to her shows: “This isn’t just a tour. It’s a movement that creates jobs and opportunities that last.” And that journey is far from over. It’s still just getting started.