THAT VILLAGE OF YOURS MIGHT JUST BE WAITING TO BECOME NASHVILLE!

Next time you're in a country bus, headed for the village, probably listening to Don Willams or Dolly Parton or Kenny Rogers, spare a thought for that village of yours. If it has a pub, with a resident local musician belting out tunes that we city dwellers sometimes think are unsophisticated, then with a bit of luck, something huge might just roll into that village of yours.

In their insightful paper entitled "Nashville in Africa: Culture, Institutions, Entrepreneurship" published by the International Policy Network, Mark Schultz & Alec van Gelder recount that Nashville, the iconic hub of American country music, was, in the 1920s, a struggling city in one of the poorest regions of the United States.

According to Schultz and van Gelder, “Like much of sub-Saharan Africa today, early 20th century policymakers pinned Nashville’s economic hopes on industrial development founded on access to raw materials and large, government-funded public works projects."

These hopes were never fully realised, but Nashville found success anyway – from its creative industries.

The unique talents and abilities of local artists were overlooked when government planners sought to invigorate Nashville’s economy. These skills were ridiculed at the time and local output was pejoratively referred to as “hill-billy” music.

Nevertheless, it was this talent that convinced entrepreneurs to make the significant investments that were required to bring modern recording and production technology to Nashville-based artists.
The story of Nashville's rise is well documented. Intrepid entrepreneurs left New York City with huge sound recording machines, hauled them up the mountains of Tennessee into "hill billy" country and the rest, as they say, is country music history.
Africa can learn many lessons from Nashville’s success.

Creative clusters, such as Nashville’s country music industry, can be powerful drivers of development for many reasons:

1. They play to local strengths, taking advantage of knowledge, skills and forms of expression that arise from local culture, and are thus, by definition, largely unique and non-duplicable.
2. For the most part they do not require cutting-edge technology, large capital investments, or a robust infrastructure.
3. Although creative work often requires a significant personal investment in training and development, it typically does not require the sort of extensive formal educational system that still remains unavailable to the poor in many African countries.

Vibrant creative industries can provide benefits beyond the economic activity they create directly. A thriving creative cluster stimulates investments elsewhere. For example, Nashville’s music industry has engendered a substantial tourism industry, with the additional transportation and lodging infrastructure that come with it. For the music industry, Nashville proved to be ideally suited to the spontaneous emergence of a creative cluster, despite its apparent “underdevelopment” ”.
The parallels between Nashville and Africa in this respect are strikingly similar. Africa has many vibrant and well-recognized music cultures, from Mbalax in Senagal, to Chakakacha in the coast of Kenya. Despite this, the continent has remained largely impoverishment economically.
Maybe its time to develop new models for economic development and start exploring ways in which we can take advantage of factors that are so readily at our disposal.
And with a little bit of luck, my village of Oriang', may just turn into Nashville, Karachuonyo.