Chukwuka Chukuma is an investment banker and partner at Racecourse Capital Partners, an Africa-focused private investment and advisory firm. With over two decades of experience across Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citibank, Afrinvest and Stanbic IBTC, he has led landmark financings across infrastructure, energy, telecoms and media. In this interview with KENNETH ATHEKAME, Chukuma spoke on FESTAC at 50, the economics of culture, and why structured capital is critical to Nigeria’s creative economy. Excerpts:
You have described yourself as both an investment banker and a storyteller working at the intersection of finance and culture. How has this dual identity shaped your work?
I see my work less as sitting between capital and creativity and more at the intersection of capital and culture. Creativity generates ideas, but culture gives those ideas meaning, durability and scale. My investment banking background trained me to think in terms of risk, structure and sustainability. My grounding in African culture through storytelling, music and community taught me how value is created and transmitted over time. When those two perspectives come together, you stop funding one-off projects and start building ecosystems.
That approach guides everything I do, whether structuring transactions, backing creative platforms or building initiatives like ReBAND and the Road to FESTAC ’77. The objective is institutional-grade outcomes that respect culture while delivering sustainable returns.
You’ve called the Road to FESTAC ’77 a “full circle” moment. Why does this project carry such personal significance?
FESTAC ’77 was foundational for me. I attended as a child and was struck by the scale, diversity and creative energy Lagos hosted at the time. It remains the largest gathering of Black and African culture in modern history, bringing together over 16,000 participants from 56 countries. That exposure stayed with me. My family was deeply embedded in Nigeria’s creative scene through music, dance and film, and even as my career took me into global finance, I remained connected to that cultural world. The Road to FESTAC ’77 is therefore not about nostalgia. It is about reconnecting Africa’s cultural capital with structured investment and long-term platforms that can endure. That is why it feels more like a legacy project than a transaction.
You have worked on landmark transactions across Wall Street and Nigeria. Which deal best prepared you for what you are doing now?
The $400 million Lekki Concession Company toll road financing probably shaped my thinking the most. It was Nigeria’s first major public-private partnership road project and was executed during the 2008 global financial crisis. The challenge was not size but bankability. There was no precedent for long-tenor project finance in naira, limited appetite for foreign-exchange risk, and significant political and social sensitivities around tolling a public road.
We addressed this through disciplined risk allocation, combining local and foreign equity, long-term debt, development finance support, government-backed protections and innovative hedging structures. Every major risk was deliberately identified and mitigated.
That experience reinforced a simple lesson: when risks are properly structured and trust is built, capital follows. That same mindset underpins our approach to media, entertainment and creative infrastructure today.
At Stanbic IBTC, you founded the Debt Solutions unit. What gap were you addressing?
At the time, most Nigerian banks focused on plain-vanilla corporate lending. Yet clients increasingly needed structured solutions for acquisitions, leveraged transactions, trade flows and real estate development.
We built a unit integrating project finance, structured trade, securitisation and acquisition finance. The toughest challenge was internal convincing the institution to underwrite more complex, longer-tenor risks.
By building strong risk frameworks and delivering consistent execution, the unit grew to manage the entire structured debt book and generated about 75 percent of Stanbic IBTC’s investment banking income within four years.
Racecourse Capital Partners focuses on Africa. What is your current investment thesis?
We invest in proprietary opportunities across secularly growing, fragmented sectors such as technology, infrastructure, energy, and media and entertainment. Our model is flexible, allowing us to invest across the capital structure to optimise risk-adjusted returns.
ReBAND and the Road to FESTAC ’77 align with this thesis. Beyond culture, they create pipelines for investable opportunities in content, live events, tourism, hospitality and creative infrastructure.
The goal is to build the backbone of a creative economy, not to stage isolated events.
You co-executive-produced God Calling, which later secured Netflix licensing. What was different about its financing?
We applied structured finance thinking to the film’s unit economics. Church screenings proved significantly more profitable than traditional cinema runs, so we prioritised that revenue window across Nigeria, the UK and the US.
We also renegotiated standard distribution terms to improve investor economics and used unconventional marketing channels such as nationwide in-store trailer placements and faith-based platforms to prove demand at minimal cost.
By the time the film moved to Netflix, it had diversified revenues, proven audience traction and de-risked cash flows. That combination made it an investable proposition rather than a speculative creative project.
You have advised both Nigerian and US policymakers. How does that experience shape ReBAND?
I approach policy through the lens of impact. In Nigeria, my work on the Creative Industry Development Bill focused on unlocking capital, formalising the sector and treating intellectual property as economic infrastructure.
With the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), we were tasked with reimagining FESTAC after 50 years. That work directly informed the Road to FESTAC ’77 and ReBAND. This policy grounding gives partners confidence that ReBAND is not a one-off cultural moment but a platform designed to scale, endure and deliver economic impact.
For readers unfamiliar with ReBAND, what exactly is it?
ReBAND is a multi-year, global initiative by Racecourse Media designed to reconnect Africa and the diaspora through storytelling, innovation and creative enterprise.
Its first project, the Road to FESTAC ’77, is a series of global activations commemorating the 50th anniversary of FESTAC ’77 and building momentum toward the 2027 Golden Jubilee.
It operates as a travelling platform that activates culture, policy dialogue, tourism and local commerce in host cities across Africa, Europe and the Americas.
Human capital is a recurring theme in your work. How does it influence how you structure deals?
Human capital is central. In transactions, I prioritise strong governance, aligned incentives and structures that enable growth rather than extraction.
When building teams, I hire for character and the capacity to grow. My role is to set direction, remove obstacles and allow strong people to execute.
The guiding question is whether a structure unlocks more human potential than it consumes. If it does, that is where I deploy capital.
What problem are you most interested in tackling next?
Talent development, particularly in sport. I am focused on building systems that identify and develop talent early, regardless of where a child is born.
We are designing platforms that use data, coaching and clear pathways to connect grassroots talent to professional and scholarship opportunities. Done properly, this creates spillover benefits across education, health and capital formation.
Sport, media and entertainment remain among Africa’s most undercapitalised yet fastest-growing sectors. Structured correctly, they can become powerful engines of jobs, investment and global influence.
