A new South African innovation is stepping up to fix one of Africa’s long-standing challenges, data invisibility in the creative sector.
Malaika Evaluate, a data management platform launched by research company Andani.Africa, is offering artists, cultural organisations, and creative businesses across the continent a powerful tool to manage, interpret, and learn from their data.
The platform aims to transform the creative economy’s fragmented information landscape into structured insights that drive informed decisions and sustainable growth.
“Our world is increasingly a data-informed world,” said Molemo Moiloa, executive director at Andani.Africa.
“If the data isn’t quality, or doesn’t represent the nuance and potential of who we are, decisions will be made without truly representing us. It’s vital that we have the data that backs up who we are as a continent, and even more so as a sector.”
What is Malaika Evaluate and What It Does
Malaika Evaluate is a comprehensive data management system built specifically for Africa’s creative economy. It gives creative organisations, from art collectives to film producers, the ability to collect, analyse, and report on their projects in a single workspace.
The platform helps users capture both the quantitative metrics needed for funding reports and the intrinsic cultural value of creative work, often overlooked in traditional reporting systems.
By centralizing data collection and analysis, Malaika reduces the administrative strain on under-resourced arts organisations while improving the quality and consistency of their impact data.
It follows a Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) framework, which allows organisations to assess what works, what doesn’t, and where improvement is needed, all based on concrete evidence rather than assumptions.
About Andani.Africa
The brain behind Malaika Evaluate, Andani.Africa, has been a leading research firm in the continent’s creative economy since 2016.
The company focuses on bridging the gap between cultural knowledge and data-driven decision-making.
Over the years, Andani.Africa has worked across multiple African countries to help governments, investors, and institutions understand the creative economy’s potential and challenges.
“Malaika is an extension of our years of research and field experience,” Moiloa said. “It brings together what we’ve learned about how creative organisations function, and how they can thrive if given the right data tools.”
The Tech Side: Where Art Meets Algorithms
While the creative sector is often seen as emotion-driven, Malaika Evaluate is bringing technology to its core.
The platform’s data scientists are currently training AI algorithms to standardize MEAL data, enabling comparative analysis across creative fields and regions.
This means organisations will be able to benchmark their performance and identify emerging trends, paving the way for a more data-conscious creative ecosystem.
“With Malaika, our data scientist is training algorithms to standardize MEAL data and enable comparative analysis,” Moiloa noted. “These are exciting new frontiers of bringing together the culture sector and technology.”
This fusion of art and data science marks a significant step for Africa, where digital transformation is increasingly reshaping industries, from agriculture to finance, yet the creative sector has lagged behind in measurable growth systems.
Why It Matters for Africa’s Creative Sector
The creative economy is one of Africa’s fastest-growing sectors, contributing nearly 3% of the continent’s GDP, according to UNESCO, and employing millions of young people.
Yet, because of limited formal data, its full impact is often underreported, and creatives struggle to access funding or policy support.
By providing a reliable data infrastructure, Malaika Evaluate seeks to change that narrative.
With structured insights and measurable outcomes, creative organisations can now present solid evidence of their contributions, from community engagement and job creation to economic value.
This, in turn, can help attract investors, inform government policy, and position African creativity on the global economic map.
As Moiloa emphasized, “It’s vital that we have the data that backs up who we are as a continent, and even more as a sector.”
Talking Point
Malaika Evaluate’s launch marks a transformative moment for Africa’s creative economy, one long stifled by data invisibility and informal documentation.
By merging art with analytics, the platform, developed by Andani.Africa, offers a structured, evidence-based approach to understanding and strengthening the continent’s creative industries.
Its integration of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) framework, alongside AI-powered data standardisation, provides a rare opportunity for creative organisations to quantify impact, benchmark growth, and identify gaps, tools that have been largely missing in Africa’s creative landscape.
This innovation moves beyond digitisation; it introduces accountability, strategy, and foresight to a sector that contributes nearly 3% to Africa’s GDP yet remains undervalued in policymaking and investment.
As Molemo Moiloa aptly noted, data that fails to represent Africa’s creative realities risks erasing them from decision-making altogether.
Malaika Evaluate, therefore, is more than a tech platform, it is an act of cultural and economic empowerment, ensuring Africa’s creativity is both visible and valued in global discourse.
