For some African musicians, artificial intelligence (AI) is still viewed as a threat: a technology that could take jobs, dilute creativity, and reduce songwriting to a simple prompt. Jude Lemfani Abaga, popularly known as MI Abaga, takes a different view. Speaking at a business panel in Lagos earlier this month, the rapper-turned-tech-entrepreneur argued that fear of AI may pose a greater risk to modern creative careers than the technology itself.

Abaga made the remarks at the fourth edition of United Bank for Africa’s quarterly SME Business Series, held at UBA House on Marina on Thursday, 16 July. The event, themed “Building for Africa’s Realities: Turning Consumer Feedback into Technology-Driven Solutions”, brought him together with Chowdeck co-founder and CEO Femi Aluko and Octerra Capital managing partner Ashim Egunjobi. Media entrepreneur Adaora Mbelu moderated the session.

Although the broader discussion focused on how African founders can build products that respond to real consumer needs, Abaga’s comments on AI became one of the session’s clearest messages for the creative industry. His argument also fits into a wider question facing African creators: whether new tools can help them compete in global content markets without losing control of their work, income, or creative identity.

Aluko began the founder-led conversation by discussing Chowdeck’s operational experience. The food delivery platform, he said, quickly learned that Nigerian consumers cannot be treated as a single, uniform group. Its purchasing data showed more complex patterns: some users value speed above all else, while others are willing to wait an additional fifteen minutes if it lowers delivery costs.

Those behaviours also change as monthly salaries are spent down, and that cycle directly affects Chowdeck’s decisions on pricing, logistics, and restaurant partnerships. Aluko said the company’s close attention to consumer data helped lead to Chowstore, a spin-off business that emerged from observing how customers actually used the app rather than from relying only on early assumptions.

Abaga applied that same lesson to music and the broader creator economy. He said he initially assumed that creators and their commercial partners mainly needed a transaction platform. After building around that assumption, however, he found that creators needed deeper, day-to-day problems solved before transactions could be made easier.

“It’s more like relationships and hardcore agency, and then the tech can sit and make that transaction easier,” Abaga noted.

On AI specifically, Abaga described the technology not as an existential threat but as a multiplier for existing talent. He cited major creative figures such as Kemi Adetiba, Adaora Mbelu, Burna Boy, and Wizkid, saying AI could help these “really special creators” “become even more special”.

His case was grounded in practical production economics and the removal of administrative friction. In the past, albums by top-tier artists such as Kanye West required major recording budgets to pay for elements including choirs and specialised drum programming. Today, according to Abaga, AI studios can reproduce some of those premium sounds at far lower cost, making high-end production more accessible.

He also pointed to the amount of tedious administration involved in creative work, from registering rights and uploading files to distribution platforms to preparing pitch decks and sending proposals. Those tasks are especially important in digital creative markets, where discoverability, rights management, and professional presentation can determine whether a creator’s work reaches paying partners. Abaga said solving that kind of repetitive labour is the idea behind his company, Tasck, which aims to use AI to handle such burdens. With those tools, he said, creators can draft business proposals and design professional decks in a mere second, helping them connect with relevant businesses and audiences much faster.

Abaga framed AI adoption not only as a defensive response to technological change but also as a major macroeconomic opportunity. He said the global creative industry is currently valued at more than $2 trillion and is projected to reach $3 trillion very quickly because of modern content consumption habits. He also said those projections may still understate the market’s true potential.

He urged young Africans to find a place inside that growth by building an “Andela model” for the creative arts. In Abaga’s view, Africa has specific strategic advantages. He described a future in which thousands of young people in Nigeria and across the continent use AI tools to deliver essential services to the global market and solve substantial problems for international clients. Large global industries such as Hollywood, which need services requiring significant compute and manpower, could become natural customers for that African talent.

Abaga also highlighted Nigerians’ strong command of English relative to much of the world. Combined with what he described as an inherent creative edge, that linguistic fluency could position African creatives to provide in-demand technical services such as subtitling, film colouring, sound design, set design, and script editing. He argued that examining the intersection of technology and creativity is the “best way for us to think holistically about where we are in this moment”.

At the same time, Abaga’s remarks should not be read as a formal AI policy position for the Nigerian music industry. They represent the view of one influential figure making a case for an industry he helped build. Other prominent Nigerian musicians have previously expressed more sceptical views about AI’s creative risks, including concerns that it could make artists intellectually lazy. The broader debate also includes unresolved questions around consent, attribution, copyright, and how artists are compensated when AI systems are used in creative production. Abaga’s contribution to that debate was that technology is not replacing talent, but making creators’ lives easier.