Addy Awofisayo Is the Storyteller Championing African Music

To anyone who has followed the impressive rise of Addy Awofisayo in the music industry, it may come as a surprise to learn that music wasn’t her first love, or her earliest choice for a career. “It was, and still is, storytelling,” Addy tells OkayAfrica. “I was driven by storytelling and how powerful the media is and how stories really define how we feel, how we see things, how we think.”

We are catching up for the second time in four months over a virtual call. It’s a mild-tempered day, and Addy’s voice bounces across the screen with a bright and unassuming energy. 

The first time we met was in December, and YouTube Africa, where Addy is the head of music for sub-Saharan Africa, had just released its end-of-year report, revealing data such as the most-watched music videos on YouTube. The data noted interesting listening patterns, one that Addy described as “participatory.”

“What you've seen in the list are the songs that have something where people are participating in, whether it's a dance, whether it's a challenge, participation has been that theme that you see across the list,” she explained.

That observation reflects Addy’s philosophy of storytelling. Much of her work in music has leaned toward making storytelling accessible and inclusive of the influences around it. Storytelling, as Addy has shown, is shaped by the people from whom the story is inspired, not entirely by the people who tell it. This philosophy has made her an exceptional and innovative champion of African creativity, especially in the music industry. One who is constantly thinking, “How do we help Nigerian artists gain a global audience?”

Starting out

Addy’s early introduction to the transformative power of storytelling began with Tales By Moonlight, a once-famous Nigerian kids’ show. “I was always so fascinated by the stories on those shows, but I didn't know what a career in storytelling meant outside of being the one in front of the camera,” she shared.

This, for Addy, meant pursuing a career in finance, something safe and acceptable to her Nigerian parents. “I was good with numbers and analyzing data, but after doing that for about four years, I was like, no, this is not me. I needed excitement, uncertainty, and ambiguity, and finance just wasn't giving me that.” Finance was monotonous and predictable. As a music executive, though, Addy has found a more unpredictable, exciting pace. Some days she works on creative strategies, and on others she attends a listening party and leads high-level activations.

Eventually, Addy found a way to combine her graduate degree in public policy with her interest in storytelling, which led her to work on the hit TV series MTV Shuga. “It was basically evaluating the impact of MTV Shuga on young people. This is where storytelling meets policy, meets like the numbers, because we were doing surveys, taking the numbers, etc.”

Addy’s career in media would continue to build on her existing strengths in policy, working in business development, strategy, and partnerships. In 2016, her interest in tech as the new frontier of storytelling led her to Microsoft. “The tech space was going to define what media is going to look like in a couple of years, and that's where I wanted to be.”

YouTube was Addy's next stop after leaving Microsoft in 2018. There she began leading content partnerships. The YouTube ecosystem that Addy began working in has evolved dramatically. What started as a niche platform for music artists to premiere their music videos has since evolved into a go-to platform for Nigerian filmmakers, storytellers, and multi-interest creators. And Addy has been at the forefront of that change, moving from her original role to leading YouTube Africa’s music expansion on the continent. 

Making a difference

Just as Afrobeats was experiencing massive global success, artists like Burna Boy, Wizkid, Rema, and others began setting records with their performances. Wizkid became the first African artist to sell out the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London in 2023, while Burna Boy made history as well when he sold out his show at Madison Square Garden the year before. There was just one problem: fans of their music, at least on the continent, had very few ways to be part of these historic cultural moments.

Addy’s solution was to encourage African artists to embrace YouTube Live to stream their shows and bring their fans from around the world along for their monumental moments. It seems a pretty obvious strategy, but Addy says it took a bit of convincing. YouTube Africa streamed Burna’s MSG show, opening a new way to experience Afrobeats on a global scale, without the restrictions of borders. “What I wanted to show with MSG was an artist from Nigeria selling out a venue that your regular global artist would also sell out,” she says. “I wanted Nigerians to also experience it because what we take for granted, I think back home, is just how powerful our voices are as Nigerians.”

Addy’s impact shifts between platforming artists and creating the facilities that enable them to thrive through initiatives like Black Voices and Foundry. This means that Addy has helped mold some of this generation’s most vibrant stars. Yet, the long process, the grueling work of developing stories and supporting the people who tell them, is what Addy continues to value over the noise that comes with the finished product. “The noise can get so loud that you forget that at the end of the day this is a career, it's people's livelihoods, and so I treat it as such,” she says. “Someone has asked me before what separates a great artist from another, even though they are both talented, and I think it's the team that they surround themselves with and the hunger for the artist to learn and to really grow.”

For Addy, being a mother has changed her approach to work. While having her children, Addy says she learned the delicate balance of prioritization. “I call it ruthless prioritization. I had to focus on the things that were going to have an exponential impact on the work that I do, on the industry, and the people that I was working with. Quality and impact over quantity, and it's what I'm still figuring out today.”

And when Addy reflects on her sprawling journey in storytelling, she has only one piece of advice: “Take the risk, and take the risk early,” she says. “If you're lucky enough to already know what you want to do, but there's that fear, take the risk.”