CANEX Creations Inc. has told two interviewers, on the record, that it has invested in a music publishing catalogue of about 230 songs, “mostly Afrobeat stars,” administered by Sony Music Publishing. It has not named the catalogue. It has not named a single songwriter in it. It has not said what it paid, what it received, or when. For a company that names its film investments by title in the same breath, the silence around the thing it calls its third public investment is the story.
CANEX Creations Inc. (CCInc) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), which is itself the equity investment arm of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank). Its chief executive, Osahon Akpata, has given two interviews in 2026 that between them constitute the entire public record of this transaction. Checked on 9 October 2026, neither has been followed by a press release, a filing, or a statement from the other side.
What Akpata actually said#
The fullest version is in Communique 121, published 16 June 2026, in which Akpata walks through CCInc’s three public investments. The first two are named without hesitation: Muganga: The One Who Treats, the Angelina Jolie-backed biopic of Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, and Clarissa, the Esiri brothers’ Lagos-set reworking of Mrs Dalloway, acquired for worldwide distribution by NEON. Then the third: “The third is the publishing catalogue of about 230 songs administered by Sony Music Publishing, composed or produced by Africans and the diaspora.”
Three and a half months later, in a Deadline interview published 1 October 2026, Akpata describes the same holding in his own words, unprompted by any question about it: “We’ve invested in music publishing, a catalogue of about 230 songs, with mostly Afrobeat stars, but film is a big part of our portfolio.” The two statements corroborate each other on the one number that matters, the song count, and on the genre. Beyond that they do not add up to much, because neither was pressed on the specifics.
What “administered by Sony Music Publishing” does and does not tell you#
This is where a reader needs to slow down, because the sentence is doing less work than it sounds like it is.
Administration is a service. A publishing administrator collects royalties, issues licences, registers works with collection societies, and takes a fee or a percentage for doing it. The administrator does not need to own the copyrights it administers, and in the vast majority of commercial administration deals, it does not. Sony Music Publishing administers catalogues for independent publishers, estates, and writer-owned companies all over the world without acquiring a share of the underlying copyright in most of them.
So “administered by Sony Music Publishing” tells a reader who is managing the collection pipes. It tells you nothing about who owns the songs, who signed the original publishing deal with the writers, or what kind of financial interest CCInc actually holds. CCInc could have bought the catalogue outright. It could hold equity in a holding company that owns the catalogue. It could hold a royalty participation with no copyright interest at all. Akpata’s two statements are consistent with any of these, and do not distinguish between them.
Compare that to how CCInc talks about its films#
The contrast is the clearest evidence that the silence here is a choice, not an oversight. CCInc’s film investments come with names, credits, producers, co-financiers, and a distributor. The Afreximbank newsroom named Clarissa‘s cast, director, and financing partners (MBO Capital, Chapel Hill) in a dedicated release in February 2026. Deadline’s October interview has Akpata naming the Muganga screening partners down to the moderator. A reader can trace both films from financing to distribution.
No comparable trail exists for the catalogue. No press release names it. No source names a rightsholder, a publisher of record, or a single one of the roughly 230 songwriters involved. “Mostly Afrobeat stars” is a genre description, not a credit list.
What this means for artists#
Three practical readings follow from what is, and is not, on the record.
A songwriter cannot assume a catalogue deal is public just because the buyer is. CCInc is a subsidiary of a multilateral development bank that publishes extensively about its film slate. That same institution has gone three and a half months, across two separate interviews, without naming a music asset it describes as one of only three things it has publicly invested in. If your catalogue, or a catalogue you have a stake in, has been bought into by an institutional investor, do not assume the deal surfaces anywhere unless someone names it specifically.
“Administered by” is not an ownership credit, and conflating the two costs writers money. If you are a songwriter whose work sits inside a catalogue administered by a major publisher, that administrator’s name tells you who collects, not who owns, not who negotiated your original deal, and not who you should be chasing for statements. Those can be three different parties.
Round numbers from an investor describing its own portfolio are not deal terms. Akpata has given a general ticket size for CCInc projects elsewhere, between $500,000 and $5 million, with CCInc typically covering “20 to 40%” of a project’s financing. That is a stated operating parameter for the fund, not a disclosed term of the catalogue investment, and it should not be read backward into this transaction as an implied price.
Limits of this record#
No price, stake, royalty split, or transaction date appears in either source, and none is asserted here. No source names the catalogue, the rightsholder, the original publisher, or any songwriter in it. Both statements of record come from the same person, CCInc’s own chief executive; no filing, registry entry, or statement from Sony Music Publishing or from anyone identified as a writer in the catalogue was found to corroborate its existence, size, or administration arrangement. Whether CCInc holds a copyright interest, an equity interest in a holding company, or a pure royalty participation could not be established from the sources checked.
This record is also separate from CCInc’s July 2025 term sheet for an equity stake in D’Kings Men Media Ltd‘s C.R.E.A.M. talent platform, the company built by Nigerian artist D’Banj. Afreximbank’s own announcement of that term sheet described it as “subject to the satisfactory completion of due diligence and final board approval,” and no primary source confirms it has since closed, though at least one secondary report states in passing that Afreximbank “acquired an equity stake” in the platform. That is a different transaction, with a different counterparty, and it is not the catalogue investment described here.
