Nigerian rapper and entrepreneur Sasha P has added another achievement to her career, winning the CANEX SME Pitch Grant Prize in Algiers. Her winning pitch, titled “From Barriers to Bridges: Building Africa’s Creative Backbone,” secured her $10,000 under the Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) initiative led by Afreximbank, which champions innovation and sustainability across Africa’s creative industries.
Sasha P, through her company Purplefire Entertainment, has been steadily developing the framework for Pan-African collaboration in terms of touring, talent buying, casting, and event production. The CANEX win provides both the recognition and resources required to scale the vision with the goal of creating systems that simplify cross-border collaboration. Her focus is on building a system that supports creativity economically as well as artistically, while fueling trade, tourism, and cultural exchange across the African continent.
Sasha P, widely known as the “First Lady of Nigerian Hip Hop,” began her career in the early 2000s, during a period when very few women engaged in the Nigerian hip hop scene. Catapulting to the top as a result of early collaborations and signing with eLDee’s Trybe Records, she became the first Nigerian female artist to perform at the 20th anniversary of the World Music Awards in 2008. She made history again the following year as the first female winner of the Best Female Artist Award at the MTV Africa Music Awards (MAMA).
Storm Records released her debut album, First Lady, solidifying her reputation as a pioneering voice in Nigerian music. With singles such as Adara, which won her the Best Female Artist Award at the Women in Entertainment Awards in the UK in 2009, and Only One, which received dual nominations at the SoundCity Video Music Awards, Sasha P built a career that has inspired a generation of female rappers and musicians.
For Sasha P, who has constantly reinvented herself over the years, the CANEX win opens up new opportunities. In 2013, she stepped back from the music scene to follow a career in fashion, bringing Nigerian high street fashion to a wider audience by launching her brand, Eclectic by Sasha. Sasha P, a seasoned attorney, champions social issues and participates in several initiatives, including those aimed at addressing violence against women, reducing maternal mortality, and aiding children in Lagos.
Posting on Instagram, Sasha P spoke about her father and her earliest memories of holding a microphone at family gatherings. She described him as her loudest supporter and connected his encouragement to the community of people who continue to believe in her vision. “You are all a reminder of my father’s unapologetic protectiveness of my dreams,” she wrote, stressing that the CANEX SME Pitch Forum represented so much more than the financial reward.
Focusing on touring networks and structures that can enable artists to cross borders with ease, Sasha P aims to address one of the most persistent challenges in Africa’s creative economy: access. Building these systems, according to her perspective, would empower individual artists while also strengthening the continent’s position in global creative trade.
Her company, Purplefire Entertainment, is expected to play a major role in this expansion, with the firm’s stance on talent buying and event curation aligning with the growing demand for Pan-African tours and collaborations.
