By Eromo Egbejule
Publication Date: 2026-04-29 04:00:00
LIn July, Nigerian singer-songwriter Fave had a viral moment: an unauthorized version of a track featuring an AI choir was released and quickly became an internet sensation. To get ahead of the situation, she recorded her own remix incorporating the AI-powered song and added it to her discography.
“In my opinion (that) was smart and very business-minded,” Oyinkansola Fawehinmi, a Lagos-based entertainment lawyer, remarked a few months later. “It has essentially reclaimed the ‘AI version’ and released it as its own official expression.”
Many of Africa’s music markets are considered particularly vulnerable to the risk of AI-generated music plagiarizing the work of real artists due to relatively weak legal frameworks for protecting intellectual property.
There are similar fears about the broader deepfake market. On Monday, South Africa withdrew its draft national AI policy after ironically revealing AI-generated quotes…
