Nigerian music legend and entrepreneur Anthonia “Sasha P” Alabi just proved once again why she is more than a voice behind tracks. She just won the CANEX SME Pitch Grant Prize in Algiers taking home $10,000 for her pitch “From Barriers to Bridges: Building Africa’s Creative Backbone.” The win came under the Creative Africa Nexus initiative run by Afreximbank.
Her company Purplefire Entertainment is already doing the heavy lifting. They are booking tours across borders, buying talent, staging events, handling casting work. Sasha P’s vision is to stitch together the bits of Africa’s creative industries that often stay separated by geography, policy, and money. She laid out plans to build systems that allow creatives, promoters, and audiences to move easier across countries. She wants less friction, more stages, more connection.
At the Algiers pitch she stood in emerald green, clutching a large ceremonial cheque. She paused to remember her father, her first mic, early performance moments where her dreams felt fragile but loud enough to be noticed. She tagged the win as belonging to both her past and everyone still cheering her on.
This prize gives Sasha P more than money. It gives visibility. It gives credibility. It gives opportunity to shape infrastructure for an industry that often functions on passion, hustle, and improvisation. When tour dates cross borders, when visas are secured, when promoters understand value, and when artists have frameworks to build on—this is what will define a new era.
Sasha P is not just winning for herself. She is winning for creatives who get stuck at airports, who dream in studios, who whisper “what if.” With “From Barriers to Bridges” she is offering a roadmap for the what-ifs to become what is. The $10,000 prize is a seed. Africa’s creative backbone could soon be strong enough to be felt around the world.
