South Africa, Sept. 17 -- For South Africa, the festival has always been both a measuring stick and a platform, and the conversations that follow Cannes often shape and influence how the industry at home thinks about craft. For The Up&Up Group, Africa's largest group of independent creative companies, the question is about how African creativity can and should show up at the festival and in the conversations that follow around the world.

Jacques Burger and Neo Mashigo delivered a presentation at the Cannes Lions festival this year called Lessons in Creativity. What Africa Can Teach the World. The presentation was built around a reality familiar across the continent. African creative industries have had to work through constraints and con...