2025 Osun Osogbo Festival: Our Vision Is to Increase Sponsorship, Showcase Festival’s Vibrant Spirit, Says Monarch

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

The Ataoja of Osogbo land, Oba Jimoh Larooye has called for increased sponsorship of Osun Osogbo Festival to truly showcase the festival’s vibrant spirit.

The monarch who made the call at Osun Osogbo Festival Global Summit held at the Nigerian Air Force Base, Oke Bale, Osogbo, highlighted the critical roles of the festival which he noted includes tradition, trade, and transformation in shaping Africa’s global cultural future.

The Osun Osogbo custodian stressed that “This is just the beginning; we are committed to elevating the Osun Osogbo Festival to truly global heights.”

However, in his speech at the summit, the Brand Engineer of Our Heritage Branding and Advertising Limited Mr. Ola Oluwasanmi who spoke on the Theme: “Tradition, Trade and Transformation: Building Africa’s Global Cultural Future,” said as observers of tradition, but as custodians of a story older than borders, deeper than rivers, and more sacred than words.

 Oluwasanmi stressed the Global Cultural Summit was not just a prelude to a festival, it serves as a call to purpose, a declaration of intent, and a blueprint for cultural transformation.

 According to him “the Festival with the Power to Reshape a Continent, the Osun-Osogbo Festival, for over 600 years, has not missed a single season. It has survived colonization, modernization, and globalization not as an act of resistance, but as an act of resilience.

He stressed that the festival stands not only as a spiritual and cultural cornerstone for the Yoruba people, but as Africa’s longest-running continuous festival and a UNESCO-recognized living heritage and a sacred model for cultural preservation.

 Oluwasanmi emphasised the mission of the summit is to see culture as an engine of change and use the power of cultural storytelling to build new economic opportunities.

Others, he opined, was to turn rituals into revenues, groves into galleries, and festivals into frameworks for development and invite the world to not only witness, but to partner, invest, and preserve.

He further stated that the summit would forge partnerships, unlock investments, and turn sacred heritage into shared prosperity not only for Osun state but the nation at large.

Also, in his own remarks at the event, the Group Head and Media Manager for the festival, Mr. Oyinda Olukanni, emphasised the custodian of the festivals are building a Pan-African alliance of cultural festivals, a roadmap for diaspora investment in heritage spaces and hub for academic, diplomatic, and creative collaboration.

Others are a cultural economy that is sustainable, inclusive, and powerful

Africa is not poor in history but rich in heritage, saying that the summit would make ensures that richness becomes a viable, visible, and valuable currency in a changing world.

Also to establish Osogbo as the gateway to Africa’s cultural tourism industry, to foster Pan-African unity through shared cultural expression, to elevate indigenous heritage as a platform for diplomacy, innovation, and commerce, to shape a new global narrative where African festivals are seen not as spectacles of the past, but as platforms for the future.