Digital Nomads: How a Nigerian tutor relocated to Thailand on a $500 visa

Ava Anthony arrived in Thailand expecting little more than a holiday. What she found instead unsettled the way she thought about music. One evening, inside a jazz bar, she watched performers whose ease on stage felt almost rehearsed into instinct. Beyond the live performances, she discovered an industry built on years of deliberate preparation, in which aspiring artists could spend seven to nine years training before a record label would consider them ready to debut. For Anthony, a Nigerian singer-songwriter who performs under the stage name ‘Denle,’ the experience raised an uncomfortable question. If Afrobeats has become one of the world’s fastest-growing music genres with far less formal preparation, what could it become if artists developed within similarly structured systems? “There’s a structure that Asia has been able to incorporate,” Anthony told TechCabal. “I’m also taking a look at the numbers and the statistics comparing that to Afrobeats, and the stat is alarming—how they’re doing like 30 to 100 billion streams in a year, and Afrobeats is just doing like 30 [billion streams].” It was an unlikely realisation for someone who had travelled to Thailand on a modest budget, intending to teach English while experiencing life in a different country. Yet that journey would leave her thinking as much about Nigeria’s creative economy as her own career. The irony is that Anthony’s relationship with music began in a far less structured setting. Growing up, mornings in her family home often began with the voices of Nigerian gospel singer Panam Percy Paul or American country musician Jim Reeves drifting through the house.  Both of her parents sang in the church choir—her mother still does—and music was woven so naturally into family life that she scarcely noticed its influence. She certainly didn’t imagine it would become the opening chapter of a life that would take her from studying electrical and electronics engineering to working as a digital strategist for major Nigerian brands, teaching English in Thailand and pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter. Nor did she expect that travelling halfway across the world would fundamentally reshape how she thought about the future of African music. From church choirs to campus busking sessions Long before Chiang Mai, there was a 13-year-old girl discovering that her voice could move people. Anthony says she first realised she might actually be able to sing after performing a solo in her church’s children’s choir.  Afterwards, a woman approached her mother and remarked in Yoruba, “What a voice your daughter has.”  Anthony remembers that moment as a turning point. Encouraged by her mother, what began as a fascination with music gradually evolved into writing original songs while she was still in secondary school. She sang Disney songs alone in her room, joined the school choir and continued writing. Her mother supported her ambitions but insisted that education came first. “Once you get that certificate, then you can go into music,” they told her, according to Anthony. At Landmark University in Kwara State in southwestern Nigeria, she studied Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering; she met a guitarist who shared her enthusiasm for performing.  Together, they began holding informal Saturday evening busking sessions behind one of the campus cafeterias. What began as two students playing music gradually attracted regular audiences of between 15 and 20 people. “It became an every-Saturday thing,” she said. “That was when I started thinking, ‘okay, I can actually do this in real life.’” After graduating in 2015, the guitarist—Damilola Aalabi ‘Isama’—became her manager, and she began attending recording camps that helped launch her music career. One of the clearest confirmations that she was on the right path came during a recording session for an unreleased song titled Magnificent, performed under her stage name, Denle. She sent the song to her sister in the United Kingdom, who called back in tears. Written for Black girls navigating questions of beauty, race and self-worth, the song resonated deeply with her sister’s experience of living as a Black minority in Britain. That conversation reinforced Anthony’s sense of purpose. “I feel like I was given this gift and this talent to be able not just for myself but for people.” After university, Anthony was posted for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Nigeria’s compulsory one-year national service programme, to Brotherhood Secondary School in Ibesikpo Asutan, Akwa Ibom State, in southern Nigeria. The public school bore little resemblance to the private schools she had attended. She says she arrived on her first day convinced the students would mock her accent. Despite having no formal training as an English teacher, she found herself teaching the subject anyway. Rather than retreat, she leaned into the challenge.  One lesson at a time, she built a rapport with her students. She asked what they hoped to become, shared stories of people who had overcome difficult circumstances and, every so often, ended lessons by singing. “Before I leave the class, [the kids] would say, ‘Teacher, teacher, sing one more song,’” she said. “It felt like a beautiful merger: teaching and music.” Teaching may have become her profession, but music never stopped being her ambition. The strategist behind the songs After completing national service, Anthony built a career in digital strategy. Between 2016 and 2020, she said she worked in advertising and branding, developing campaigns for clients including Nigerian tier-one lenders Access Bank and Zenith Bank. She later served as a community manager on a Lagos State gubernatorial campaign that challenged incoming governor Jimi Agbaje in 2019, according to Anthony. Those years gave her something many emerging musicians never acquire: a practical understanding of digital communities, audience development and brand positioning. “I realised that it’s not just for corporate sectors,” she said. “You can actually put that into music and entertainment, into a person.” By 2020, Anthony was ready for another chapter.  She had secured admission to the University of Ilorin Business School to pursue a master’s degree, but the COVID-19 pandemic derailed those plans before the programme could begin. “In 2020, I secured admission into the