How Kilimanjaro Live Took Burna Boy’s Stadium Show Indoors & Sarkodie’s Rapperholic To Royal Albert Hall

Afrobeats is popular worldwide, and has been for a while. The UK in particular is a real hub for the genre outside its core origins in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria.

Two special concerts may serve as cases in point: Burna Boy‘s Manchester performance in April 2025, which brought his stadium production into an indoor arena, as well as Sarkodie‘s celebration of Ghana’s Independence Day at the Royal Albert Hall London in March 2026.

Both shows were promoted by Josh Casey at Kilimanjaro Live, who first worked with Burna Boy while at Robomagic, the company that brought the Nigerian superstar to London Stadium June 3, 2023. It marked the UK’s first-ever Afrobeats stadium show, sold out, a “massive moment,” as Casey recalls.

He had stayed in touch with the team after leaving Robomagic for Kilimanjaro, and heard via his partner Ropo Akin at Cokobar, that Burna Boy was keen on playing Manchester. “They heard about the new arena, Co-op Live, how it was the biggest and the best and all these things,” Casey recalls, adding, “I managed to connect the dots and make it happen.”

On April 21, 2025, Burna Boy became the first African artist to headline Co-op Live. By that point, he was already a bonafide stadium act who hardly played arenas anymore. The show before Manchester, for instance, took place at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, April 18

The show was so massive, Casey had doubts it would fit inside. “The stage is huge,” said Casey, “but, fortunately, given the size and shape of the massive square bowl, it was able to fit. They had three walkways all pointing outwards from the center, and every inch of it got used in the venue. If you look at photos and videos from that night, you’ll see that it was a massive production. And if you didn’t know it was indoors, you could think it was an outdoor show. We ended up having screens that were bigger than they used inside Stade de France. It worked out fine,” Casey recalls, adding that “it was all down to the production team, both on the artist’s and the promoter’s side, who figured it would be worth doing.”

He continued, “when it comes to having a stadium show, it’s just a bigger scale version of what we already do, but in terms of the actual production, it’s very similar.”

Still, that exact show, added Casey, “wouldn’t have been possible anywhere else, not with those exact specifications. We would have had to scale it down in a lot of ways, which would have taken away from the magic.”

Speaking of the Co-op Live performance, Burna Boy said: “Co-op Live was a movie last night! You all brought that big stadium energy—mad vibes from start to finish. My only UK arena show, and we turned it into something unforgettable. The sound, the love, the energy…! Big thank you to everyone who made it magic.”

Guy Dunstan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Co-op Live added: “Last night was truly special, as we continue to see some of the world’s biggest artists choose Co-op Live for their only UK arena performances. The venue was designed to hold productions of significant scale, and it was great to see that in action. Thank you to Burna Boy, his team, and his incredible fans for bringing it all to life.”

Casey has become somewhat of an Afrobeats specialist in the UK. He never set out to become one, but he might have had an affinity for beat-driven music, having grown up a fan of hip hop, listening to Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Eminem, etc. “I don’t just like rap music. I like a lot of music, but it just so happens that most of the stuff I’ve promoted over the years, whether it’s grime, drill, Afrobeats, R&B, whatever has a hip hop lean to it.”

Another case in point is Sarkodie’s Royal Albert Hall show on March 6 of this year, celebrating Ghana’s Independence Day by bringing his annual festival Rapperholic to London.

Casey had first seen the Ghanaian appear at Fameye’s Nov, 2025 performance at London’s 800-cap Steel Yard, promoted by Kilimanjaro Live.

“Sarkodie came out as a special guest during the headline set, and the crowd reaction was like nothing I’d ever seen before. We were in a 800-cap venue, but it felt a lot bigger. Every single person in the room was reacting to him coming on stage. I didn’t actually recognize who he was at the time, my co-promoter, Berny [Sarfo], who runs Bizzle Entertainment, told me.

“After a couple meetings with Sarkodie and his management, they told me that one of their dreams was to play the Royal Albert Hall one day. So, I got on the phone. The Royal Albert Hall is a venue that’s notoriously hard to get, especially weekend dates, yet I managed to get Friday, March 6, Ghana’s Independence Day. Artist and team were both super excited, they confirmed it all straight away. We made the plan to announce the show as his festival in Ghana, which happens in December every year. So, I had to tell my marketing team that we were going to be announcing a show on Christmas Day on stage in Ghana for a show at the Royal level Hall in London, and everyone was like, “what?”

The team got everything ready before the holiday break, including a sign-up page, QR code, and artwork. Everything was in place when the liv biz shut down for the annual festive period.

When Sarkodie announced the show at Rapperholic Festival on Dec. 25, 2025, live on stage in Ghana, Casey recalls, “it lit up a big viral moment online with everyone talking about the show by the time we came back to the offices. We went on sale in early January, everybody will tell you, that’s a bad time to go on sale with a show. But we sold out in a week. It was a lot of luck and good timing and good planning, which brought it all together.”

It was such a successful collaboration that Sarkodie will celebrate Ghana’s Independence Day in London again next year, this time at The O2, making him the first African rapper and artist from Ghana to headline the iconic arena.

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