Africa’s film financing landscape may be evolving rapidly, but for producers, financiers and various industry professionals attending the Durban Film Expo this week, there are still a host of questions remaining about how to unlock the largely untapped potential of the continent’s screen industries.
From providing equitable access to the growing number of financing mechanisms created to support African content production to ensuring that these schemes are adaptable to local market challenges, many producers have expressed both hope and frustration with a global financing model that doesn’t always seem to fit the practical realities of filmmaking on the continent. Regional and global streaming platforms have fueled a surge in production, but as Amazon Prime Video’s surprise withdrawal from the African market earlier this year demonstrated, this model has left local producers at the mercy of decision-makers in distant offices.
However, optimism was not absent in Durban, with industry representatives from the region and around the world feeling optimistic. “The world is coming here,” said veteran US talent agent Dana Sims. “By 2030, 60% of the continent’s population will be 25 or younger. By 2040, Africa will have the largest GDP on the planet… and that has to happen here.”
The Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank, which last year announced a $1 billion African film fund as part of a broader effort to boost the continent’s creative industries, has sent a team to Durban to host a “deal room” where African filmmakers can pitch their projects to investors and financiers. The sheer size of the Afreximbank fund could be a game-changer for the continent. However, many producers have privately complained that the financial institution is too onerous, and that the barrier to entry is too high for most African filmmakers to access.
However, many applaud the fund’s overall vision and insist it is moving in the right direction, and that other financial institutions are following suit. “I think the responsibility that most of us in the financial industry have is to create an ecosystem that allows ideas to be incubated and to bring them as close as possible to the traditional financial model, so that innovators can access funding more easily,” says Kagisho Bapela (pictured), a senior dealmaker at the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa.
Yet distributing African content remains the most difficult task, both for established African filmmakers and newcomers to the market. “One of the frustrations I have in trying to figure out how we as a company are going to participate in the region and how we can be more helpful is that the distribution pipeline here is tough,” says Katie Irwin, agent and co-director of international distribution at WME Independent. “Monetizing the distribution pipeline is what’s supposed to feed your project money. And those things are a little bit atrophied.” [in Africa]“I've got a commissioning structure with streamers that's really helped a lot of filmmakers, production companies and producers get things done, but that can't be the only way.”
“We’re trying to bring the same kind of architecture that we’ve developed in Europe, particularly in terms of financing and distribution, to the African market,” said Frederic Fiore, president of Logical Pictures Group, which launched a new venture in Africa this year that includes a content investment fund, production companies and physical facilities, as well as a distribution pipeline. The company has become a leading player in film and TV equity through major investments in film banners such as Pulsar Content and Jokers Films, and Fiore suggested that the fast-track approach could become a model for financing in Africa.
“We are now seeing a lot of funds wanting to invest in the African continent, in the creative industries, but a lot of this is coming from institutions that traditionally finance gas, roads and hotels. Their due diligence process is very similar to the financing process. [large infrastructure projects],” He said.
“Here we want to insert ourselves as intermediaries between the major funding bodies, which have hundreds of millions to allocate, and the projects that are implemented in a timely manner. [operating with smaller budgets]“It's not on the same scale. And that's what I see as both a challenge and an opportunity.”
For many investors—whether large institutional funds or individual producers—the biggest hurdle is understanding a huge and incredibly fragmented market of 1.2 billion people, riven by linguistic, cultural and economic divides and governments with competing agendas. “How do we get investors who are interested but may have some reservations, may not know where to go, may not know how to do due diligence on investments in the African continent—how do we get them into the market?” said Iman Kennerly, senior advisor and business development officer at the U.S. government agency Prosper Africa.
“In many cases, these investors may be comfortable investing in entertainment in the United States, but when it comes to going outside of U.S. borders, they don’t know where to start.”
“There are a lot of producers in America who want to be here, who want to create here, and they’re tired of the old ways in the United States,” said Sims, a talent agent who, with producer Erica Grayson, has launched a new venture focused on making commercial films “with Africans for a global audience.” “I think we’re at a time where there’s a huge appetite for that, it’s just a matter of the mechanics of how we make it happen,” Grayson said.
“It’s important that we allow creators to take the lead and support that, and empower them to tell these stories, and become financially creative so they can continue globally,” said Kathleen Burke, a New York-based producer and filmmaker who is teaming up with South African film and television veteran Beverley Mitchell to launch Rare Bird Studios, a multinational global production studio focused on African, diasporic and international content. The duo also works closely with Betty Solti Johnson’s Paris-based Habebo Studios, which specializes in the production and distribution of African, Caribbean and diasporic content.
“The only way to do that is for producers who are passionate about it and institutions who are passionate about making fair deals, and they do it in a way that if they’re going to break the status quo of taking advantage of certain individuals, they’re going to come in and take what they can get,” Burke said. “I think you have to have a shift in leverage to do that, and that shift in leverage comes from making successful films that are marketable on a global stage, that everyone can enjoy and that will make a lot of money for the people who made the film here.”
