Nigeria Goes Global; AFRIFF Plots Market; Doha Launches New Festival
Streamlined looks at how the Nigerian government plans to support the creative industries.
Africa had a notably bigger presence at this year’s Cannes film festival and market, in particular Nigeria, which had My Father’s Shadow in Un Certain Regard, while the Nigerian government was talking up plans to invest in the country’s creative economy. In addition, the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) announced plans to launch a market at this year’s edition, one of a series of new film markets and festivals based in the Global South announced during Cannes.
Various organisations from the Arab world also held a busy schedule of panels, talks and networking events at the festival, with activities spearheaded by the Arab Cinema Center, Doha Film Institute (DFI) and Media City Qatar, Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival and Saudi’s Red Sea International Film Festival. DFI also announced plans to launch a fully fledged film festival this November. You can find further details of all these developments below along with a reminder that, unlike the US & UK trades, Streamlined is an independent publication that is funded by readers, not by film commissions, so strives to be objective rather than regurgitating publicity material.
This is Streamlined’s last free report before taking a six-week break over the summer, during which I’m overseeing some technical upgrades to the platform which should hugely improve the reader experience. The Streamlined Guide to Asia Co-production Funds will be published later this month.
Nigerian Government Steps In To Support Screen Industries
Nigeria’s Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy was active in Cannes, talking up plans to invest $300m into the country’s screen industries and introducing recently launched film promotion agency, Screen Nigeria, which hosted the first ever Nigeria Pavilion in the International Village.
The country had a lot to celebrate at the festival this year with Akinola Davies Jr’s debut feature My Father’s Shadow as the first Nigerian film in Cannes official selection. Nigeria’s culture minister Hannatu Musawa says the country now plans to build out the soft power of its screen industries, emulating its globally successful Afrobeats industry, which has seen artists like Burna Boy, Wizkid and Tems become international stars.
Nigeria is of course already home to the prolific Nollywood film industry but faces a lot of infrastructure problems, particularly when it comes to distribution and monetisation. Like several other content industries around the world, Nigeria had a flood of investment from the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Disney during the height of the streamer wars, but from early 2024, disillusioned by low ARPU and infrastructure problems, they started to pull out. Netflix is still active but local producers say the streamer has reduced investment over the past year.
Meanwhile, the country remains massively under-screened with just over 300 screens for a population of around 240 million – the biggest population by far in Africa. In the past, Nigerian producers have mostly relied on digital revenue, often targeting the higher spending diaspora population in the UK and North America, but are now exploring other ways to recoup.
Nigeria’s government has not historically been involved in supporting the screen industries, but now perhaps seeing the potential for jobs creation, is starting to step in. During Cannes, Musawa explained that her ministry had commissioned Boston Consulting Group to conduct a study in which they looked at how South Korea has developed its creative industries. She also said that the government has secured investment of $300m in partnership with banks, including Afreximbank, to fund initiatives that could add $100m to Nigeria’s GDP by 2030...
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