EXCLUSIVE: In an indication of the rising momentum round African cinema, the inaugural African Movie Investor Roundtable (IFIR) gathered prime movie buyers and financiers concerned within the continent’s inventive industries in Cape City this week, alongside a bunch of regional producers and worldwide consultants.
Working July 21 to 23, the assembly was spearheaded by Steven Markovitz, the founding CEO of Huge World Cinema, the Cape City-based firm behind a string of African competition hits together with Omen, Tug of Conflict and Rafiki, and the African inventive industries-focused HEVA Fund.
Markovitz, who can be Govt Director of the African Producers Accelerator (APA), co-chaired the assembly with HEVA Fund Managing Accomplice Wakiuru Njuguna.
“It looks like a historic second in African cinema with elevated international recognition of the rising expertise on the continent and elevated availability of African finance for African movie, the roundtable was a novel alternative to carry these forces collectively and the outcomes have been past,” he stated because the assembly wrapped.
Njuguna, whose Nairobi-based HEVA Fund has mobilized greater than $40 million and invested in additional than 500 inventive companies throughout East Africa so far, added: “The driving power behind the roundtable was to carry collectively buyers who already recognise African movie as an investable asset class and create a platform for collaboration throughout the continuum of capital.”
He was amongst quite a lot of key rising African movie funders who made the journey to Cape City together with Osahon Akpata, CEO of CANEX Creations Inc., the mental property funding firm of Afreximbank’s Fund for Export Improvement in Africa (FEDA), which just lately invested in Nigerian produced NEON-acquired drama Clarissa by fraternal directorial duo Arie and Chuko Esiri.
Adekunle Adebiyi, Govt Director, Investments at Lagos-based MBO Capital Administration Restricted, which has invested greater than $9 million within the African movie business, supporting the manufacturing of greater than 42 movie and TV productions from Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda and South Africa so far, was additionally in attendance.
Contributors additionally included representatives of the Ford Basis, the Bertha Basis, the Mastercard Basis, South Africa’s Industrial Improvement Company and Nationwide Movie and Video Basis, and Enterprise and Arts South Africa, as particular person buyers together with Tony Tabatznik and Wale Gbadamosi-Oyekanmi alongside consultants Caroline von Kühn, Govt Director of Oxbelly, and Erica Motley Dupuis, Govt Producer at Influence X Capital.
The assembly additionally featured a program of professional talks from worldwide movie professionals.
Phil Hunt, Co-founder and CEO of Head Gear Movies and Bankside Movies, led a session on de-risking the movie worth chain from growth to distribution; Nadim Cheikhrouha, the Oscar-nominated producer of 4 Daughters and The Voice of Hind Rajab walked buyers by means of case research from funds to finance plan to waterfall; and lawyer Sandra Oyewole, Accomplice and Head of the Mental Property and Expertise Observe at DLA Piper Africa Nigeria offered an summary of IP finance in Africa.
AFIR grew out of the African Producers Accelerator, established by Huge World Cinema in 2025 with the help of the Bertha Basis, to assist mid-career African producers strengthen their companies and put together investment-ready initiatives. In 2026, APA acquired over 260 functions from 31 African nations; six producers from the brand new cohort pitched their initiatives to buyers through the assembly, alongside 5 producers from final 12 months’s cohort.
All eleven producers had come by means of APA’s three-month programme protecting enterprise technique, financing constructions and investor readiness.
They included Annemarie Du Plessis, producer of a 2026 Rotterdam Tiger winner Variations on a Theme; Khalid Awad, co-producer of the Cannes award winner Goodbye, Julia; Josh Olaoluwa, who produced movie One Lady, One Bra, which premiered at Venice and went on to win the viewers award at Tribeca and the BFI London Movie Competition’s award for greatest first function, and Mimi Bartels who produced the Netflix hit Black E-book and lots of different commercially profitable movies.
ANEX Creations’ Akpata praised the inaugural roundtable, saying an “spectacular group of individuals” had been put collectively for the assembly.
“I see very investable initiatives… and I’m certain that they are going to get funding both from Canex Creations Inc. or a few of the different buyers who have been within the room,” he added.
The subsequent AFIR assembly will happen in Lagos in November on the 2026 version of CANEX WKND, a four-day networking and enterprise alternative occasion gathering creatives, buyers, and business leaders from Africa and its diaspora.
