What Is Akoroko?
A professional intelligence platform covering African and diaspora film, television, and digital media.
"I think cinema is needed throughout Africa because we are lagging behind in the knowledge of our own history. I think we need to create a culture that is our own. I think that images are very fascinating and very important to that end."
— Ousmane Sembène
Akoroko is an intelligence platform covering African and diaspora film, television, and digital media. It provides reporting, market analysis, and structured data used by producers, distributors, financiers, festival programmers, researchers, and institutions working across African and diaspora screen sectors.
Its work combines journalism, market intelligence, and data analysis. In practical terms, it tracks projects, companies, funding activity, distribution, exhibition, policy decisions, and other market developments across Africa and its global connections.
Akoroko is a living platform. Its coverage, datasets, and research continue to expand as the sectors it documents continue to change.
What Akoroko Does
Akoroko is a reporting, analysis, and data service covering African and diaspora screen activity. It documents projects, institutions, people, financing, policy decisions, distribution activity, and market movement with an emphasis on verification and specificity.
Its editorial standard is factual reporting grounded in named projects, named institutions, named individuals, and documented market activity. Analysis and criticism appear where they are supported by evidence and clearly presented as such.
What Akoroko Covers
News & Dispatches
Time-sensitive reporting on developments across African and diaspora screen sectors.
Market Analysis
Reporting and analysis on box office, streaming, distribution, exhibition, and audience access.
Festival & Market Coverage
Reporting from festivals, film markets, and industry events including Cannes, Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance, and AFRIFF.
Funding & Finance
Tracking of grants, investments, co-productions, public funding decisions, and financing structures.
Data & Intelligence
Structured datasets on projects, companies, institutions, releases, and market activity.
Policy & Regulation
Reporting on laws, regulatory decisions, public policy, and institutional action affecting screen activity.
Interviews
Conversations with filmmakers, producers, executives, funders, regulators, programmers, and other decision-makers.
Long-form Analysis
Reported essays and research reports on major developments across African and diaspora screen sectors.
Akoroko Premium
Akoroko Premium launched in April 2024 as the subscription layer of the platform. It provides access to in-depth reporting, analysis, and data-led intelligence for professionals working across African and international screen sectors.
By December 2025, the paid subscriber base had tripled across Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Subscribers include producers, distributors, financiers, festival programmers, researchers, and institutions.
Localized pricing is currently available in selected markets, with pricing structured to improve access across different economies.
SUBSCRIBE TO AKOROKO PREMIUM →Led by Tambay Obenson
TAMBAY A. OBENSON
Founder & Editor
Tambay A. Obenson is a journalist, critic, researcher, and media entrepreneur covering African and diaspora film, television, and digital media. He is the founder of Akoroko, an intelligence and editorial platform tracking finance, distribution, exhibition, policy, streaming, and screen culture across Africa and its global connections. He also leads African Film Press (AFP), an alliance linking Akoroko with regional partner platforms including Sinema Focus in Kenya and What Kept Me Up in Nigeria.
Over more than a decade, Obenson has built a body of work that combines reporting, criticism, market analysis, and long-term documentation of African screen activity. His writing has appeared in "Sight & Sound," and he previously worked as a features writer at IndieWire. He has spoken and presented at international festivals, markets, and academic institutions including Cannes, MIP Africa, Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, Yale University, and the University of Exeter.
His work tracks how African screen sectors are financed, distributed, regulated, and discussed, with particular attention to infrastructure gaps, data scarcity, institutional power, audience access, and the international circulation of African and diaspora work. Alongside Akoroko's editorial coverage, he is developing African Screen Intelligence, a research and data initiative designed to produce deeper market information on African film, television, and digital media.
Obenson's reporting and analysis are used by producers, distributors, financiers, festival programmers, scholars, and institutions seeking detailed coverage of African and diaspora screen sectors.