Afreximbank’s October 18 announcement of a doubled $2 billion commitment to African creative industries continues to reverberate across the continent, with filmmakers and other creative professionals voicing familiar frustrations.
From its launch in 2020 with an initial commitment of $500 million, Afreximbank’s CANEX (Creative Africa Nexus) funding pool grew to $1 billion in 2022 and is now at $2 billion as announced last month, for deployment over the next three years.
Three weeks after the announcement, it appears that there remains a chasm between Afreximbank’s operational framework and the daily actualities of African filmmaking—a gap between headline numbers and on-the-ground realities.
From the point of view of the average African filmmaker or producer, these dramatic funding increases that are announced with fanfare might be creating a kind of false hope.
A question I’m sometimes asked is: ultimately, what’s Afreximbank’s strategy here?
For Akoroko Premium subscribers, I provided my own objective assessment of the situation, based on what I know and have observed thus far.
In the piece, I addressed questions like, who actually receives funding from Afreximbank/CANEX? What has been the real-world impact? Is there sufficient transparency?
I also addressed the reasons for the reflexive nature of reactions from the African film community, broadly speaking, to major funding announcements in general, the need for other funding mechanisms that are accessible and could be developed in the African context, and more.
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