On 15–16 October 2025, Cologne hosted the first “Africa XChange Summit” as part of Film Festival Cologne (9–16 October 2025). The event was organized by Rushlake Media — the Cologne-based distribution company founded by Philipp Hoffmann — in partnership with Die Gesellschaft DGS, with institutional support from Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and Film Festival Cologne. Nadia Denton, founder of Beyond Nollywood (UK) and former BFI London Film Festival selection-committee member, curated the program.
I was invited but couldn’t attend. My African Film Press (AFP) partner, Ikeade Oriade, based in Berlin, covered the summit. What follows draws from transcripts of his recordings of all the panels and addresses.
Speakers came from Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Tanzania, Lesotho, Belgium, France, and Germany, covering finance, film, gaming, and technology. The moderators were Scott Roxborough (Europe Bureau Chief, The Hollywood Reporter, Germany) and Denton.
The finance and production panels featured Pam Mutembei (Investment Director, HEVA Fund, Kenya) and Joel Phiri (Managing Partner, Known Associates Group, South Africa).
Creative-industry perspectives came from Jude Abaga (Executive Director, TASCK Creative Company, Nigeria), Jorge Cohen (Founder, Cinezunga / Geração 80, Angola), and Michael Baruti (Creative Director, Ubongo, Tanzania).
Gaming and technology were represented by Dean Gichukie (CEO, Kunta Content, Kenya), Olympe Challot (Managing Director, Spielfabrique, Belgium), and George Ahere (CEO, Weza Interactive Entertainment, Kenya / Germany).
Film distribution and curation were discussed by Sata Cissokho (Director, Berlinale World Cinema Fund, Germany), Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Filmmaker, Germany / Lesotho), and Slim Mrad (Pathé Touch Afrique, France / Tunisia).
In his opening remarks, Hoffmann called the summit “a big step for us,” noting that it was the first time Film Festival Cologne had placed African creative industries at its center. He said the goal was to create direct commercial and creative exchange between African producers and European institutions without the language of aid or representation. He described Africa as “the last major growth market globally” and said the summit was designed “to move from visibility to collaboration.”
Hoffmann founded Rushlake Media in 2013 as a distribution company focused on international film rights, with a strong footprint in African markets. The company aggregates and licenses films and series across digital platforms, and curates the Africa-focused channel TidPix, developed in partnership with Nairobi-based curators and producers. That operational focus — commercially distributing African content within and beyond the continent — informed the summit’s design.
The Financing Impasse
Pam Mutembei (HEVA Fund, Kenya) described the fund’s work since its establishment in 2013 as one of the few structured financing mechanisms for creative industries in East Africa. Per Mutembei, HEVA has invested approximately $40 million across 14 countries. Internal data show that every $10,000 invested has generated about four jobs. She outlined systemic barriers that continue to limit growth: the absence of tax incentives, high production costs relative to available credit, and a weak exhibition base. She added that creative enterprises require long-term investment horizons because the time between production and revenue recovery often exceeds conventional loan periods.
Joel Phiri ( Known Associates Group) said South Africa’s film economy has expanded with national tax rebates and co-production treaties with Germany, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He said similar agreements between African states could allow producers to share infrastructure, talent, and financial risk rather than depend on external partners.
Both speakers described how producers routinely close budgets by combining personal equity, deferred fees, service contracts, and small-scale private loans.
Phiri proposed a matched-capital model for European partnerships. He said African producers are already investing their own money in development and production, and that international collaborators should contribute on equal terms. “We’ll bring fifty percent, and you, Germany, must bring fifty percent,” he said, framed as a shared investment instead of development assistance.
Infrastructure That Doesn’t Exist and the Systems Built Anyway
Jorge Cohen (Geração 80, Angola) presented Cine Zunga, the company’s mobile cinema initiative created to address Angola’s lack of theatrical infrastructure. The country has five multiplexes in total. Cine Zunga organized approximately 150 screenings in 2025, most in municipalities with no permanent cinemas. Each screening costs around $100 per film and relies on community partnerships for venues and logistics.
Cohen said the initiative functions as both audience development and market access. He criticized European funding mechanisms for their slow timelines, saying that application and approval processes can last up to two years. “The funds come in 2027 for a project conceived in 2025,” he said. He called for small, fast-moving seed programs that would allow producers to begin work without waiting for multi-year bureaucratic cycles.
Jude Abaga (TASCK, Nigeria), also known as M.I., said that most African creative businesses still operate without adequate legal or administrative infrastructure. Finding legal representation familiar with intellectual property and media contracts remains difficult, and creators often train their own lawyers while closing deals.
Established in 2020, TASCK operates as both a creative agency and professional development platform and has worked with more than 7,000 Nigerian artists, producers, and managers.
Abaga said the scale of African music and screen industries has outgrown local financial structures. He cited Warner Music Group’s acquisition of a stake in Chocolate City and Universal Music Group’s reported $100 million partnership with producer Don Jazzy as examples of valuable African intellectual property moving offshore. “We’re just getting our artifacts back from museums after hundreds of years, and we’re doing the same thing with music now and films,” he said.
Michael Baruti (Ubongo, Tanzania) described the company’s expansion since its founding in 2013 into the continent’s largest educational media enterprise. Ubongo produces television, radio, and digital programs for children aged 3–14 in 12 languages, reaching about 42 million households across 19 countries via free-to-air broadcasters, radio networks, and mobile platforms. The company’s data show an average 24 percent improvement in literacy and numeracy among regular viewers.
Baruti said Ubongo’s development model requires direct collaboration with children in the intended audiences before writing begins. Each project includes focus sessions where writers and animators test comprehension and engagement before finalizing scripts.
Each of these models — Geração 80’s Cine Zunga, TASCK’s mixed agency-training structure, and Ubongo’s multi-platform education network — operates as a market-based solution to gaps left by governments and international funders. None rely on subsidy to function, yet all address structural absences that public policy has failed to resolve.
Distribution and Audience
Sata Cissokho (Berlinale World Cinema Fund, Germany) said that since 2014, more African films have entered European distribution circuits, but that critical visibility has not translated into reliable theatrical performance. She explained that arthouse cinema continues to rely on subsidy and that funding agencies must now treat African producers as equal partners rather than occasional beneficiaries.
Slim Mrad (Pathé Touch Afrique, France) described the group’s network of about 80 screens across 15 French-speaking African countries, including Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Benin. Annual admissions across those territories total roughly five million tickets, equivalent to €10–12 million in gross box office, based on average ticket prices between €2 and €2.50.
Mrad said that most European-financed African films underperform theatrically in Africa because they are designed for European festival and television audiences. He noted that Pathé Touch Afrique is repositioning toward commercially driven African films intended for local and regional audiences.
Under new CEO Sébastien Onomo’s direction, the company has begun acquiring and distributing genre titles developed for African cinemas. Mrad cited the upcoming “Rumba Royal,” a Congolese-Belgian co-production starring Belgian-Congolese artist Damso, scheduled for release on 12 December 2025, as an early example of that approach.
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (filmmaker, Lesotho, Germany) discussed audience perception beyond urban and festival circuits. He recounted screening one of his films for rural audiences in Lesotho and the engaged discussion that followed. He said honesty of perspective matters more than adherence to formal conventions: “When you are truthful, it connects with people.”
Mosese also described avoiding a storyline involving voodoo imagery because of expectations that the subject would be misread by international programmers and distributors, contrasting that scrutiny with the freedom European and American filmmakers have in handling comparable material.
Policy and What Governments Aren’t Doing
Joel Phiri said that sustainable industry development in Africa depends on organization at the producer level. He noted that most African producers negotiate independently, without trade associations capable of producing data, drafting policy proposals, or lobbying ministries. He said that governments respond to collective economic arguments, not cultural appeals, and that professional associations are needed to formalize those positions.
Phiri proposed a continental data tax, modeled on levies already used to finance creative sectors in parts of Europe, to generate recurring domestic revenue for audiovisual funds. He also said that public broadcasters like South Africa’s SABC should be publicly financed rather than required to operate as commercial entities, since national broadcasters serve as the base for any production ecosystem.
Jude Abaga criticized how repeated funding announcements in Nigeria have failed to create accessible capital. He cited the introduction of multiple funds, noting that little reached creative professionals, adding that many Nigerian producers face commercial loan rates of 34–37 percent, while African Development Bank programs that advertise 9 percent loans for creative industries remain inaccessible in practice.
He said that the creative economy remains one of the continent’s most scalable employment engines, but that public intervention must be context-specific. “For Nigeria,” he said, “I don’t think the government getting more involved would be a net positive. Nigerians are boisterous and entrepreneurial on their own. The government should create pathways and step aside.”
Mic drop?
Both speakers agreed that African film and media industries require structural policy, not occasional grants or one-time funds, to compete within regional and international markets.
Broader Context
In July 2024, the East African Screen Collective (EASC) — a coalition of African production companies and industry organizations — published a statement with twelve specific guidelines for non-African entities working on the continent. The recommendations included African ownership of intellectual property, African-led selection committees for funding decisions, fair compensation for research participants, and training programs designed and led by African professionals with lived experience in local markets.
The statement named practices that have been standard for decades: European organizations managing funds meant for African producers, non-African staff designing development programs for African filmmakers, and research conducted without paying participants.
Around the same time, EAVE — the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs, a professional training and development organization backed by the EU — released its 2024 “Inclusive Co-Productions” report. The document acknowledged that current co-production engagements are built on colonial relationships that still determine who gets financing, which stories get made, and whose aesthetic standards get treated as universal.
The report was first presented at Cannes 2024 and represented institutional recognition, from a major European training body, that the imbalances are real and structural.
Both documents arrived at what the EASC described as a moment of receptiveness, specifically, European institutions discussing equity more openly than before.
The Cologne program unfolded within the same conditions, each described. It was not a reaction to them but part of the same conversation, shaped by the same pressures: a maturing African production economy engaging with institutions whose rules were written for earlier eras of cultural exchange.
The question was, and still is, where do we go from here?
Rushlake’s Hoffmann, who organized the inaugural Africa XChange Summit, expressed hope the event would return, though it may be too early to confirm a second edition.
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