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African Film Press (AFP) has been building what we believe is the most comprehensive map of financing instruments for film and television operating on the African continent — all of them: national government funds, Pan-African equity vehicles, broadcaster-backed programs, festival-embedded labs, bilateral co-production mechanisms, and regional bodies that are currently, verifiably, putting money into film and television production in Africa. The count currently stands at 35. Before you read anything into that number, let me say plainly that the financing ecosystem documented here, despite being continent-based, represents a formal layer that most working African filmmakers will likely never access — for any number of reasons, whether it be selection criteria or judgment calls made by filmmakers and producers themselves. **What 35 Actually Means** 35 financing instruments may initially sound like a lot on the surface. In a continent of 54 countries and 1.4 billion people, with film industries active across Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and dozens of other markets, it most certainly is not. The United Kingdom alone has the British Film Institute, Film4, BBC Film, Screen Scotland, Film Cymru Wales, Northern Ireland Screen, and Creative UK — for a country of 67 million people. France's CNC administers support for cinema and television production running to several hundred million euros annually. For all of sub-Saharan Africa, the total annual institutional grant capacity we have been able to verify is estimated at **$20 million to $35 million** — a rough floor that includes irregular dispersers and excludes equity vehicles not yet deployed. The 35 instruments are not evenly distributed. Some countries have layered ecosystems — Morocco, South Africa — where a filmmaker or foreign producer can combine a national grant, a provincial incentive, a broadcaster pre-buy, and a co-production treaty into something resembling a structured finance package. Most countries have one instrument, sometimes poorly funded, sometimes years behind in publishing results. And in at least one case, Algeria's FDATIC closed entirely for three years before being revived by presidential decree in 2025. **Who These Funds Are Actually For** These funds were designed for filmmakers who already have some production infrastructure in place. The eligibility requirements are standard for national film funds anywhere in the world: a registered production company, residency, local production spend, demonstrated co-financing from other sources. The BFI requires the same things. So does the CNC. The criteria themselves are not unusual. What makes them exclusionary in most African markets is the gap between what those criteria assume and what most working filmmakers there actually have access to. The co-financing requirement is the most consequential. Most funds require you to demonstrate that other money is already attached before they will consider your application. In markets where broadcasters rarely pre-buy, equity investors are scarce, and co-production partners are hard to reach, that requirement rules out anyone who hasn't already cleared the hardest hurdle on their own. The Kenyan filmmaker cannot apply to Senegal's Fopica. The Ghanaian filmmaker cannot apply to Morocco's CCM. The Ugandan filmmaker cannot apply to South Africa's NFVF. These are national instruments set up to develop national industries. The implication is that a continent-wide filmmaker looking for institutional support within Africa is largely confined to the handful of Pan-African or multi-regional mechanisms — the OIF's Fonds Images de la Francophonie (primarily for francophone language projects), AFAC (Arab region focus), and the growing number of equity funds like Afreximbank's Canex Creations Inc. and the Next Narrative Africa Fund, both still in early deployment stages. **The Exceptions Worth Knowing** Morocco is the most complete ecosystem on the continent for film financing. The CCM (Centre Cinématographique Marocain) runs three domestic grant cycles a year across fiction, documentary, and animation. It also administers a **30% cash rebate** on eligible expenses for foreign productions shooting in Morocco — uncapped, with a minimum spend of approximately $1 million — making Morocco one of the most active foreign production destinations in Africa. In 2025 alone, CCM backed at least 23 foreign features through this incentive scheme, generating over **$165 million** in local investment. Morocco also has 11 active bilateral co-production treaties with other countries — the largest treaty network on the continent. South Africa has the deepest institutional financing package in sub-Saharan Africa: the NFVF nationally, the DTIC's film and TV incentive package, a foreign production rebate comparable to Morocco's, the Gauteng Film Commission and KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission provincially, and the City of Cape Town's Film Support Fund municipally. The caveat — and it is a significant one — the DTIC's approval committee has not convened since March 2024. Industry bodies estimate the sector has contracted by nearly **50% since 2020** as a result. South Africa's financing infrastructure is the most sophisticated on the continent, and it is currently broken at a critical juncture. Tunisia, through the CNCI, runs one of Africa's oldest and most consistent national film support mechanisms, and in November 2025 passed a new audiovisual investment law further expanding the institutional architecture. Algeria reactivated its FDATIC — closed since January 2022 — via the 2025 finance law, and its Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage launched a digital submission platform in February 2026, reopening institutional support for Algerian production for the first time in three years. **What This Means If You Are Looking for Production Partners** For a financier or producer based outside Africa who wants to make a film or series set on the continent, the map above defines what African filmmakers and producers — via African institutions — can and cannot bring to a finance plan. The realistic scenario in most markets: an African production company can contribute local expertise, on-the-ground logistics, eligibility for available domestic grants, and in some cases a co-production credit that unlocks a bilateral treaty benefit. What African institutions cannot currently provide in most markets is lead financing for an international-scale project. The gap between what is available domestically and what a $2–5 million co-production requires is still largely filled by European public funds, Gulf institutions (primarily the Red Sea Film Foundation and the Doha Film Institute), and in some cases UK or Canadian agencies. Across AFP's festival financing analyses of top-tier festivals and markets 2025–2026, covering more than 40 project financing breakdowns, every project with an estimated budget above approximately €400,000 drew on at least one European or Gulf source as its structural base. That gap is exactly what the newer equity vehicles — Canex Creations Inc., Next Narrative Africa Fund, Logical Pictures Africa, MBO Capital (Nigeria's most active private equity financier in film, with over **$6 million deployed across 35 projects** as of Q3 2025), and Moshood Abiola's announced Ebony Life Afro Film Fund — are designed to address. As of March 2026, Canex Creations Inc. has made its first confirmed local film investment, co-producing *Clarissa* by the Asiri Brothers alongside MBO Capital, with Neon acquiring worldwide distribution. NNAF deployed its inaugural slate of nine projects in March 2026. These are proof-of-concept, not scale. But collectively, they could represent a structural shift — as models for internationally scalable African productions backed primarily by African funders. That was not present just five years ago. The premise of this work is simple. Before anyone can make a sound argument about what African film financing needs, or evaluate whether the new funds announced every quarter are closing the gap, the current state of the infrastructure must be documented accurately. The picture it shows is certainly not discouraging. At a minimum, it's honest. Across the continent, institutional support for film and television production is more geographically distributed and more capitalized than it was five years ago. It's still not sufficient for the scale of filmmaking talent that exists across 54 countries.
