Africa’s Realness Institute Selects Four Screenwriters for AuthenticA Series Lab

The Africa’s Realness Institute has selected four screenwriters for its AuthenticA Series Lab, a six-month screenwriters programme that supports African writers to develop original series concepts set in Africa into market-ready pilot scripts, pitch decks, and bibles. Four screenwriters from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Cameroon will participate in AuthenticA Series Lab, the training programme that supports African writers to advance their series ideas into pilot scripts.

The participants are Lateefah Mayaki, a writer, director and cinematographer based in Lagos, Nigeria,  Ghanaian-Canadian writer-director Lindsey Addawoo, South African filmmaker Phumi Morare, and Cameroonian filmmaker Sahndra Fon Dufe. The programme is currently holding an eight-day residency in Ethiopia until September 25, which will be followed by online sessions until January 14, 2027. A second in-person residency takes place in Geneva, Switzerland, from January 19 to March 21, with a final event in Lille, France, from March 22-26 2027, where participants will pitch their projects as part of the African Series Pitch at Series Mania Forum. This pitch is the culminating market moment of the lab, where the four selected writers present their developed series to international industry decision-makers. As part of the African Series Pitch at the Series Mania Forum in Lille, it gives African stories direct access to buyers, commissioners, and co-producers from Europe, the UK, US, and Canada. This exposure is crucial for moving projects from development into active financing and co-production conversations. For writers from Africa and the diaspora, it provides rare global visibility and a pathway to get African-set series greenlit for the international market.

The participants will be mentored by Realness director of producing and showrunning Mehret Mandefro and director of writing programmes Selina Ukwuoma. “Offering writers the time, mentorship and industry access to turn an original idea into a market-ready series seems even more important in light of what is going on in the world,” said Mandefro. “We need to write a new world, and that begins with supporting fresh voices that have something to say.” “This year’s unprecedented all-female group of storytellers gives us a glimpse into four more fascinating worlds we have not yet encountered on screen,” added Ukwuoma.

The programme, since inception, has supported 15 African writers with some writers currently in active co-production conversations with companies across the UK, France, Canada, and the US. Now in its fifth year, the AuthenticA Series Lab comes at a time when the African film industry is particularly volatile and unstable, making this offering even more necessary. The programme is run with Geneva-based philanthropic organisation The Storyboard Collective, supported by the Canada Media Fund, and Series Mania Forum.