When I asked Rwandan filmmaker, Mutiganda Wa Nkunda, in 2025, about his concern and critique of Western funding amidst the troubling realization that there are scanty national funds and grants for contemporary African filmmakers, his response was political. They were a “new form of colonialism.” That these European cultural institutions and bodies get to decide which African project is worth funding and not is concerning to the filmmaker. For Ganza Moise whose short film, Ako Kantu had its world premiere at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam(IFFR) and is steadily working on his feature project, Tears, funding —the scarcity and absence of it on the continent, is a pinning concern.
From Ghana to Gabon, Nigeria to Niger, Liberia to Lesotho, Kenya to Rwanda, the story is the same: there’s a paucity of funding, not stories nor storytellers. For the past seven decades, this has been a recurring concern. Post-independence African cinema, famed for its political consciousness, was still dependent and controlled by former colonizers. French institutions provided technical advice and funding while occasionally stifling films and filmmakers whose ideological stances were critical of France. The Ghanaian Film Industry suffered the same fate until the 60s when Kwame Nkrumah nationalized the Gold Coast Film Unit and changed its name to the State Film Industry Corporation and subsequently the Ghana Film Industry Corporation(GFIC).
Although this allowed the production of African-centered films and job opportunities for Ghanaian filmmakers, Nkrumah’s GFIC was criticized for being propagandist. After the coup that ousted Nkrumah from office, the GFIC was dismantled alongside its enormous file of films and achievements. One of the horrors committed against the Ghanaian film industry was the reduction of state funds and investment in the industry. Thus, Ghanaian filmmakers were compelled to obtain funds from external sources. Consequently, in the period from 1966 to the 1980s only approximately 20 Ghanaian films were made.
From inception, African cinema has never had a robust domestic financial infrastructure, save for Nollywood, capable of taking a film from conception to screen without external dependency at some stage. As highlighted, pioneering African filmmakers depend on external funding, technical support, and distribution support. In contemporary African cinema, that dependency is still present. For now, filmmakers are using the lab-and-residency circuit as the latest iteration of that outside dependency. It’s more benevolent in intent than colonial-era funding, but still structurally aligned.
Earlier in the year, Culture Custodian reported on a longlist of African filmmakers whose films are structurally locked in this lab-and-residency circuit. African filmmakers are moving from one lab and residency to another, worshiping their scripts, seeking co-production deals, funding, and international distribution opportunities. Ironically, these available instruction opportunities that exist for contemporary African filmmakers often push them outside the continent. The funding committee wants to weigh in on the film’s creative and ideological direction, the labs and residencies dull the film’s Africaness while prioritizing what it considers exportable African stories, and the international distribution deals don’t often cater towards the Africa-based audiences. On one hand, their labs and residencies are the pipeline for internationally ambitious African filmmakers. In the absence of local infrastructure, these film incubators develop talents through a structured process of discovering, nurturing, training and supporting individuals towards building sustainable careers in film.
Labs like Realness Institute’s AuthenticA give writers time/space to “get closer to their voice” with mentors, writing programs, and structured residencies. It allows African projects funding, co-production, and global networks. That most African projects can’t get financed locally isn’t news. But, these international labs and residences provide the leverage to access co-production and transnational distribution networks that may not be readily available within local industries. Programs like Berlinale Talents, Cannes’ La Résidence, Sundance Labs, Red Sea SeriesLab, TorinoFilmLab, and others which have backed African filmmakers give international attention and visibility. Whether this attention translates to a blossoming carree is debatable.
On the other hand, these talent-nurturing and film-developing labs and residencies come with risks which Wa Nkunda had highlighted. They’re critical infrastructure that sustains the more artistic-driven arm of the Africa film industry. But they also shape what stories get told, and for which audience. And this is concerning.
In the 70s, there was a pan-African response to curb this dependency. African filmmakers created the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes(Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers), during the first Pan-African Cultural Festival. The idea was to unite filmmakers from across the continent — today it has associations from 30+ African countries — to tackle shared issues like funding, distribution, training, censorship, and defending African cinema’s cultural identity. In 1980, the United Nations helped film workers found Centre International de Développement du Cinéma(International Centre for the Development of Cinema), to support filmmakers, especially from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. CIDC focuses on training, co-production, distribution, and defending the rights of film workers in the Global South. These were genuine efforts, but they ran up against a fundamental problem: in the absence of rigorous financing policy and appropriate structures in most African states, film production suffered deeply. Directors wishing to make and profit from their films never found the minimum conditions to do so. Produced films couldn’t be profitable because of the absence of an organized, structured market for efficient distribution and exploitation.
For internationally ambitious African filmmakers, these Western-facing labs and residences provide an escape from this generational trap. By proving their ingenuity and fluency in the language of international cinema, the contemporary African filmmakers get invited, scouted, and accepted to film incubators. Occasionally, they win conditional grants, make festival-loved and award-winning titles, but, quite often, they get stuck in the developmental labs. The effect of this is similar to post-Nkrumah’s eviction from the government: fewer films being made. This is an indictment on African governments, cultural institutions, and policy makers. With domestic infrastructure non-existent and lagging and state support absent, international co-production and developmental labs became the load-bearers for African filmmakers who wanted to make work outside their local industry.
The current influx of artistically ambitious African filmmakers to international developmental labs is the culmination of decades of structural failure. African filmmakers are more internationally visible than at any point in the continent’s cinema history and more dependent on international validation for their work to exist at all. As Zimbabwean director, Nyasha Kadandara highlighted, “with limited funding and an uncertain prospect of recouping, compromises have to be made: you have to either embrace the constraints of telling the most feasible story, scale down your vision, or wait for years to get funding. Whichever way you choose has its own hurdles.” This is a common challenge across Africa.
To curb this dependency and creative stagnation, African countries and decision makers need to set up national funding opportunities for filmmakers. Senegal has Film and Audiovisual Industry Promotion Fund Call For Projects(FOPICA) providing funding for projects. In 2019, the Rwanda Film Office (RFO) initiative was launched under the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), to centralise services related to the audiovisual and film industry, and support stakeholders in enhancing their operational capacities. Recently, the Namibia Film Commission (NFC) invited experienced Namibian filmmakers to submit co-production funding proposals for Short, Feature or Documentary film projects under the N!xau ≠Toma Film Fund for the 2026/2027 Funding Cycle. The South African The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), Moroccan The Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM), .Kenyan The Kenya Film Commission (KFC), and Senegal Film and Audiovisual Industry Promotion Fund Call For Projects(FOPICA) are few of the active government-led national film funds on the continent. There needs to be a creation of more bodies and opportunities.
As Culture Custodian concluded in an essay about My Father’s Shadow‘s dual citizenship conversation, the limited funding opportunities and contemporary African filmmakers latching onto Western grants have exposed the limitations of the African funding infrastructure. “As African filmmakers with diaspora identities and funding continue to make internationally ambitious work, and as European institutions remain the primary source of the funding required to do so, more films will carry this dual citizenship. The question for African criticism and policy is not whether to accept or reject these films as African. It is whether the continent can build the infrastructure to eventually make the dual passport unnecessary.” By offering structured funding for projects that showcase African stories, the created Africa-centric funds will bridge local technical crews with partners from the broader African continent and diaspora. The long-term effect of this is the creation of a sustainable film ecosystem that can rely on its local talents, stories, and ecosystem.
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