African film producers have spent years searching for safer projects. The answer may already be sitting on a publisher’s shelf.
Cairo International Film Festival has announced a new From Book to Screen forum that will place ten Egyptian publishing houses in the same room as producers, filmmakers and platforms. The timing is revealing. In South Africa, The Polygamist, adapted from Sue Nyathi’s 2012 novel, has reached nearly 28 million Netflix views. In Nigeria, Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives has moved from novel to stage, radio and now a TIFF premiere ahead of a December theatrical release.
These are not isolated creative decisions. They are signals that the competition for African screen content is moving earlier in the value chain. The producer who waits for a book to become a cultural event may already be late. The publisher, agent or author who signs away every screen right before that moment may discover the value only after somebody else has captured it.
READ ALSO: Lola Shoneyin published Baba Segi sixteen years before the screen caught up with its women.
Why Books Reduce One Kind of Risk
A film adaptation does not remove production risk. It can still be badly cast, poorly directed, inadequately financed or released without a workable audience plan. What a recognised book can reduce is uncertainty around the underlying material.
A novel arrives with characters, a world, a tested narrative and, sometimes, an identifiable readership. It can show producers which themes have already survived public attention. It can also provide marketing language before a trailer exists. “Based on the bestselling novel” is not merely a creative description. It is a risk signal for investors, distributors and platforms.
The Polygamist demonstrates the advantage. Its Zimbabwean source material was adapted into a South African production, directed across Nigerian and South African creative leadership, performed in a culturally specific world and distributed by Netflix. The book did not guarantee the audience. It gave the production a developed foundation from which that audience could be built.
READ ALSO: The Polygamist reached nearly 28 million views by making cultural specificity commercially legible.
The Valuable Contract Is Signed Before the Camera Arrives
The World Intellectual Property Organization describes an option agreement as the usual first step when a producer wants to adapt an existing work. The producer pays for an exclusive period in which to develop the project and decide whether to acquire the screen rights fully. If the production proceeds, the option is exercised and the acquisition payment follows.
That structure matters because “film rights” are rarely one simple right. A contract can cover a feature, television series, sequel, prequel, remake, animation, stage production, audio adaptation, merchandising and territories that the original writer may never have imagined. WIPO’s filmmaking guidance notes the tendency of producers to seek broad bundles while literary representatives increasingly push for higher payments and fewer surrendered rights.
The commercial question is therefore not only whether an African book reaches the screen. It is what the author and publisher still control when it does.
An option that pays a modest fee for a short development period can be reasonable. A permanent transfer of multiple rights for a fixed payment is a different proposition. So is a contract that defines net profit so narrowly that participation exists on paper but may never produce a payment.
Cairo Is Building a Rights Market, Not a Book Club
The importance of Cairo’s forum is its structure. Al-Ain, Al-Karma, Al-Masriah Al-Lubnaniah, Al Rewaq, Beit El-Hekma, Diwan, Al-Kotob Khan, Nahdet Misr and Shorouk are not attending simply to celebrate literature. They are entering an audiovisual market with catalogues of characters, stories and reader recognition.
For producers, the forum can shorten discovery. For publishers, it creates a chance to package rights professionally instead of waiting for informal approaches to individual writers. For authors, it could improve bargaining power if the process makes ownership, term, territory and reserved rights visible.
It could also concentrate control. If publishers hold screen rights through existing contracts, the author may enter the negotiation with less authority than the festival language suggests. If platforms seek regional or worldwide exclusivity, an adaptation that succeeds in one territory could close off other formats or languages for years.
The forum will become valuable when it discloses what kind of rights are being presented and what protection exists for the original creators. A list of ten publishers is a beginning. A functioning rights market requires clean ownership records, comparable deal terms, legal capacity and producers who understand that acquiring a book is not the same as acquiring the author.
The Next Competition Begins With the Catalogue
Major African production companies already understand the advantage of recognisable intellectual property. The next stage will be more systematic. Studios will track books before publication, seek first-look relationships with publishers and option works that fit specific production budgets and platform needs.
This creates a new commercial role for African literary agents and rights specialists. Someone must know which rights are available, which have reverted, which territories were granted and whether a theatre or radio adaptation affects the screen chain of title. Without that infrastructure, attractive projects can remain unfinanceable because nobody can prove that the producer controls what is being sold.
READ ALSO: A global film deal and a good film deal are not always the same thing.
Africa does not lack stories. That familiar sentence has become too easy. The more useful question is whether the continent has built a system that identifies valuable stories early, prices their rights fairly and allows writers to participate when an adaptation becomes commercially successful.
Cairo’s new forum is evidence that the system is beginning to form. The Polygamist and Baba Segi show why the market wants it. The next fight will not begin on set or at a premiere. It will begin quietly, inside the option agreement, while the book still appears to be only a book.
RollCallAfrica analysis based on Cairo International Film Festival’s From Book to Screen announcement, WIPO filmmaking guidance, published production records and disclosed platform performance as available on 12 September 2026. Individual adaptation agreements for the cited titles are not public; no ownership terms are inferred beyond disclosed records.
