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Roll Call Africa’s editorial team is built from some of the most experienced film and television journalists on the African continent. Combined, our writers carry more than 150 years of industry coverage across every major African territory and the international festival circuits that matter.
We believe bylines matter. Every story published by Roll Call Africa carries the name of the journalist who reported and wrote it. No anonymous sourcing. No unsigned editorials. The people who write for this publication stand behind their work.
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ADAEZE OKOYE
Senior Industry Correspondent
Based in Lagos, Nigeria
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Adaeze Okoye has covered the African film and television industry for fifteen years, with a focus on the commercial, strategic, and cultural forces that shape what gets made and how it travels. She is one of the most authoritative voices on the business of Nigerian cinema — its box office economics, its marketing architecture, its distribution infrastructure, and its relationship to the broader pan-African screen economy.
Before joining Roll Call Africa, Adaeze held editorial positions at two major Nigerian entertainment publications and contributed industry analysis to international trade titles covering African content markets. Her writing combines practitioner-level knowledge of the industry’s mechanics with the critical intelligence of someone who has watched it from the outside long enough to see its patterns.
She covers the Nigerian theatrical market, West African co-productions, streaming economics, and the business decisions behind the continent’s most significant productions.
Contact: adaeze@rollcallafrica.com | @AdaezeOkoyeRCA
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ROTIMI FASH
Senior Distribution Correspondent
Based in Lagos, Nigeria
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Rotimi Fash is the publication’s specialist in the economics and logistics of African film distribution — theatrical windows, streaming deals, regional release strategies, and the data behind performance. He has tracked box office numbers across West, East, and Southern Africa for more than a decade, and his analyses are read by distributors, producers, and investors who need to understand not just what a film made but why it made it.
Rotimi writes without sentimentality about commercial performance. He trusts the data, follows it wherever it leads, and has an uncommon willingness to challenge the accepted narratives of the industry with the receipts. His coverage of the Nigerian theatrical market is the most granular available in the African trade press.
He covers distribution deals, theatrical exhibition, box office performance, streaming acquisitions, and the financial architecture of African film commerce.
Contact: rotimi@rollcallafrica.com | @RotimiFashRCA
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AMARA DIALLO
Francophone Africa & FESPACO Correspondent
Based in Dakar, Senegal
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Amara Diallo has covered African cinema from Dakar for twenty-five years. He has attended every edition of FESPACO since 1999, reported from the Cannes Film Festival for two decades, and followed the Francophone African film circuit — from development labs in Ouagadougou and Marrakech to distribution deals in Paris — with the patience and institutional memory that only longevity in a field produces.
He was in the room at Ouaga Film Lab in 2019 when the screenplay for Ben’Imana was first presented. He covered Sissako’s Timbuktu at Cannes in 2014. He was there for Sembène’s final press conferences. Amara writes with the authority of someone who considers himself part of the tradition he covers — not a detached observer but an invested witness.
He covers Francophone African cinema, FESPACO, co-production culture, West and Central African film, and the long relationship between African cinema and the European festival circuit.
Contact: amara@rollcallafrica.com | @AmaraDiallo_RCA
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LERATO DLAMINI
Southern & East Africa Correspondent | Industry Financing
Based in Johannesburg, South Africa
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Lerato Dlamini has covered African cinema and the screen industry from Johannesburg for twenty-five years. She was the founding film editor of a major South African arts publication, and her reporting has spanned the Durban International Film Festival, FESPACO, Cannes, the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and the South African Film and Television Awards across multiple decades.
Her speciality is structure — the financing mechanisms, the commissioning decisions, the institutional arrangements that determine what African television and film can be made and how. She is the writer who steps back from the specific project and asks the systemic question: what built the conditions that made this possible, and what is threatening those conditions now? She is not easily impressed, and her approval, when it comes, is earned.
She covers South African film and television, East African cinema, industry financing, streaming economics, and the commercial infrastructure of African screen culture.
Contact: lerato@rollcallafrica.com | @LeratoDlaminiRCA
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WANJIRU KAMAU
East & Central Africa Correspondent
Based in Nairobi, Kenya
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Wanjiru Kamau has covered East and Central African cinema from Nairobi since 2001. She has attended every edition of the Zanzibar International Film Festival since its inaugural 2001 edition, reported extensively on the Kenyan, Rwandan, Ugandan, Tanzanian, and Ethiopian film industries, and developed one of the most detailed analytical frameworks for understanding the infrastructure development trajectories of emerging African film territories.
Wanjiru is the publication’s expert on the relationship between state cultural policy and film industry development — the question of what governments do and don’t do that determines whether a national cinema can sustain itself. Her coverage of Rwanda’s Cannes selection was written from the position of someone who had been watching the infrastructure behind it being built for fifteen years.
She covers East and Central African cinema, African film archives and preservation, industry infrastructure development, and emerging African film territories.
Contact: wanjiru@rollcallafrica.com | @WanjiruKamauRCA
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NADIA EL-RASHID
North Africa & Continental Distribution Correspondent
Based in Cairo, Egypt
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Nadia El-Rashid has covered African screen distribution and the continental exhibition landscape from Cairo for twenty-five years. She is the publication’s specialist in North African cinema and television — the Egyptian production industry, Moroccan and Tunisian film culture, the Arab film circuit and its relationship to the broader African screen ecosystem.
Nadia is also the correspondent who most consistently asks the question the industry avoids: where does the money go, and whose interests does it serve? Her coverage of the Canal+/MultiChoice merger and its implications for African commissioning, and her analysis of the distribution gap that keeps internationally celebrated African films from reaching African theatrical audiences, represent the sharpest structural analysis in Roll Call Africa’s pages.
She covers North African cinema and television, continental distribution infrastructure, streaming economics, and the relationship between African film industries across the Arabic-French-English language divide.
Contact: nadia@rollcallafrica.com | @NadiaElRashidRCA
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EMEKA EZE
Film Craft & Creative Economy Writer
Based in Lagos, Nigeria
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Emeka Eze writes about the inside of the creative process — the directorial decisions, the cinematographic choices, the performance work, the craft that separates ambitious filmmaking from competent filmmaking. He is the writer who opens with a specific scene rather than a box office number, who traces a director’s formal evolution across their body of work, who cares about why a shot was held for three seconds longer than comfort dictates.
He came to film journalism from a background in production — he worked as a script editor and production coordinator before discovering that he wrote better about filmmaking than he did it — and that practitioner knowledge gives his reviews and profiles a specificity that purely critical writing often lacks.
He covers film craft, director profiles, emerging talent, and the creative economy of African cinema.
Contact: emeka@rollcallafrica.com | @EmekaEzeRCA
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KWAME ASANTE
West Africa (ex-Nigeria) & Prestige TV Correspondent
Based in Accra, Ghana
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Kwame Asante covers African cinema from Accra, which gives him a perspective that deliberately does not centre Nigeria even when covering West Africa. He has spent nine years building the most comprehensive coverage of Ghanaian cinema in the English-language trade press, while also tracking the East African new wave, the South African prestige television circuit, and the international festival geography of African series.
Kwame is the publication’s most intellectually combative writer. He refuses the premises of other people’s questions, challenges the assumptions embedded in how African cinema is discussed, and has an uncommon ability to make a structural argument feel personal and urgent. He was at Canneseries when Spinners competed. He was in Accra when Ghana’s Saka Saka was tracking at local cinemas and the Lagos trade press was asking whether it was Ghana’s Nollywood moment.
He covers Ghanaian cinema, West African film beyond Nigeria, prestige African television, and the international festival circuit for African series.
Contact: kwame@rollcallafrica.com | @KwameAsanteRCA
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SADE BELLO
Features & Profile Writer
Based in Lagos, Nigeria
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Sade Bello writes the human stories. Her profiles and feature interviews draw out the interior lives of directors, producers, writers, and executives — the decisions that shaped careers, the failures that preceded the successes, the philosophies behind the work. She is the writer who calls a director two weeks after the premiere and asks what they are thinking about now that the film is out of their hands.
Sade has conducted more than two hundred interviews with African film and television professionals over a twelve-year career. She believes that the best trade journalism makes the reader understand not just what happened but who the people were that made it happen.
She covers talent profiles, career retrospectives, industry conversations, and the personal stories behind African cinema’s most significant creative work.
Contact: sade@rollcallafrica.com | @SadeBelloRCA