The African screen industry has created more places to pitch. That does not necessarily mean it has created more places to get funded.
Across the continent, a growing share of the route to a commission now passes through a competition, laboratory, residency or market presentation. The opportunity is usually presented in hopeful language: access, visibility, mentorship and a room full of decision-makers. All of those things matter. But beneath the expanding calendar of calls is a harder question. How much must an African producer spend before anyone pays for the work?
FAME Week Africa’s 2026 programme makes the scale of the shift unusually clear. In the space of a few weeks, the Cape Town market promoted calls for premium drama, unscripted projects, micro-dramas, Eastern Cape film and television projects, and student concepts. The organisation says its partnership with MultiChoice, now a CANAL+ company, is designed to connect African producers directly with commissioners.
Durban FilmMart is operating further along the same pipeline. Its 2026 Pitch and Finance Forum selected 36 projects across animation, fiction, documentary and series. Those teams will receive one-to-one preparation before meeting potential collaborators and investors in Durban. For filmmakers who have spent years outside the rooms where money moves, that access is valuable.
Yet the combined picture is not simply an industry opening its doors. It is an industry turning the search for work into a permanent audition.
The pitch comes before the production risk
A serious pitch is not a conversation improvised in a corridor. Producers may need a treatment, series bible, finance plan, director’s statement, budget, schedule, market strategy and visual deck. Some calls request a teaser or proof of concept. Others require rights documentation, company records or evidence that a project can attract co-producers.
Each item costs time or money. Writers revise without a commission. Producers hire designers and editors. Directors shoot material that may never become a film. Teams travel to markets, apply for visas and pay for accommodation. Even when a programme offers mentorship, the project has already absorbed months of unpaid development before it enters the room.
That cost is easy to hide because it is distributed across the people making the application. A commissioner sees a polished ten-minute presentation. The production team remembers the weeks required to make those ten minutes possible.
The risk has therefore moved. Broadcasters and platforms can review a large pool of developed concepts before committing capital. Producers fund the early work and compete for a smaller number of decisions. If a project is rejected, the institution loses little. The producer keeps the bill.
Access is expanding while commissioning narrows
This would be less worrying in a market with many active buyers. Africa’s commissioning environment is moving in the opposite direction. Broadcasters are under pressure, streaming strategies have been reset and production budgets are being examined more closely.
RollCall Africa recently reported that the closure of four DStv channels represented more than a change to the electronic programme guide. It also removed spaces that had supported local acquisitions, production relationships and specialist audiences. When outlets contract while pitch programmes expand, more creators can enter the funnel even as fewer projects may emerge from it.
This is the contradiction at the centre of the current market. There are more workshops teaching filmmakers how to become “investor-ready,” but being ready does not mean an investor is waiting. There are more rooms in which to describe a project, but not necessarily more commissioning budgets on the other side of the table.
The danger is that the continent becomes very good at producing proposals instead of productions.
Who is filtered out?
Pitch culture rewards more than the strength of a story. It rewards familiarity with the language of international development, confidence in front of panels and the ability to package local ideas in terms funders already understand.
It also rewards mobility. A producer based near Cape Town, Durban, Cairo or another industry centre starts with advantages that are easy to mistake for talent. A filmmaker travelling across borders must solve currency, visa and accommodation problems before the meeting begins. English and French fluency open different networks. Reliable internet affects who can attend online preparation. A registered company and clean rights chain favour teams that already have professional support.
None of these requirements is unreasonable on its own. Together, they create a class test hidden inside a creative opportunity.
The result can be a market that repeatedly selects producers who already know how the market speaks. New voices may be invited, but only after learning to resemble the people who have been funded before.
A pitch should lead somewhere measurable
The answer is not to abandon film markets or public calls. African filmmakers need transparent routes to decision-makers, particularly in industries where personal networks have traditionally controlled access. Open submissions can widen the field. Mentorship can turn an idea into a financeable project. Markets can create co-productions that no single national industry could carry.
But the value of a pitch programme should be measured beyond the number of applications, participants or meetings. How many projects received development money? How long did decisions take? How many reached production? Who retained the underlying rights? Were unsuccessful teams given useful feedback? Did the programme pay for travel or expect producers to absorb it?
Those figures would tell the industry whether a call is a financing route or an engagement campaign.
They would also help producers decide where to place their limited time. The current system encourages filmmakers to treat every new call as a possible breakthrough. In practice, applying everywhere can consume the time required to develop the work itself.
This is especially important as African projects chase international finance. As RollCall Africa has examined in its coverage of what happens to African films after festival attention, entry into an industry pipeline is not the same as reaching an audience or recovering an investment.
The next stage of access
A healthier commissioning market would share early risk. Shortlisted projects could receive paid development grants. Pitch organisers could publish conversion rates from previous editions. Commissioners could state budget bands and rights expectations before producers apply. Regional participation funds could prevent travel costs from determining who appears in the room.
Most importantly, a call should make clear whether it is searching for a project to commission, a project to develop or simply a project to showcase. Those are different promises.
Africa does not have a shortage of pitchable stories. It has a shortage of dependable routes from a promising pitch to a financed production. The industry’s next achievement should not be another crowded stage. It should be a system in which the people doing the pitching are not asked to carry nearly all the risk before the first contract arrives.
Sources: FAME Week Africa; Durban FilmMart Institute.
