Osahon Akpata has spent the past month positioning a new African film investor at the center of two of the year’s biggest festival markets. The Cairo-based vehicle he leads quietly brought African projects into Cannes and then mounted a focused presence at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival to push sales, partnerships and follow-on finance.
A push from festival rooms to commercial deals
CANEX Creations Inc., or CCInc, used the Toronto market to stage an inaugural African Global Hub that combined screenings, talks and business meetings aimed at converting festival buzz into revenue. For Akpata and his team, the urgency is clear: moving African film and music from cultural success into sustainable investment opportunities matters now because it determines who owns and profits from Africa’s creative output.
The hub’s centerpiece was a special industry screening of Marie-Hélène Roux’s Muganga: The One Who Treats — a Congo-focused biopic executive produced by Angelina Jolie and featuring Isaach De Bankolé as Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege. CCInc stepped in during post‑production to close a budget shortfall and used TIFF to introduce the film to international buyers and distributors.
More than 400 industry delegates attended the screening and a follow-up conversation that included Mukwege and actors David Oyelowo and Danai Gurira. The emotional reaction in the room, organisers say, underscored the title’s cross‑border potential and the need for better commercial pathways for African stories.
- Hub highlights: industry screening of Muganga, six works‑in‑progress showcases, and a high‑profile panel on financing and distribution for African content.
- Works-in-progress shown: titles ranged from Nollywood sequels like The Black Book 2: Old Scores to documentaries and South African dramas in later-stage production.
- Strategic partners: MBO Capital, FilmOne Limited, Narrative Entertainment and South Africa’s Gambit Films helped underpin programming and outreach.
From trade-bank strategy to an IP investment arm
CCInc is a subsidiary of the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), itself part of the Cairo-based African Export–Import Bank — commonly referred to as Afreximbank. The vehicle was created after the bank decided to take a systemic approach to Africa’s creative and cultural industries, driven by a demographic reality: a very young continent and a creative sector that employs large numbers of people under 30.
That strategy, known as the Creative African Nexus Program — CANEX — bundles financing, capacity building, export promotion, policy work, partnerships and digitization. Afreximbank initially earmarked significant capital for the initiative and scaled allocations over successive years into the billions to back programs and infrastructure across the continent.
CCInc was formed specifically to provide equity and venture-style funding into creative intellectual property — a gap the bank identified when it saw many small creative firms unable to reach institutional capital markets.
How CCInc works and what it finances
The company targets music catalogues, films and other rights as investable assets, taking minority or partial stakes rather than full production financing. That approach is designed to attract other institutional players and reduce risk while helping projects secure distribution and commercial success.
- Typical ticket size: between $500,000 and $5 million.
- Investment stance: venture-style equity investments, often contributing 20–40% of a project’s funding stack.
- Portfolio examples: festival titles such as Clarissa (a Cannes and TIFF title with a Neon worldwide rights arrangement), post-production support for Muganga, and a music publishing catalogue of roughly 230 songs.
What this means for African creators and investors
Akpata argues that pairing creative talent with formal capital opens the door for Africa’s IP to become a mainstream asset class. If African-backed films secure robust distribution and box office or streaming returns, that performance can attract more regional financial institutions and global partners.
Early examples matter: CCInc’s role alongside partners such as MBO Capital and Chapel Hill on projects that secure international distribution demonstrates a working model where local investors and global distributors can both capture value.
Akpata, who joined CCInc’s build‑out in 2024 and was named CEO in September 2025, brings experience from banking, consulting and creative projects. He frames the organisation’s mission as twofold: help creators retain IP ownership and build commercial systems that generate jobs and export revenue.
Lessons from the Toronto hub
The TIFF hub combined content visibility with deal‑making focus rather than publicity for its own sake. Panels, market screenings and targeted meetings were intended to move conversations toward financing, sales and distribution commitments.
Organisers left Toronto with several clear tasks: translate festival interest into firm sales or co‑financing agreements, scale the investor base that will back African IP, and replicate sectoral programs — music factories, export showcases and producer education — that support pipeline development.
For readers tracking media finance and African cultural industries, the takeaway is simple: institutional capital is increasingly orbiting African creative IP, and that shift will shape who benefits from the continent’s creative boom.
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Hello, I’m Declan. I share my film reviews and discoveries with you to enrich your moviegoing experience.