Dear colleagues and friends,

I love a good revolution (as most French people do), and for the past 10 days the youths of Nigeria have served us with a particularly beautiful and inspiring one. 

What started as spontaneous protests against the brutality of a particular section of the Nigerian police force called SARS, whose rogue officers have been guilty for many years of harassing, racketeering, raping and killing young people across the country, has turned into an unprecedented peaceful movement for reform which is likely to have long-lasting repercussions. 

Across the country, young professionals who would normally have been too busy hustling to get involved with any kind of political wahala have had a lot of time to reflect in the past few months, courtesy of a particularly long lockdown. It seems that in the process they realized that they just had enough.

When foreigners say that Nigeria is disorganized, I tell them that they must be talking about the government, because Nigerians in the private sector and civil society are, in fact, extremely organized. What better illustration than these past few days, during which strangers and groups like the Feminist coalition have come together to raise funds for victims of police violence, deliver food and water to protesters, set up power outlets so that witnesses could continue to counter attempts at misinformation and manipulation, build crowdsourced tech platforms, all the while maintaining the pressure on Twitter where they got their very own dedicated emoji. Even celebrities are out there on the ground, Burna Boy mounting #ENDSARSNOW billboards all over Nigeria, Davido protesting in Abuja and Wizkid in London, Banky W leading street clean ups in Lekki, and countless Nollywood stars joining in as regular, masked citizens.

And in a shocking plot twist, 5-year-old Nigerian digital payment startup Paystack, founded by exactly the kind of young people that are the primary targets of SARS, was acquired by Stripe for a whopping $200 million. All in one week’s work.

It’s always pointless to attempt to compete against Nigeria’s flamboyance. But I will nevertheless still try to keep you interested. In this edition of HUSTLE & FLOW, I’ll talk about why Sports is Africa’s new oil; Canal+’s possible long-term plot to take over Multichoice; and why education companies should invest in Africa’s animation sector. But you’ll also read about Africanfuturism (and not Afrofuturism), West African portraiture, an Ethiopian gold crown, a fashion collection inspired by real female spies, Ivorian sports agoras, Kenyan content on Netflix, major new funding opportunities for film, and more.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, please make sure to do so at www.restless.global/hustleflow, where you’ll also find all previous editions of HUSTLE & FLOW. And please continue to engage by email or on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter @marieloramungai.

Happy reading to all,


Marie

LITERATURE 

This week we’ll start with literature for a change. Seven years after Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is finally releasing a new piece of fiction entitled Zikora, a short story about a Nigerian lawyer living in Washington, D.C. who has been abandoned by her successful partner after he learned that she was pregnant. Zikora will be available on October 27 as part of an Amazon Original series. 

Talking about Americanah, it looks like the book’s long-awaited TV adaptation is no longer happening at HBO Max after a scheduling conflict led star Lupita Nyong’o to drop out of the project. It was a long-time passion project for Nyong'o, who optioned it years ago and tapped Danai Gurira to write, with Brad Pitt's Plan B co-producing and Chinonye Chukwu directing. It would seem surprising for such a star-studded, topical project to die such as prosaic death, so let’s hope it gets resurrected somewhere else.

Another exciting release this month is Brittle Paper’s 10-year anniversary free Africanfuturism anthology edited by Wole Talabi. Talabi is an author, a member of the African Speculative Fiction Society and the curator of a database of over 600 works of African speculative fiction. The word Africanfuturism was coined by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, who rejects the most well-known term of Afrofuturism, to refer to science fiction rooted in the African world. Okorafor’s writing is featured in the anthology alongside works by TL Dilman Dila, Rafeeat Aliyu, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Mame Bougouma Diene, Mazi Nwonwu, and Derek Lubangakene. 


VISUAL ARTS

Sotheby's 2020 online auction of African modern and contemporary art closed on October 9, with a piece by El Anatsui notably reaching $1.35 million. The sale also listed several paintings and sculptures by Nigeria’s Ben Enwonwu, including a previously unknown work entitled The Court of the Oba of Benin. Although that particular piece didn’t end up selling, many others did. Interest in Enwonwu's work has increased dramatically in the last two years after two of his portraits, Tutu and Christine, sold for more than $1 million each. 

West African portraiture is emerging as a popular sub-genre of African contemporary art, and I must admit that I would love to have some of those on my walls. ARTSY has a lovely story about the ascent of young Ghanaian artist Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, whose striking paintings feature large-scale portraits of stylist Black figures. Quaicoe’s story involves an early childhood fascination for Ghana’s hand-painted movie posters, studies at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design, an online romance and subsequent marriage with an American lawyer, and a move to Portland. There, Quaicoe struggled for a while before his friend and fellow artist Amoako Boafo (if you follow HUSTLE & FLOW, you might recognize Boafo as the artist Dior Men collaborated with on the brand’s new collection) introduced him to Los Angeles gallery owner Bennett Roberts, and the rest is history.


HERITAGE

In the latest episode of the Looted African Artworks Saga, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has started talks with the Ethiopian embassy over returning looted treasures in its collections, including a gold crown and royal wedding dress, taken from the country more than 150 years ago. Ethiopians have campaigned for the return of the items since they were plundered after the 1868 capture of Maqdala in what was then Abyssinia. 

And in France, the National Assembly voted to pass a bill returning 27 colonial-era artifacts from French museums to Benin and Senegal. The bill now needs to be confirmed in the Senate. If enacted, it would compel France to return 26 works looted from Benin’s royal palace of Abomey that are in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, and a sword that belonged to the west African military leader Omar Saidou Tall would return permanently to Senegal from France’s Musée de l’Armée. The sword is currently on loan to the Musée des Civilisations Noires in Dakar. 


PERFORMING ARTS

The performing arts have been one of the sectors hardest hit by the lockdown worldwide, and Africa was no exception. But confinement or not, dancers gotta dance, and two initiatives offer a window into what the experience has been like for them: Arts Fundi showcases two short films made in collaboration with the Cape Town City Ballet, while the Institut Francais is presenting Lettres du Continent, a long video performance led by choreographer Faustin Linyekula and producer Virginie Dupray which stitches together contributions from 21 dancers and collectives from all over Africa.


FASHION

Paris Fashion Week has officially drawn to a close and South Africa’s Thebe Magugu and Nigeria’s Kenneth Ize, the only two African designers on the schedule, did not disappoint. Kenneth Ize invited artist Maty Biayenda to live paint a mural as models milled around in his unisex clothes, while Magugu, the first African to win the prestigious LVMH prize in 2019, illustrated his intelligence agent-inspired collection with a 7-minute film inspired by a series of interviews he conducted with female ex-spies who worked for and against South Africa's Old Regime.

It’s not everyday that we have news from eSwatini (the country formerly known as Swaziland) in HUSTLE & FLOW, so it is worth mentioning Khokho Collection, an accessories line putting a luxe spin on the classic woven basket bag. The brand is a collaboration between New York-based designer Sapna Shah, Central Saint Martins alumna Philippa Thorne, and master weaver Zinhle Vilakati. The bags are fully produced in eSwatini using traditional swazi weaving techniques.


MUSIC

MTV has announced its Europe Music Awards nominees for Best African Act, and South African artists are dominating the list including, of course, Jerusalema hit maker, Master KG. However the category has been won by Nigerian artists 4 years in a row, and 2019 winner Burna Boy is nominated again this year, so the competition will be tough. The competition will be broadcast live on November 8 on MTV and MTV Base.


SPORTS BUSINESS

The sports industry is, without a doubt, one of Africa’s most exciting untapped business opportunities. Aubrey Hruby and Jake Bright explain why in The Africa Report. As more and more international leagues and clubs, such as the NBA,  Arsenal or Paris Saint-Germain (both of whom have a deal with Rwanda), as well as global companies like Nike, Redbull or StarTimes, start getting the drift, is it likely that we will see an explosion of Africa’s markets for both competitive sports (with talent scouting and development playing a big part) and sports-related health and leisure activities. Already, strong communities exist across the continent that are passionate about cycling, biking, running and even crossfit or petanque. As just one example, the number of registered participants to the Lagos City Marathon grew from 50,000 in 2016 to 150,000 this year. 

Sports news and streaming company Sports Network Africa is hoping to tap into sports fans’ hunger for anything related to their passion by bringing them content that is currently not broadly accessible. On its first weekend of operations, the site streamed the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, the South African StrongMan contest, and the South African Squash Nationals.

Opportunities are also plentiful in infrastructure. Just a few days ago, the French Treasury granted a loan to the Ivorian government to finance the construction by WinWin Afrique and ALAMO of 10 new social and sports facilities in Cote d’Ivoire, after the successful inauguration in December 2019 of a first AGORA center in Abidjan.

And of course the scramble over football rights continues, with the new frontiers being the free-to-air broadcast of international premier properties, and the development of new audiences for and through the broadcast of African leagues games. Multichoice’s Supersport has acquired the rights to the Ethiopian Premier League, just as in South Africa the regulator is reviewing the definition of ‘public interest’ to force the Pay TV operator to make more free-to-air sports available via its satellite platform. Meanwhile the German Bundesliga has announced that it would be distributing selected free-to-air TV rights in Africa for the next three seasons. Yes, it’s a challenge to keep up.


BROADCAST

The big news in Broadcast this past week has been the revelation that Canal+ Group had bought its way to a 6.5% ownership stake in Multichoice for $165 million. Canal+ had been quietly buying shares in the publicly-traded Pay TV operator since April, but when Canal+’s stake got above 5%, Multichoice became required by law to inform their shareholders as well as the Takeover Regulation Panel. The French company is now the fourth-largest shareholder at Multichoice. Currently, Canal+ has 4.3 million African subscribers across 25 countries, compared to Multichoice’s 19 million. Over the last decade, Canal+’s parent company Vivendi has built a reputation for engaging in hostile takeovers. Under South African law, no foreign entity can own more than 20% of voting rights at a broadcasting company... But for how long? In what seems like more than a simple coincidence, the South African government is now reportedly considering allowing foreign ownership to 49% or even 100% if the investors are from other African countries. Vivendi/Canal+ buying Multichoice would make sense strategically, even if it would come with substantial challenges.

One of these challenges is the current attempts by South African and Nigerian legislators to dismantle Multichoice’s over-dominant position in both markets. One issue I’ve talked about at length is the one of sports rights exclusivity. But now a new proposal put forward by the South African government also wants to force Multichoice to pay retransmission fees for "must-carry" content and channels from public broadcaster SABC. Indeed, the financially bankrupt SABC has been complaining that Pay TV broadcasters benefit from its content for free due to the must-carry rules that were designed to fulfil the universal access regulations. This type of carriage fee is the norm in the US market and could be a lifesaver for the SABC.


VOD

The VOD sector is not being spared by the intense industry regulations overhaul ongoing in the South African broadcast industry. The government is proposing a new regulatory framework that would establish two types of licenses - Individual and Class - depending on each online video operator’s annual turnover. According to the government’s white paper, content streamers such as Netflix would require a license, while video sharing platforms like YouTube might not, although they would still face stringent regulations. Besides Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple+ and co, the new rules are also expected to apply to upcoming local services such as e.tv’s Openview Plus launching this month, and TelkomONE, set to debut on November 30. No word so far on potential local content quotas for streamers. The issue is currently a hot topic in other markets such as France, for example, where SVOD platforms will soon be required to spend 25% of their in-country turnover on European productions, with a large (and as yet undetermined) proportion of that going toward French productions in particular. 

In any case, these new regulations, if they are confirmed, will not slow Netflix’s progress on the continent (or elsewhere). The latest African production to get everyone talking is Òlòturé, a hard-hitting film on human trafficking in Nigeria directed by Kenneth Gyang and executive produced by the ubiquitous Mo Abudu. Soon after its release earlier this month, the film became the 8th most watched movie on Netflix in the world, reaching the top 10 in many countries such as Switzerland, Brazil, Morocco, Ukraine, Qatar, South Africa and of course Nigeria. 

But it cannot always only be about Nigeria, and other countries, such as Kenya, are also yearning for this kind of exposure and recognition. Writing in The Guardian, Nairobi-based filmmaker Fred Onyango calles Netflix “a lifeline for African filmmakers”, just as three Kenyan films - Sincerely Daisy, Disconnect, and Poacher - make their debut on the platform.


FILM

Staying in Kenya: as I have mentioned in previous editions of HUSTLE & FLOW, 2020 has been a good year (I admit I didn’t think I would have the opportunity to string these words together) for Kenyan documentaries. Multiple award-winning Softie, about activist and photojournalist Boniface Mwangi, has now been qualified for consideration for the Oscars shortlist in 2021. The film premiered in Kenyan theaters last week. Meanwhile, Le Monde has a profile of Peter Murimi, the director of I am Samuel, the other big Kenyan documentary of the year which tells the story of a gay couple struggling to gain acceptance. I am Samuel screened at the recently concluded London Film Festival. I would be remiss not to mention that the two films were both produced by Toni Kamau, who is probably the hottest African documentary producer right now and is the youngest female African documentary producer member of the Academy for Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Across the border, UNESCO and the European Union have partnered with the Government of Uganda to launch a joint year-long project to support the development of the film sector in the country. The initiative aims to boost local content development and professionalization by creating tax incentive measures and strengthening the capacity of professional film associations. 


CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Two new funding opportunities are now available to African content creators. YouTube has reached out to content creators and artists in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa to ask them to tap into the available grants from its $100 million dollars Black Voices Fund before applications close this Wednesday. The company is reportedly looking at expanding the list of applicable countries further in the future. The fund, which was launched last June to support Black creators and help them promote their work on the YouTube platform, has also just unveiled its first slate of shows from the US. 

Meanwhile, applications are also open for The Write Project Film Fund, a new initiative by PSP Media Capital and its Managing Director Brian Wu. Wu, who has reportedly been successful with a similar model in China, has tapped angel investors from California, Asia, and South Africa to raise the fund. The Write Project aims to crowd source story ideas, scripts, or fully packaged projects from across the continent, eventually financing and producing up to 6 features, 4 TV series pilots, and 15 short films in 2021 (there is no current target on the number of documentaries). The Write Project is targeting an international sales business model to platforms such as Netflix and Amazon, and plans to invest between $2.5 and $6 million per feature film, an amount multiple times larger than typical film production budgets on the continent. The initiative is interesting in that it goes against conventional thinking about film development and production, such as the necessity to have a correlation between film budgets and local revenue potential, or for filmmakers to painstakingly build credibility and trust over many years before being considered for any kind of private investment. It will certainly be fascinating to see the results of this experiment. Applications are currently open and close on October 31 for South Africa and December 15 for the rest of Africa. Keep in mind that the platform charges application fees (which in my view they should get rid of asap).


CONTENT DISTRIBUTION 

French film production and distribution company Pathé has announced the launch of Pathé BC Afrique, a new subsidiary in charge of distributing French and American films in 17 countries in North and French-speaking Africa, starting with Tunisia and Morocco. In 2016, Pathé and its exhibition partner Gaumont had announced their plans to open a joint network of 47 cinema screens across Africa, and they soon after inaugurated a multiplex in Tunis. However in 2018, Pathé acquired Gaumont’s existing Africa cinema network and it seems that it is now going to continue on this journey alone. With no mention of any plans to invest in local content, Pathé’s approach (or at least its communication) appears anachronistic at a time where other players such as Vivendi/CanalOlympia or Netflix have fully realized that localized content strategies were a must-have and not a nice-to-have.


ANIMATION

After Forbes declared in June that Africa is “animation’s next global hotspot”, it’s BBC’s turn to affirm that “Africa’s animation scene is booming”. Besides the usual mentions of bright star Ridwan Moshood of Garbage Boy and Trash Can fame, the good work of Nick Wilson and the African Animation Network, and Ng’endo Mukii’s iconic Yellow Fever, the article does a good job at laying down the challenge of growing new talents in an environment with a dearth of formal training institutions. Currently, most African animators are self-taught. However, for Africa’s budding animation sector to turn into a real industry capable of generating revenue by servicing global studios (as per the India model) or through original content creation at a large scale, proper training infrastructure needs to be developed -- a major opportunity for private operators in the education field. International animation studios Toonz Media Group and Baboon Animation have announced plans to establish animation academies in Africa, while the African Animation Network hopes to inspire broadcasters to invest by launching its own TV network. In Tunisia, digital arts school Net-Info has trained 12,000 young people from North and Francophone Africa in the fields of animation, 3D imaging and gaming since its inception in 1999. Last week it announced it has become Epic Games’ new and only academic partner in Africa.