Dear colleagues and friends,

Everyone’s favorite Octopus has won the holy grail - the Oscar for Best Documentary - at the 93rd Academy Awards which took place semi-virtually on April 26.

Although celebrations are in order, My Octopus Teacher is only the 4th “African” film to win a Best Feature Oscar, either Foreign film or Documentary. And if we look closely, two of those were actually directed by French filmmakers (Costa-Gavras for Z in 1969 and Jean-Jacques Annaud for Black and White in Color in 1976), while the other two were helmed by white South Africans (Gavin Hood for Tsotsi in 2005 and Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed for Octopus). So there’s clearly still a long way to go.

But Africa scored another goal that night when British-Ugandan actor Daniel Kaluuya snatched up the award for Best Supporting Actor. Or did it? Kaluuya’s win instantly prompted an online debate among Ugandans over whether or not his success could really be claimed for the country, considering that the actor was born in the UK from Ugandan parents. As Quartz writes, “It is a debate that spotlights the complexities of diaspora identity, as well as some of the missed opportunities by African countries to nurture their own artistic and creative talent”. Kaluuya, however, never misses an opportunity to remind people of his Ugandan ancestry. For my part, I’m on team Claim Them All.

This week in HUSTLE & FLOW, I’ll talk about a new investment fund focused on connecting African luxury brands to global markets, Amazon laying the groundwork to finally do business in Africa, and Canal+ making power moves in Ethiopia despite the country’s current instability. I’ll also talk about African art collectors stepping up, untapped opportunities in furniture design and manufacturing, the idea of an African football Super League, and the boom in African documentary filmmaking.

And finally, in internal news: HUSTLE & FLOW will take a break for the month of May as I focus on finishing my report for UNESCO on the African film and audiovisual industry. The project is groundbreaking: it is the first time that a study has looked at the film and TV sector in each of Africa’s 54 countries to provide a deep analysis of the current trends driving the industry. I will present the results to African Union member states on June 2nd, and the full report will be made public in September this year. I will make sure to let you know how you can access it.

In the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already done so at www.restless.global/hustleflow. I will be back on June 7th with the next edition of HUSTLE & FLOW.

Happy reading to all,


Marie



FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

Good news for creative entrepreneurs from across the continent as a couple new funding opportunities have recently opened up. Seasoned investor Laureen Kouassi-Olsson has launched Birimian, the first investment firm dedicated to connecting African luxury and heritage fashion brands to the global market. By investing between $30,000 and $3 million at various stages and providing access to an ecosystem of experts, the fund’s all-star female executive team will seek to address African designers’ challenges with capital, production and international distribution. Birimian wants to target companies across the fashion, accessories, beauty and gourmet sectors, and is launching with a portfolio of 4 brands: Ghanaian women’s apparel and accessories brand Christie Brown, Ivorian fashion brands Loza Maléombho and Simone et Élise, and Belgium-based bag brand Yeba. As the African creative industries still struggle to establish an investment model that works for the sector, Kouassi-Olsson’s pragmatic, strategic and hands-on approach is one worth studying.

Meanwhile in Kenya, HEVA Fund has launched the 2nd round of its Growth Fund debt facility, making $90,000 available for mature creative businesses. HEVA, Africa’s first investment fund focused on the creative industries, has supported more than 20 creative businesses since 2013. Also ready for its Season 2 is the Afrique Creative incubation program, which provides technical and financial support to creative entrepreneurs in 9 countries (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Morocco, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Tunisia).


MOBILE

After much suspense, what had been billed as the telecoms deal of the century has landed with a disappointing thud. Ethiopian authorities have confirmed receipt of only two bids for the country’s two new telecoms licenses: one from MTN, and the other from a consortium led by Safaricom which includes Vodafone, Vodacom, CDC Group and Japanese general trading giant Sumitomo Corp. As you may recall, as much as 12 multinationals had initially expressed interest in entering Ethiopia’s newly liberalized telecommunication sector, hungry to exploit the potential of a 115 million-strong market with only 38.5% mobile penetration. But with a war raging in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, and the government’s propensity for internet shutdowns (costing the economy $100 million last year), it looks like the Ethiopian market has suddenly become a lot less sexy.

Millicom, one of Africa’s historic telco operators, is exiting the continent to focus on its Latin American markets. The company has signed agreements to sell its AirtelTigo stake to the government of Ghana and its Tanzanian operations to Axian, a pan-African group that had already acquired Millicom’s operations in Senegal in 2018.


E-COMMERCE

Amazon is planning its first African office in South Africa, with a real estate investment of $280 million in a new development on the outskirts of Cape Town. The new headquarters will house a local staff of over 7,000, employed in web services, customer service for the company’s North American and European markets, corporate development, human resources and kindle content. Despite a South African presence that dates back to 2004, Amazon is yet to launch its e-commerce services on the continent. This new investment is one major sign (along with Amazon’s budding interest in African content for its VOD service) that the company may finally be ready to do real business on the continent.

Leading Ivorian platform Afrikrea has launched ANKA, an all-in-one platform that allows merchants to sell from Africa, ship products to anywhere in the world and get paid through local and international payment methods. African merchants were previously splitting time and concentration across different channels in addition to Afrikrea, including personal websites and social media, with no single tool to track global orders. ANKA customers will now have access to an omnichannel dashboard with a single inventory, as well as orders and messages management, and can use customized storefronts such as social media platforms, shopify, or their Afrikrea accounts. Payments can be processed via an Afrikean Visa card, Paypal, MPesa, MTN or Orange, while shipping is done via DHL. Contrary to other African e-commerce platforms, ANKA is focused on exporting African products - fashion especially - rather than importing foreign ones. The company currently ships more than 10 tons of cargo from Africa every month.


ARCHITECTURE

Burkinabe architect Francis Kere has been awarded the prestigious Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. The 55-year-old founder of Berlin-based Kere Architecture has worked on four continents on projects such as the Gando School and the National Assembly in Burkina Faso, the Mopti Centre For Earth Architecture in Mali, and the Zhou Shan Harbour Development in China.


HERITAGE

Germany is the latest European country to announce that it will return invaluable Benin Bronzes looted by British troops from the Kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria. Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum, which holds more than 500 artefacts from the Kingdom of Benin, most of them bronzes, is expected to make its first returns in 2022.


VISUAL ARTS

African contemporary art is steadily on the path to becoming a new, investable asset class as African art collectors drive the growth in contemporary art sales on the continent. Sotheby's estimates that in the 4 years since the launch of its Modern & Contemporary African Art category, about 70% of sales have gone to African buyers. At the auction house’s latest sale, several records were broken by artists from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Cameroon. The trend signals a major shift in the global African art market, with artists’ valuations now being shaped by local rather than foreign collectors. It is also a sign of the increasing influence of African art fairs, markets, galleries and museums in raising the profile of homegrown talents. The pandemic helped by pushing sales to online-only, opening them up further to young, digitally savvy collectors.


DESIGN

Leading Nigerian tech hub CcHub has selected furniture company Taeillo for its first slate of syndicate investment. In the absence of modern, affordable, local furniture chains, anyone who has gone through the process of outfitting a home in Nigeria (or in Africa in general) knows how painful the experience can be. In Nigeria, the furniture industry is estimated at $1.5 billion, with the majority of the players being traditional artisans. This, coupled with the government’s embargo on the importation of furniture into the country, constitutes a major opportunity for solid local players to emerge. With the ambition to become the Made.com of Africa, the 2-year-old startup Taeillo leverages e-commerce and immersive technology (AR/VR) to offer superior African furniture designs while ensuring that its production processes involve zero waste. I have to say that this is a sector I am particularly interested in. Back in 2009 I had started the process of launching an African furniture brand based on similar thinking (I had even registered a company and developed some initial designs), but had to make a choice when The XYZ Show took off the same year. I will be looking forward to following Taeillo’s journey.


FASHION

Lagos Fashion Week’s high quality Woven Threads industry program was back last week for its virtual, second edition. This year, the program focused on highlighting the drive towards a circular fashion economy in Africa by spotlighting designers that demonstrate innovative sustainable practices that consider community, pollution and waste. Woven Threads featured the work of designers working to close the product life-cycle with an emphasis on waste and recycling, such as Awa Meite, Bloke, Chiip O Neal, Emmy Kasbit, IAMISIGO, Nkwo, Pepperrow, and This is us. Woven Threads is, in my opinion, the best source of thought leadership on African fashion. Catch up with the program here.

Five African designers dubbed the “Fab Five” opened the Milan Fashion Week virtual show, themed “We are made in Italy”. A collaboration between the National Chamber of Italian Fashion and the Black Lives Matter in Italian Fashion movement, the Milan Fashion Week virtual show began last year to highlight racism in the Italian fashion industry. This year the “Fab Five” included Nigerian-born Joy Meribe, Gisele Claudia Ntsama from Cameroun, Fabiola Manirakiza from Burundi, Morocco-born Karim Daoudi and Senegalese-born Mokodu Fall. All share a similar background as immigrants who decided to explore opportunities for their craft in Italy.


MUSIC

US music streaming platform Audiomack has partnered with MTN Nigeria to offer music to its 76 million subscribers at zero data cost. The Audiomack+MTN Data Bundle program will offer MTN subscribers tailored data bundles for streaming unlimited music and accessing content on Audiomack free of data charges. Founded in 2012, Audiomack now has 17 million monthly active users globally and is accelerating its development on the African market, where it is becoming increasingly popular. In November 2020, it signed a partnership with Chinese company Transsion, owner of streaming platform Boomplay and smartphone brand Tecno.


SPORTS BUSINESS

Ten days ago, the news that a dozen of Europe's top football clubs had agreed to form a semi-closed, breakaway Super League rocked the global football world, uniting the sport’s governing bodies, leading personalities and fans in their outrage at the club owners’ greed, which they saw as a major contradiction to the spirit of the beautiful game. After the involvement of various European heads of state, in 48 hours the Super League idea had crashed and burned. Meanwhile, a similar concept in Africa is making its way almost unnoticed. While FIFA president Gianni Infantino said he was averse to the European Super League’s creation, he has been leading a similar charge on the continent. Infantino hopes to get 20-24 African clubs to pay a $20 million annual membership fee, with the goal of raising up to $3 billion to help bring the continent’s football at par with Europe and South America. As many experts have pointed out, this seems like a pretty unrealistic plan for many reasons. To start with, I’d love to know which African football club can currently spare $20 million a year.

Still in football, StarTimes has acquired the rights to the UEFA EURO 2020 tournament. The Pay TV operator will broadcast the 51 UEFA 2020 games across its 5 sports channels across sub-saharan African on its various platforms, including the StarTimes ON streaming app.


BROADCAST

Unfazed by Ethiopia’s recent troubles, Canal+ has now officially launched its Pay TV operations in the country. With the plan to invest $100 million over 5 years, Canal+ is entering the market with a fully localized offer which includes some 30 Ahmaric-language TV channels, 9 of which are original channels created by the group. In preparation for the launch and to back up its ambition to convince 1 million new subscribers, Canal+ acquired Kana TV, Ethiopia’s most popular private TV station, and secured a catalogue of 500 Ethiopian films. If the plan succeeds, it would make Ethiopia Canal+’s largest market in sub-Saharan Africa. Canal+ certainly has all the cards in its hands: between 2012 and 2020, the company multiplied its African subscriber base by 10, reaching 6 million people at the end of last year.

I have said that the African free-to-air broadcast sector was a hot mess before, and I will say it again. But I also think it is underinvested and undervalued, if only these chronic issues could be sorted out. After boastful announcements that Nigeria’s digital switchover process was back on track, it looks like it is not so after all, courtesy of the deterioration of some infrastructures since the project started and stalled, and of a $6.5 million money-laundering scandal involving former National Broadcasting Commision boss Ishaq Modibbo Kawu. In Ghana, the National Communications Authority has shut down 49 operational free-to-air stations that were operating illegally without licenses. About 146 TV channels are currently authorized to operate in the country.

In the last edition of HUSTLE & FLOW I talked about ViacomCBS Networks Africa’s current efforts to localize its programming. The company has now named 18-year-old South African social activist Lerai Rakoditsoe as its first African presenter to host a show on its Nickelodeon channel. Rakoditsoe, who has previously worked with youth and female empowerment groups, becomes the face of the new family music show NickMusic, a family-friendly, after school music show.


VOD

After its massive 15 million increase in subscribers last year, Netflix fell short of its Q1 2021 target, adding only 4 million of its forecasted 6 million subscribers. The streamer attributed the shortfall to absence of big titles following the inability to shoot new originals during the pandemic. This is most likely a temporary setback, as the second quarter of 2021 will bring the return of new seasons of some of the platform’s biggest hits. In the meantime, Netflix received a whopping 45 nominations at the South African SAFTA awards, for its first submission year. The nominated titles include Queen Sono, Blood & Water, How to Ruin Christmas: The Wedding and of course the now cult My Octopus Teacher.

Still in South Africa, Showmax has dropped its mobile subscription fee from $3.45 to $2.75, bringing it on par with Netflix’s mobile subscription fee. Other subscription plans remain unchanged as Showmax sets to implement the reduction in other markets outside South Africa.


FILM

The global success of My Octopus Teacher has certainly been impressive, but it is only one example of the boom in documentary filmmaking currently underway across Africa, writes friend-of-HUSTLE & FLOW Chris Vourlias in Variety. Indeed, the past couple of years have been rich in prestigious accolades for African documentary filmmakers, such as the Congolese Dieudo Hamadi for Downstream to Kinshasa (2020 Cannes official selection), Kenyan director Sam Soko for Softie (2020 Special Jury Award at Sundance), and Sudanese director Suhaib Gasmelbari for Talking About Trees (2019 Berlinale prizewinner). This ebullition can largely be attributed to the emergence in recent years of grassroots efforts to grow the African documentary ecosystem such as the Nairobi-based DocuBox film fund, the Ouaga Film Lab in Burkina Faso, and the pan-African DocA initiative, which are finally bearing fruit. European and North American film funds, such as the IDFA Bertha Fund and the Hot Docs-Blue Ice Docs Fund, which has awarded grants to 78 projects from 24 African countries in the past 10 years, have also played a key role. Hot Docs director of programming Shane Smith says it best: “What we’re seeing is where resources are directed, the talent is following. The talent is being developed. It’s not rocket science. You invest in developing the voices and the talent, and you’ll see the incredible work that they’re able to do.”

Talking about talent development, South African film organization The Realness Institute has been on a roll in the past year, announcing high profile partnership after high profile partnership. The latest in line is the “Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy”, a collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival to extend its film academy to the region. The initiative will aim to equip emerging African professionals in the sales, distribution and exhibition subsectors, and will kick start its first edition virtually in October this year.

Finally, the Namibian government has allocated a little over $200,000 to the Namibian Film Commission to promote Namibia as a preferred filming destination and as well as the local film industry. There are also talks of mobilizing more resources to support the development of filming studios that could attract large foreign productions to Namibia.


CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

European studio/distributor Fremantle, Passenger, the company founded by True Detective producer Richard Brown, and sports marketing company Infront have partnered to make a documentary series about the launch of the Basketball Africa League, the first NBA-operated league outside of North Africa. The series, which is directed by South African director Tebogo Malope (Queen Sono) and executive-produced by Nigerian director-producer Akin Omotoso (Greek Freak), will follow BAL’s inaugural season which is kicking off on May 16 in Kigali, Rwanda.

The highly anticipated Yasuke, a Japanese anime series inspired by the true story Japan’s first Black samurai, was released on Netflix just a few days ago on April 29. Lakeith Stanfield provides the voice for the titular hero, an African slave abducted from his home, possibly in present-day Mozambique, and brought to 16th century Kyoto to serve as the bodyguard of an Italian Jesuit priest. The launch of the series was praised by an army of Blerds, or Black nerds, who lament the lack of Black characters in anime. We can fully expect Yasuke to be a case of “the first, but not the last”.

Oscar-winning writer-director Terry George (Hotel Rwanda) and Egyptian writer Marian Naoum have been tapped to co-write The Alexandria Killings for Yalla Yalla, the Arabic content JV started by Dubai-based distributor Front Row Film and sales and finance banner Rocket Science. The series is based on the true story of two serial killer sisters who were the first women to be executed in colonial, 1920s Egypt.


ANIMATION

The Snail and the Whale, a 27-minute short film animated in Cape Town by leading South African studio Triggerfish and produced by Magic Light Pictures, has won the prestigious Annie Award for Best Special Production. The film, an adaptation of a book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, was also shortlisted for the Oscars and won other international awards at the British Animation Awards, Cartoons on the Bay, New York International Children’s Film Festival, The Venice TV Awards, and the BANFF Rockie’s Awards. It is available to stream across Africa on Showmax.