The 2025 Submission Report: What Africa Asked Capital For

Between 15 May and 11 September 2025, 138 projects from 20 countries entered the AFFF cycle. This is what they asked for — and what the pattern says about how African film actually gets financed.

Who submitted

Nigeria led with 53 submissions, followed by Uganda (26), Kenya (16), Tanzania (11) and Zambia (6). Twenty countries were represented in all, from Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone to Ethiopia and South Sudan. Five submissions came from diaspora teams based outside the continent, pitching African stories to African capital.

What they asked for

Of the 138 projects, 113 were film productions, 23 were infrastructure proposals and 2 were distribution ventures. The infrastructure share is the number that should give investors pause: nearly one in six applicants was not asking to make a film at all. They were asking to build the studios, hubs and cinema capacity that the other five depend on.

• Film production — 113 projects
• Film infrastructure — 23 projects
• Film distribution — 2 projects

The size of the ask

Stated requirements ran from US$28,000 to US$3,000,000, quoted variously in dollars, naira and shillings. The overwhelming majority sat below $500,000 — too large for grant capital, too small for institutional funds with minimum ticket sizes. This is the missing middle of African film finance.

• Smallest stated ask — US$28,000
• Largest stated ask — US$3,000,000
• Most common band — under US$500,000

What happens next

Every project in this report was submitted through a form that never asked for genre, development stage, comparable titles or a financing structure. The 2026 cycle changes that: a five-step submission capturing the investment-memo fields investors actually screen on. Better questions produce a better pipeline.