The room in Addis Ababa did not feel like the beginning of yet another creative convening; it felt like the beginning of an answer. A quiet but unmistakable shift in the continent’s creative winds. The kind that happens when a people decide, collectively and without hesitation, that it is time to build their own stage and speak without waiting for translation. This is what the Arkwood Africa Film Market & Awards (AAFMA) represents: a deliberate move to rewire how Africa’s stories are valued, circulated, financed, protected, and projected into the world.

In this city, where history breathes through stone and skyline, Ethio-Arkwood Entertainment carved out a gathering that felt both intimate and monumental. Addis Ababa, long a diplomatic anchor for Africa, suddenly revealed its other identity: a creative capital ready to hold space for the continent’s cinematic future. The conversations ignited here made one thing clear: AAFMA is not being built as a festival, nor as an awards night dressed in red carpets and flashing cameras. It is being built as a system. A strategic infrastructure. A new centre of gravity for African cinema.

Africa’s screen culture has grown in remarkable, sometimes contradictory ways. From Lagos to Nairobi, Kigali to Johannesburg, a multiplicity of festivals and awards have emerged, each carrying an important slice of the industry’s evolution. The Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) has become a powerhouse for talent development and international dialogue. The Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) has normalised continental recognition on mainstream television and built a culture of celebrating African excellence at scale.

These platforms matter. They have shaped audiences, validated careers, and proved that African cinema has domestic star power and global magnetism. But AAFMA is positioning itself differently. Where AFRIFF nurtures artistry and AMVCA celebrates stardom, AAFMA is stepping into the harder, less glamorous terrain: industry infrastructure. Financing pathways. Co-production pipelines. Distribution channels. Copyright literacy. Market intelligence. Policy influence. The deep structural work that determines whether African cinema can not just shine, but sustain itself.

This was evident from the very first voice that took the stage: H.E. Nebiyu Baye, Minister Daeta of Arts and Culture. His vision did not float on rhetoric — it was anchored in the practical reality that Ethiopia, and Africa more broadly, cannot build a creative future without first valuing their cultural industries as economic engines. In his words, cinema is one of the most essential cultural mirrors of our time. A lens through which the continent can finally see itself clearly, and demand to be seen clearly by the world.

He spoke with the conviction of someone who understands that storytelling is not merely cultural expression; it is strategic positioning. A way of controlling public imagination, shaping national identity, and asserting soft power in a world where narratives have become currency. When Nebiyu Baye emphasised that film allows Africans to tell their own stories in their own voice, he was articulating a sentiment that has long existed below the surface of Africa’s creative debates: representation is no longer a plea. It is an act of sovereignty.

If Nebiyu Baye outlined the national stakes, Arsema Worku, Co-Founder and CEO of Ethio-Arkwood Entertainment, articulated the continental ones. Her opening remarks delivered a clear, urgent message: Africa must place itself on screen without apology. Without shrinking. Without waiting for partnership to masquerade as permission. The vision she set before the audience was not just ambitious; it was uncompromising.

AAFMA, she said, is being built as an ecosystem where African creators can co-produce, co-own, and co-claim their narratives. A place where collaboration is not a buzzword but an economic strategy. When African filmmakers share resources, when countries pool technical capacity, when creators intentionally stand with one another, entire industries rise. Infrastructure rises. Communities rise. Creative economies rise.

This is not optimism; it is continental logic.

Arsema Worku’s appeal to unity was not sentimental; it was infrastructural. It positioned collaboration as the backbone of a new African creative economy. One that is grounded in authenticity, rooted in identity, and bold enough to believe that Africa’s stories are not simply content, but cultural capital. A currency. A long-term investment in global influence.

Then came a shift in tempo, a quiet but profound meditation from Serawit Fikre, legendary artist and executive board member of Ethio-Arkwood. His keynote peeled back the glamour of filmmaking and returned everyone to the core of the craft: storytelling as responsibility. Truth as duty. Identity as inheritance.

Serawit spoke of stories not as commodities but as communal vessels. When narratives stand alone, he warned, they are fragile. When they stand together, they become culture, a force that endures, uplifts, and defines a people’s future. His call to filmmakers was intimate and resounding: tell the truth. Ground your stories in lived experience. Honour the communities that raised you. Stand tall in your voice and create from a place that belongs to you.

It was a reminder that Africa’s cinematic renaissance cannot be built on imitation. It must be built on memory, rhythm, and the integrity of our lived worlds.

And then, in one of the event’s most electric moments, Cameroonian multi-disciplinary artist and cultural entrepreneur Blick Bassy brought the room into the sonic architecture of storytelling. With over 30 years as an artist, a music company in France, and more than 45 trainings across 45 countries on intellectual property, his presence carried the weight of experience.

He reminded everyone that music is not an accessory to film, it is its pulse, emotion, and breath. Music, he said, is everything: texture, rhythm, frequency. The energy that allows stories to feel human.

But Bassy’s most urgent message was about ownership. Copyright. Heritage. The long-term control of African creative labour. African governments, he argued, must build stronger copyright frameworks. Cinemas, online platforms, and AI tools must not dilute African rights. And perhaps his most powerful declaration: Africa must own its catalogue. Because in 50 years, when global audiences search for African sound, the economic and cultural benefits must return to African creators, not global corporations.

This is not just policy — it is protection. Cultural self-defence. A declaration that Africa will not be footnoted in the archives of its own creativity.

Across all these conversations, visionary, grounded, and fiercely forward-facing, one thing became unmistakably clear: AAFMA is not emerging in isolation. It is arriving in a continental film ecosystem that has been steadily organising itself, layer by layer, discipline by discipline.

AFRIFF has shaped training and global festival integration. AMVCA has built continental recognition and mainstream celebration. FESPACO has honoured African cinematic heritage for decades. But AAFMA is stepping into the one gap that none of these, by design, were built to fill: the market. The continental engine room. The infrastructural centre where trade, financing, co-production, policy, and intellectual property converge.

By doing so, AAFMA becomes more than a platform; it becomes a blueprint. And this is where the story turns towards an industry not yet at this level of organisation: the African comic book sector.

Because if we are honest, the comic ecosystem is experiencing the very challenges African cinema faced twenty years ago: limited funding, fragmented distribution, weak documentation, almost no continental pathways for co-production, and an absence of unified market infrastructure. Comics remain one of Africa’s most vibrant but least systematised creative industries, rich in talent, thin in scaffolding.

Film has AFRIFF, AMVCA, FESPACO, Ecrans Noirs, Durban FilmMart, and now AAFMA. Comics have none of their continental equivalents. There is no African Comic Market. No African Comic. Awards operating at an industrial scale. No dedicated continental co-production forum. No unified rights marketplace. No structured annual gathering where African illustrators, writers, publishers, distributors, licensing agents, and digital platforms convene at the scale necessary to transform a sector into an industry.

And this is the quiet tragedy: African comics are some of the continent’s most potent storytelling tools. They hold mythologies, histories, youth cultures, futurist imagination, political commentary, and identity narratives in a form that is visually accessible and globally exportable. Comics are the pipelines through which animation, gaming, merchandising, and film adaptations flow.

Yet they remain structurally under-supported.

AAFMA, therefore, becomes more than a film initiative; it becomes an example of what is possible when a sector decides it has outgrown fragmentation. When it understands that creative excellence is only half the work, the other half is infrastructure. AAFMA is a reminder that Africa’s cultural power expands when Africa organises itself.

Which means the comic book industry must do the same.

It must build its own continental engine: a Comic Market and Awards body (like the NICE Awards in Nigeria) capable of aggregating creators, investors, distributors, training programmes, and intellectual property frameworks. A place where stories can travel across borders and build economic momentum. A place where African graphic storytelling receives the same respect, resources, and continental strategy that African filmmaking is finally claiming.

Because in all truth, Africa is not experiencing a creative boom. It is experiencing a creative renaissance. A continental awakening in which film, comics, animation, literature, and sound are all part of the same rising wave.

And in Addis Ababa, at the maiden convening of AAFMA, this renaissance felt tangible — a living, breathing thing. A reminder that when Africa builds its own platforms, its own markets, its own cultural engines, it builds its own future.

AAFMA is a spark. Now the rest of the creative ecosystem must catch fire.