Lavaille Lavette, chief executive officer of the US$1 billion film fund of the Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), told an audience at the Tourism Investment Forum Africa (TIFA) in New Orleans in late September that her team was working to make the fund operational, including the legal work involved. A post-event report on the forum, published October 8 by Africa.com, one of its media partners, said the fund’s detailed funding criteria and application requirements are expected in the fourth quarter of 2026.
The fund, which Afreximbank calls the Pan-African Film Fund, seeks to "mobilize" up to US$1 billion for African film, television and screen infrastructure.
TIFA's New Orleans event is its first edition outside Africa. The forum’s program listed Lavette as the sole speaker for a September 26 session at Southern University, titled “Financing Africa’s Film & Television Future.”
Channel Africa, the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) international radio service and another TIFA media partner, published a roughly 6-minute edit of Lavette’s remarks at the forum.
Asked why the fund was created, Lavette said financing films is not enough on its own: “If we don’t have the infrastructure and a system, no one sees it.”
She said the fund would invest in filmmaking and the infrastructure around it, including cinemas and distribution systems, so African films reach audiences on the continent first, without relying on buyers abroad, citing research showing African consumers want to go to the movies.
Lavette further described African films as a form of intra-African trade, alongside agriculture, oil and gas, giving the example of a viewer in South Africa watching a film from Ghana. She said the whole continent should be the "home market" for African films, with continental box office coming first and sales to the rest of the world after.
Sharing her upbringing in Louisiana's St. Landry Parish, Lavette said she began her work in Africa in Angola in the late 1990s, when she became the first president of a local sister city association with Angola. That work has continued for almost 30 years.
Lavette became CEO of the Pan-African Film Fund on July 8. That same day, the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA) — Afreximbank’s investment subsidiary — appointed One Street Studios, where Lavette is managing partner, to manage the fund jointly with FEDA as co-general partners. Lavette also co-founded JVL Media with American actress/producer Viola Davis and partner Julius Tennon.
Before TIFA, she joined a panel at Unstoppable Africa, a business forum organized by the UN Global Compact in New York on September 20–21, for a fireside conversation with TIME Africa managing director Josh Wilson.
Afreximbank’s next CANEX WKND, its annual gathering for Africa’s creative industries, takes place in Lagos from November 5 to 8. It includes a CANEX Finance Summit and Deal Room, where creative businesses present projects to financiers. As the bank’s own event, it's a likely setting for more information about the US$1 billion fund and a possible appearance by Lavette.