Five months after announcing its first nine film and television projects, Akunna Cook’s Next Narrative Africa Fund (NNAF) has shared more about what has happened since.
The most concrete number is $450,000.
In an email announcement sent today to NNAF's newsletter distribution list, Cook disclosed that the nine projects have collectively received $450,000 in development grants. She again put their prospective production activity across Africa at more than $60 million, the same figure NNAF cited when it announced the cohort in March. She has provided no methodology or project-level budget information for that estimate.
In March, I clarified that the widely reported $50 million Next Narrative Africa Fund and what those nine projects had actually received were two different things. They were development grantees drawing from the planned $10 million nonprofit side. They had not received production financing from the separate $40 million commercial equity fund.
An aside: that March piece, “What ‘Africa’ Meant in Next Narrative Africa Fund’s First Slate,” has so far been the most widely read and distributed piece I have published this year, across both the publicly available version and the versions sent to Akoroko subscribers. The attention it received said something about how closely people were following the fund after the first cohort announcement, and how many questions and concerns the selection generated among African filmmakers and producers.
So, of course, I was going to write about this update. As far as I can tell, this is Cook’s first direct public correspondence specifically about the fund and the inaugural cohort since March.
We now know what has been distributed to that first group, although not what each project received individually: $450,000.
But what's even more noteworthy in Cook's email today is the launch of what she calls the Next Narrative Africa Institute, described as a permanent home for the nonprofit side of the work.
The Institute will fund project development and research, advocate for production policy and incentives across African countries, and organize events connecting filmmakers, financiers, creative-industry professionals and diaspora communities.
It's also fundraising.
The Institute is currently operating as a fiscally sponsored fund under Build Up Inc., with donations processed via Every.org. Cook says contributions will support its work, including the next round of development grants and the research behind them.
That makes one of the questions I had in March more relevant now: how much of the originally announced $10 million nonprofit pool has actually been raised?
The same question applies to the $40 million commercial fund.
To be sure, it's only been five months. But given the size and coverage of the original $50 million announcement, I think it's necessary to continue making these distinctions.
One other development of note since the cohort announcement — I didn't cover the reveal — is NNAF’s study with entertainment analytics company Parrot Analytics, which was released on April 23, 2026, six weeks after the slate announcement. It received considerably less attention than the cohort itself.
When the first participants were announced, much of the conversation among continent-based filmmakers and producers was about who had been selected and what kind of opportunity they thought they had been applying for. The presence of internationally established or diaspora-based talent, including Trevor Noah and Rapman, led some applicants to question how they could compete in the same pool. I wrote about that at length at the time, so I won’t repeat it here.
Nothing announced today really changes that discussion.
If anything, the Institute gives us a fuller picture of Cook’s project. Next Narrative Africa is combining development grants, eventual commercial investment, audience research, policy advocacy and industry convening around the idea that African film and television can attract substantially more global capital.
Cook says the Institute intends to push for more production incentives across the continent, arguing that requiring projects to spend at least half their production in Africa only works if countries have competitive places to shoot.
That part makes sense to me. I made a similar point in March: private capital can only do so much when public financing, production incentives, co-production structures, and other forms of national support remain weak or inconsistent across much of the continent.
That said, I still have a few basic questions.
How much of the $10 million development target has been raised? How much of the $40 million commercial fund has closed? Have any of the nine projects moved into equity consideration? When does the next development round open? And after the reaction to the first cohort, has anything changed in how NNAF intends to reach and support filmmakers and production companies working primarily on the continent?
Again, five months might be too soon.
But we now have at least one real number to put beside the original $50 million announcement: $450,000 has been distributed to develop the first nine projects.
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