It has been a hectic few weeks for Osahon Akpata, the chief executive of CANEX Creations Inc. (CCInc), the Cairo-based intellectual-property investment and holding company that is actively reshaping how films from Africa are financed. CCInc has been involved in several high-profile projects, including the Cannes and TIFF-selected feature Clarissa.
After attending French President Emmanuel Macron’s Lumière Summit in the South of France in September, Akpata traveled to Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where he led the launch of the African Global Hub inside the festival’s new market. This was CCInc’s second appearance at TIFF: last year the company supported Idris Elba’s short film Dust to Dreams, one of its earliest investments.
The TIFF hub represented CCInc’s largest international showcase outside Africa, following a prominent presence in Cannes where Arie and Chuko Esiri’s debut feature Clarissa played in Directors’ Fortnight. The film, which relocates Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway to modern-day Nigeria and stars Sophie Okonedo and David Oyelowo, also screened at TIFF.
Among the hub’s standout events was an industry screening of Marie-Hélène Roux’s biopic Muganga: The One Who Treats, executive produced by Angelina Jolie. The film features Isaach De Bankolé as Denis Mukwege, the Congolese gynecologist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (2018) who is renowned for his work treating survivors of wartime sexual violence and for advocating for their rights despite personal risk. Following the screening, Mukwege joined a conversation moderated by Afua Hirsch that included David Oyelowo, Danai Gurira (known for The Walking Dead and Black Panther) and director Roux.
CCInc stepped in at the film’s post-production stage to cover a shortfall in the budget for the French–Belgian co-production led by Paris-based Petites Poupées Production. The special TIFF industry presentation aimed to give the title a lift on the international sales front; Muganga has already played in France and Belgium but has not yet opened theatrically in many other territories.
Akpata said the response to Muganga was striking. More than 400 attendees watched the film and then welcomed Dr. Mukwege for the discussion. That turnout and the powerful audience reaction convinced him that the film’s story has the potency to resonate far beyond its original markets.
The Toronto hub also featured a selection of six African works-in-progress. These included The Black Book 2: Old Scores, the sequel from Nollywood filmmaker and producer Editi Effiong to his 2023 breakout action thriller The Black Book; Lagos Fashion Week-focused documentary Last Week in October by Nosarieme Garrick; and Not God’s Plan, a return project from South African director Reabetswe Moeti-Vogt, who previously attracted attention with Lockdown.
A central panel at the hub, titled “Closing the Gap,” examined how African cinema can move past moments of celebration to establish sustainable systems for financing and distribution. Akpata shared the stage with Janet Brown, Chief Commercial Officer at Tribeca Enterprises and former President of Global Content Sales at BBC Studios; Ethiopian-Canadian producer Tamara Dawit, founder of Gobez Media and co-head of the EAVE Producers Workshop studies; and Adekunle Adebiyi of Lagos-based private equity firm MBO Capital, which has financed Nollywood releases such as The Wedding Party 2, Moms at War and New Money.
Partners for the hub included MBO Capital as well as Nigerian companies FilmOne Limited and Narrative Entertainment, and South Africa’s Gambit Films, which has an established international profile through collaborations with Netflix on series like Unseen, Blood & Water and Blood Legacy, and on the action thriller Indemnity.
Akpata emphasized that the hub’s goal was not publicity for its own sake. The intent was to present compelling African projects and creative teams directly to buyers, distributors, financiers and other decision-makers. He reported steady activity throughout the market days: works-in-progress screenings attracted strong interest, the financing-and-distribution panel was well attended, and the Muganga screening drew an emotional crowd. The next objective, he said, is turning that interest into concrete commercial deals.
What is CANEX Creations Inc.?
CANEX Creations Inc. is an intellectual-property investment and holding company set up under the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), which itself functions as the development-investment arm of the Cairo-headquartered African Export–Import Bank, commonly known as Afreximbank.
Akpata was brought on in April 2024 to build the CCInc platform and was appointed CEO in September 2025. A Nigerian national with a background in banking and consulting, he previously worked at pan-African lender Ecobank and at McKinsey & Company. He holds a degree in Accounting and Finance from Nottingham Trent University in the UK and an MBA in Media Management from Columbia University. Akpata says the role at CCInc felt like a natural synthesis of two strands of his life — finance and creativity.
He has long been engaged in creative work: he published his first book at age 11, produced the documentary Nollywood in Focus, and over the last decade and a half has been involved in creative projects alongside his corporate career, including collaborations on Iké Udé’s photographic series Nollywood Portraits and Amazing Graces. Those experiences, he says, helped him see how much original talent and intellectual property can remain undervalued when the commercial framework around it is underdeveloped.
That perspective aligns with Afreximbank’s broader strategy to support Africa’s creative sectors. The bank, which has been operating for three decades and manages roughly $42 billion in assets, is best known for trade finance. But about six years ago it decided to apply its development mandate to the creative industries after studying the continent’s demographics — a median age of around 19.5 — and recognizing that the creative sector is a major employer of people aged 15 to 29.
Afreximbank’s research showed Africa’s share of global revenue from creative and cultural industries was only about two to three percent at the time, on a worldwide market that approached $2.5 trillion. The institution asked how it could boost Africa’s contribution to those global revenues, expand economic opportunities and create jobs for young people. That inquiry produced the Creative African Nexus Program (CANEX), a strategy built around six pillars: financing, capacity building, export promotion, policy advocacy, partnerships and twinning, and digitization. Afreximbank initially allocated $500 million to the initiative, which rose to $1 billion in 2022 and $2 billion in 2024.
Under those pillars, Afreximbank has funded initiatives such as the CANEX Music Factory — a program that helps emerging artists record and distribute music — and CANEX Presents Africa, an export-promotion effort that, for example, has taken African designers to Paris Fashion Week to meet buyers and markets. On the financing side, the bank introduced a film financing facility and a music development financing facility, structured as debt products. CANEX’s activities have also extended to major infrastructure investments, including stadium refurbishments in Abidjan ahead of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations and at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown before the 2024 Cricket World Cup, reflecting the bank’s remit over Africa and its diaspora.
CANEX Creations Inc. emerged as a specific vehicle within that broader program after it became clear many creative enterprises across the continent are very small and need forms of venture or equity financing. Afreximbank responded by creating a company focused on making equity investments into intellectual property — that company is CCInc.
CCInc’s portfolio spans film and music. Besides backing films such as Clarissa and Muganga, the company has invested in music publishing, acquiring a catalogue of roughly 230 songs, largely by Afrobeat artists. Akpata notes that while Africa produces many outstanding film stories, the industry needs more institutional investors who can treat IP as a genuine asset class. He points to Clarissa — which CCInc helped finance alongside MBO Capital and Chapel Hill and which secured a worldwide rights deal with Neon — as an example that could encourage additional financiers to enter the space by demonstrating that African films can gain proper distribution and commercial traction.
Akpata was careful not to disclose CCInc’s overall global budget, but he outlined its investment playbook: typical deal sizes run from $500,000 up to $5 million; CCInc does mainly venture-style investments and usually contributes a minority portion of a project’s financing, often in the range of 20 to 40 percent.
The Afreximbank initiative and CCInc’s mission are drawing attention from across Africa and among the diaspora. Akpata says they are now engaging with creators and talent from various backgrounds, naming actors and artists such as John Boyega, Viola Davis, Folake Olowofoyeku and Angélique Kidjo as examples of people who have come into conversation with the company. He believes CCInc’s emphasis on enabling Africans to own and commercialize their IP, backed by committed financing, is an attractive proposition that is bringing new partners and interest to the table.
Daniel Hayes is a business journalist with a focus on market trends, startups, and corporate strategies.
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