Poor Knowledge Costs Nigeria Good Investment On Film, TV Industries – Expert

Posted by African Examiner Arts, Entertainment News, Latest Headlines Sunday, November 9th, 2014

The “Investor Knowledge Gaps and Risk Perceptions” has been attributed to the poor investment flow into African Film and TV industries for so many years, up till the present.

The Group Head, Corporate Affairs, Heritage Bank, Mr. Fela Ibidapo who made this assertion stated this was among the reasons why the Bank indicated interest to be part

of the 2014 American Film Market (AFM) and Conferences, scheduled to hold between November 5 and 12 in Santa Monica, United States (US).

Mr. Ibidapo who emphasized that the investment flow into Africa over the years has been largely affected, affirmed that the conferences, would bridge these gaps and drive investments into African Film and TV sectors.

In a statement issued by the Bank “The Roundtable (tagged: African Productions: The Possibilities and the Challenges) was part of a series of premium event lined up for this year’s edition of the American Film Market (AFM) and Conferences.

It added that the discourse would bring together, stakeholders in films, produced in Africa with cross-cultural appeal, thereby initiating business opportunities that could impact the untapped potential of the African film industry as well as feature exchange of ideas and technical-know-how on ways to fast-tracking the development and promotion of the African film industry through co-production.

The Bank, Mr Ibidapo confirmed would take advantage of the Nigerian angle to Film and TV.

The sum of $100m has also been earmarked by the Bank to directly invest in Nigeria’s film, media and broadcast space in readiness for Nigeria’s migration to the digital broadcast format slated for 2015.

“At AFM 2014, Heritage Bank will be seeking for collaboration, content and ideas that have the capacity to shape Africa’s audio-visual industry for sustained growth”, he submitted.

speakers at the AFM Roundtable Workshop include the Bank’s Group Head, Enterprise Risk Management, Mr. Dike Dimiri who has over the last eighteen months directly advised on nearly $ 50Million in funding for a variety of transactions in the film and entertainment industry. Other expected speakers are: Bernard Azria, CEO, Côte Ouest; Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, Regional Director, M-Net/Africa Magic; Jason Njoku, Founder, iROKO Partners and Chris Roland, Owner, ZenHQ Films. The CEO of FISL Global Network Ijeoma Onah, CEO, is billed to be the Moderator.