The Akuna Cooke Africa Next Narrative Fund has spent the past year proving that African storytelling represents a serious global market that the entertainment industry has consistently underestimated. Now the organization has some numbers to back up its position.
NNAF released a new report on Thursday, produced in partnership with Parrot Analytics, which finds that global demand for African and diaspora film and television has outstripped supply over the past five years — and that the imbalance is particularly pronounced in non-English-speaking titles and many of the commercial genres that drive demand for streaming.
The study, titled “From Impact to Investment: Identifying Global Demand, Travel Potential and Investment Opportunities,” measures digitally expressed demand for African and diaspora content from 2020 to 2025. The key takeaway from the study is that African storytelling is not just a cultural niche or opportunity to enhance representation, but a structurally untapped growth category for the global entertainment sector.
The researchers found that non-English-speaking African stories accounted for 28% of audience demand within the group tracked by the study, but only 16% of available supply — “a clear structural gap within the global streaming ecosystem,” according to the authors.
The report also rejects the industry assumption that African screen stories rarely travel beyond their home markets. The United States is the largest single market for African and diaspora content, accounting for 8.5 percent of global demand, but the most consuming regions span four continents and include Great Britain, South Africa, Canada, France, Brazil and China. Belgium and Portugal emerge as particularly strong markets for over-cataloging, which the study attributes to the role of African diaspora communities as early discovery engines. In the Caribbean, East Africa and Southern Africa, African and diaspora stories account for more than 60 percent of demand compared to other major global import groups tracked by the report.
The study also explores how African content is traversed. It identifies Black American women as the “bridge audience” for Black-led storytelling, consuming such content at nearly six times the rate of the general U.S. population — making them, within the report, the audience segment most predicted for mutual success. Meanwhile, Black American men are described as playing a complementary role as early adopters of non-English-speaking African content, helping titles transcend the diaspora.
Cook, a former US State Department official who served in China, South Africa and Baghdad before working on African policy in the Biden administration, launched NNAF in 2024 as a $50 million hybrid vehicle combining $40 million in commercial equity and a $10 million nonprofit venture studio. The fund’s first list was unveiled in March, drawn from more than 2,000 submissions from 80 countries.
In a recent interview with Hollywood ReporterCook claimed that Hollywood’s top decision-makers – “the Neon, A24, Disney and Lionsgate families” – must think seriously about their strategy in Africa, given the continent’s cultural clout and enviable demographic profile, with more than 60% of Africans under the age of 25.
The report’s authors acknowledge that digitally expressed demand is not the same thing as box office revenues, licensing fees, or audited financial performance. But Cook’s broader pitch to content investors and studios is clear enough: There is already a global audience for African content, the cultural momentum around African music and storytelling continues to grow, and the industry’s current production falls far short of demand.
