What makes a film truly circulate beyond the moment it is produced?

I think a few things matter. One of the easy ones is the quality of production. I say easy because it is something money can solve. If you have the right money, you can get the right people onto a project, and that can improve the quality.

But before quality, you really need to understand the story and how relatable that story is outside your immediate audience. If you are shooting a movie in Nigeria, the question is how relatable that story is, not just within Nigeria, but across the world. That is where universal themes come in. Love, ambition, treachery and things that every human being can understand. People can identify with them as experiences they have also gone through in their lives.

One crucial thing that is especially lacking for African films, and Nigerian films, is distribution and access to markets. It is almost non-existent for the majority of Nigerian or African films.

The entrance of the streaming platforms gave us a bit of leverage, but there are still too few opportunities like that. I also think that the right creative minds were not always engaged for those platforms. It sometimes felt like we were still telling stories for the Nigerian audience when we needed to think about telling stories for the world.

Distribution is very closely linked to marketing. If you see a billboard for a product, that is the marketing of the product. Having that product available on the shelf in the supermarket, or in as many small markets as possible, that is distribution. Once distribution is sorted, marketing becomes more effective. If you have the right distribution partners, marketing is often integrated into that.

For a film to travel outside its immediate market, I would say you need a universal story, quality production, access to distribution and solid marketing. Those things are all interwoven.

Where is the real bottleneck today?

Human capital.

At the end of the day, you are dealing with people across the whole chain. You need the right person who understands distribution. You need the right person in marketing. You need the right actor, the right director, the right writer and the right producer.

Human capacity development is at the foundation of the issues we have in our film ecosystem. Even if you have fantastic actors, if you do not have fantastic writers, you do not have the kind of stories that can travel. If you have a fantastic director but you do not have someone focusing on how to get the film distributed across the world, then you still have an issue. So, at the base of all this, the question is what kind of human capital we have. It is not only marketing. It is not only writing. It is the people across the chain.

If you have a training programme that connects people to foreign distribution ecosystems, trains them and gives them access to those networks, then all of a sudden you are solving part of the distribution problem. If you have a human capacity development programme for actors, writers, directors and producers, you are increasing the capacity of the ecosystem.

I do not know that there is a training that is separate from mindset. What we are exposed to largely determines the output we produce. If you expose me to how Hollywood thinks about distribution, you are changing my mindset about distribution, and you are giving me the actual skills to make that work.

How should producers think about YouTube and streaming platforms?

YouTube is also a streaming platform, but it has different characteristics. It operates differently from many of the other platforms.

YouTube works with a freemium model. You upload content, people can watch for free, and they are served ads while watching. Other streaming platforms tend to work more through subscriptions, licensing or commissioned content. They have another way of generating income. Those business models come with different limitations.

YouTube tends to work with lower-budget projects because you are trying to monetise eyeballs and views. As a businessperson or creative entrepreneur, you want to produce the film for less than what you can earn from it. You want to produce a film, monetise it, make a profit and then go back and shoot one or two more films.

With other streaming platforms, the filmmaker may be able to spend more during production because the revenue model is different. When a platform commissions or licenses a project, the structure is not the same as trying to generate millions of views on YouTube. You cannot produce a Netflix-budget or cinema-budget movie and expect to get returns on your investment from YouTube. Maybe somebody will do that one day and it will work, but that would be an exception, not the rule. You do not build business principles on exceptions.

Right now, many producers are trying to tell stories at a micro-budget level so that they can be monetised more easily on YouTube, even if the projects are still high quality and well produced. On the other hand, if you want to produce higher-value projects, you need to think about platforms that can support that scale and share the work with the rest of the world.

What should African producers understand about long-term value?

It still comes back to distribution.

Most filmmakers understand how to make films. They do not know how to sell films. It is the same way a lot of actors know how to act, but they do not always know how to get acting gigs.

There is a business side to creativity that must be instilled in creatives. Some people are comfortable in the creative side because they are doing well in their comfort zone. But you cannot produce great films sustainably without understanding great distribution. If you want a film to keep creating value after its first release, you need to understand how to sell it, where it can go, what rights are involved, and how it can continue to circulate.

The creative work matters, but the business side of the creative work also matters.

How important is audience data for the future of African film?

Data is really important, and it is one of the things we truly lack.

Marketing does not start after you finish the film. You are already thinking about the kind of audiences that are going to accept the film. You are thinking about what people want, what they are willing to spend money on, and how to reach people who are predisposed to watching your film. A lot of actors who are becoming producers are leveraging their communities and their followership. They convert that into eyeballs.

For me, with my background in sales and marketing, if I had a database of 10 million Africans who were predisposed to watching my movies whenever they come out, then it becomes an easy conversation. I can reach out to them instantly. I can do surveys, get feedback and know what they want to watch.

That does not mean you listen to exactly what people say and just do that. You extract the information, analyse it and use it in the best possible way.

If you have the right data, you can succeed. But you also need the right person to read the data. You need the right person to write the story based on what the data has shown. You need the right distributor who can come on board, understand that data and transform it into an actual strategy.

So I would put data first, then human capacity development. Once you fix those things, the rest can follow.

How do you think about African cinema as an industry?

An industry is what happens when structure is put behind art. An industry is birthed when structure is put behind talent and creativity.

In Nigeria, I do not think we fully have an industry yet. We have ventures. People are doing things, but they are often doing them individually. It is like trying to make a hundred-kilometre journey. You and I can take whatever route we want. One person finds a way through the forest. Another person goes through the mountains. Another person tries another route. Everybody may eventually get to the same place, but everybody is figuring it out alone.

The person who wins is the person who sits down and builds a road. Once there is a road, everybody can get on that road and go in the same direction. It becomes more predictable.

That is industry. It is having structure, routes and rules across the ecosystem.

What should investors and decision-makers understand about African film?

I think what they are missing is seeing the opportunity.

There is first-mover advantage, but first-mover advantage comes with first-mover risks. We have seen big streaming platforms come in, hit a brick wall, leave, come back and change the way they operate. But the issue is not only learning. It is building. You cannot just come in and try to take out of the market. You have to sit down and develop the market. Money does not solve every problem. That is why funding is often ranked last for me. Funding matters, but it is not everything.

Stories have been told in film communities around the world for at least a hundred years. We have seen the West tell fantastic stories and series that have done amazingly well, but some of those stories are now being repeated. Africa presents an opportunity to tell a new kind of story and to show a new kind of vision.

Film is not only about people watching a movie and paying for it. It is cultural transference. Audiovisual content is one of the most powerful ways to create social change and cultural change.

Investors should look at the creative ecosystem and understand that film can sell African art, African fashion, African places and African people. It can tell our stories and promote the continent. If I had 100 million dollars, I would be in fashion, in art, in African events and in film. I would make sure I link all those things to film, promote them to the world and build an industry out of that.

That is where I see the opportunity.