The Next Narrative Africa Fund (NNAF), the startup investment vehicle targeting $50 million in African content spending, has unveiled a 13-member advisory board tasked with guiding its planned deployment of $40 million in commercial equity financing and $10 million in grant funding across film, television and new media projects.
Founded by former diplomat-turned-content executive Akunna Cook, NNAF is positioning itself as a bridge between institutional capital, Hollywood content expertise and African creative industries. The organization is betting that Africa’s creative economy — long rich in talent and powered by the youngest population of any continent, with more than 60 percent of Africans under the age of 25 — can be positioned not as a niche play, but as a scalable growth market.
The fund’s model combines private investment with a nonprofit venture studio, aiming both to generate competitive financial returns and to build longer-term infrastructure for scaled content production on the continent.
Cook framed the advisory board’s formation as a signal of seriousness to global investors.
“This powerhouse group of creative industry players and finance experts have assembled to prove that investing in African narratives is a sophisticated investment strategy driving innovation, creating jobs, and delivering world-class entertainment to a global audience,” she said.
The newly announced advisors span production, finance, tech and talent management. They include producer and K Films owner Khadija Alami; GA-Agency founder and social impact executive Georgia Arnold; Gamechanger Films CEO and Academy governor Effie T. Brown; Nitin Gajria, managing director of Google Publisher Partnerships for Asia Pacific and co-founder of A54 Network Africa; senior film executive and cultural strategist Darcy Heusel; Tom Lynch, principal CEO of Tom Lynch Co.; Continental Entertainment founder Ozi Menakaya; creative technologist and entertainment executive Bianca Nepales; Confluential Films and Black Love founder Tommy Oliver; global investment and project finance executive Tunde Onitiri; ColorCreative co-founder and president Talitha Watkins; Lions Range Group founder and managing partner Victor Williams; and film financing executive and producer Sahar Yousefi.
NNAF’s stated mandate is to “industrialize the African narrative” by backing commercially viable projects that challenge entrenched perceptions of the continent. In March, NNAF plans to unveil its inaugural slate of six to 10 projects, selected from more than 2,000 global submissions — an early indicator, the group suggests, of latent demand among African and diaspora creators for global capital and deeper industry integration.
The fund has also entered into a strategic partnership with Parrot Analytics, becoming what it describes as Africa’s first “Parrot-powered” investor. The collaboration will use audience-demand data to validate the thesis that African content represents a globally undervalued asset class and will produce a co-branded study outlining investment opportunities in African film and series.
