They are screenwriters, producers, and directors who have chosen to join forces to support African women in the audiovisual sector.
Angela Aquereburu, Rama Thiaw, Tella Kpomahou, and Samantha Biffot decided to create the Indigo Fund to find financial partners and support women working in film and audiovisual media.
"In Togo, the development of infrastructure and laws conducive to audiovisual industrialization is not keeping pace with content production and therefore demand. The advertising market is weak, and there are very few broadcasters able to afford to buy or co-produce content. We are therefore forced to offer our content to pan-African channels, which naturally have a pan-African vision: they must appeal to all their subscribers. These channels also have editorial obligations. These factors can sometimes dilute certain local cultural specificities in our stories and limit our creativity," Angela Aquereburu confided in an interview with Adweknow.
Although their numbers are growing, women are still underrepresented in the African audiovisual and film industry. Many of them cite a lack of support in a male-dominated environment and a lack of legitimacy when it comes to requesting project funding. It is for these reasons that initiatives such as the Indigo Fund are essential to the representation of women in the sector and to its structuring.
"Over the next five years, I would like to see the audiovisual sector become more structured and stronger. The sector is still very fragile, even non-existent in some parts of the continent. I am thinking in particular of Gabon, the country I come from… I hope that within five years, industry players will be able to produce film projects on a regular basis, creating a sustainable environment for technicians. I hope they will be able to move from one shoot to another and thus become more professional, so that they can make a living from these large-scale, funded projects," said Samantha Biffot, director of the series Mami Wata.
The official launch of the Indigo fund will take place in July 2023.