Cameroon's Creative Sector Is Not the Soft Side of Growth.It Is the Growth.
- Sahndra Fon Dufe
- 19 hours ago
- 6 min read
At Texcellence Prelude Cameroon, one executive made the case that Africa's creative infrastructure gap is also its biggest untapped investment opportunity.
By Sahndra Fon Dufe · African Pictures International · Black Film Wire Contributor
DOUALA, CAMEROON | On May 13, 2026, the Texcellence Prelude Cameroon convened a cross-sector panel of executives from fintech, manufacturing, technology, and the creative economy to examine what they called Cameroon's digital inflection point, the strategic choices shaping what comes next.
Of the five panelists, one came from the creative sector. Sahndra Fon Dufe, Founder and CEO of African Pictures International, was the only voice at the table representing film, media, and creative infrastructure. What she said to that room is what the broader industry has been waiting for someone to say in a boardroom.
Cameroon does not have a talent problem. We have a creative infrastructure problem.
SETTING THE SCENE
The panel format titled The Next Move asked each participant to speak to Cameroon's digital growth from their sector's vantage point. For Alain Nono, CEO of MTN MoMo, the conversation was about payment rails and trust. For Dangote Cameroon, it was manufacturing execution and long-term investment confidence. For CWG Plc, enterprise technology modernization.
For Sahndra Fon Dufe, the lens was different and deliberately broader. "The creative economy is not just film and television," she told the room. "It is music, fashion, design, art, gaming, architecture, advertising, publishing, and performing arts and it is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world economy. We are sitting right in the middle of its next frontier."
That framing creative economy as economic frontier, not cultural footnote set the tone for one of the panel's most quoted exchanges.
THE INFRASTRUCTURE ARGUMENT
Fon Dufe grounded her argument in history before she moved to prescription. "The very first film ever shot in Cameroon was in 1919," she noted. "That is over a hundred years of creative history in this country. And yet, if you ask most investors or institutions today what the Cameroonian creative sector contributes to GDP or to foreign direct investment, they cannot tell you. We cannot even find the data."
The data point landed. Without measurement, there is no investment case. Without an investment case, there is no infrastructure. Without infrastructure, talent exports itself or loses its commercial value entirely.
She drew on three international case studies to make the argument that what Cameroon faces is not a talent deficit but a systems deficit.
Korea's Hallyu, the deliberate, government-backed investment in creative exports following the 1997 financial crisis was presented not as a cultural curiosity but as a replicable economic model. "Korean tourism, fashion, and food exports all rose on the back of Korean storytelling. That is not a soft story. That is hard economics built on creative infrastructure."
Spain was cited as a more recent example: a country that went from having no globally recognized native creative stars to producing Money Heist and 13 Reasons Why through intentional, back-to-back investment in scripted content. "What changed was not the talent. The talent was always there. What changed was the intention, the investment, and the infrastructure behind it."
Hollywood was framed not as an entertainment empire but as a foreign policy instrument, the system through which the United States built consumer desire for an entire economy. "Perception was treated as infrastructure and it worked."
THE CEMAC OPPORTUNITY
One of the panel's most striking moments came when Fon Dufe reframed Cameroon's market size entirely. "We have 30.6 million people," she said. "That is the population of one African city. If we create only for ourselves, we cannot sustain a creative economy at scale. But Cameroon is the largest economy in CEMAC, a region of 65 to 66 million people. We are bilingual. We have diaspora on every continent. Our market is not 30 million. It is regional, continental, and global."
She followed this with a regulatory provocation: in 2022, Nigeria's Advertising Regulatory Council (ARCON, formerly APCON) banned the use of foreign models and voice-over artists in all Nigerian advertising materials. The intent to stimulate local creative talent and industry is one model for how policy can function as creative sector infrastructure. "Cameroon has 443,000 registered businesses," she noted. "If even a fraction of them committed to using Cameroonian creatives in their campaigns, we would not be asking whether this sector can grow. We would be asking how fast."
Partnership cannot just be logo placement. It has to become infrastructure.
THE COLLABORATION PROBLEM
Fon Dufe was direct about what she called the industry's collaboration paradox. "Collaboration is weakest at the exact point where sectors should be converting each other's strengths into shared value," she said. "Right now, we are still operating in silos."
Her critique was not of intent but of structure. "We sponsor one festival. We put a logo on one campaign. We take a photo. But we do not build the pipeline after that moment. That is not partnership. That is optics."
She outlined what operating partnership as opposed to symbolic partnership would look like in practice: telecom companies powering ticketing, creator payments, and audience data infrastructure; banks building creative-sector financial products; tech companies supporting rights management and content monetization platforms. "The African Development Bank reports that every dollar invested in the creative economy generates approximately $2.50 in spillover. The sector cannot access that potential without the right instruments and the right partners."
ON SUCCESSION AND INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY
In a moment that resonated particularly given the industry losses of recent weeks, Fon Dufe addressed the question of succession and knowledge transfer, without naming names, but with clear urgency.
"The world's greatest institutions were not built by one person, they were built by one person who had the wisdom to plan for the people who would come after them," she said. "In Africa, we celebrate our giants while they are alive, but we have not yet built the culture of transferring what they know before they leave. Every time we lose a founder without a succession plan, we are not just mourning a person. We are burying decades of irreplaceable knowledge, relationships, and institutional memory that no archive can fully restore."
The African creative industry has lost significant figures in recent weeks, including voices whose bodies of work represent decades of industry architecture. The field of pan-African film exhibition and creative sector institution-building has been particularly affected. Fon Dufe's call was not retrospective grief but forward-facing responsibility: founders must build institutions, not just legacies.
THE NEXT MOVE
Fon Dufe closed her panel contribution with what she called "formation" a word she used repeatedly and deliberately. "Think of it like a military movement where there is no gap for penetration. You have a vision, you invest in it, you build around it, and you execute with clear KPIs. We cannot build this on emotion alone. Emotion is beautiful. But emotion without strategy is just noise."
Her closing line to the room has since circulated widely in post-event commentary:
Cameroon's next competitive advantage may not only be what we extract from the ground. It may be what we create from imagination and how well we build the systems to monetize it.
WHAT API IS BUILDING
African Pictures International, Fon Dufe's company operates at the intersection of film production, creative strategy, trade media (via Black Film Wire), and creative sector infrastructure. The company is currently developing SaaS solutions designed to address specific gaps in the creative economy: data, rights management, market visibility, and partnership infrastructure.
The company's work with Lights Out, a Cameroonian feature produced by Carista Asonganyi, whose previous film was sold to Amazon Prime Video and served as Cameroon's Oscar submission represents one model of what organized creative sector support can produce. Lights Out was selected as one of four international films for the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) 2026 and received a festival nomination.
"We are actively looking to partner with institutions, brands, governments, and ecosystem builders who believe in the future of African creativity," Fon Dufe said. "Not for one campaign. For the long term."
Sahndra Fon Dufe is the Founder and CEO of African Pictures International and a contributing editor to Black Film Wire. She serves as Partnerships Lead at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival and has led go-to-market strategy for film festival distribution across multiple African and diaspora markets.
Contact: info@africanpicturesinternational.com · www.africanpicturesinternational.com · www.blackfilmwire.com
Comments