African Film Press, co-founded by Tambay Obenson, Jennifer Ochieng, and Ikeade Oriade, announced the launch of the AFP Critics Prize, which will be awarded across multiple African film festivals.
There are multiple narratives about African film, the most prominent and pertinent depending on who you ask. There’s the theory that we’re on the cusp of increased global visibility around the same period that international streamers are seemingly reducing interest in Africa. There’s another that African filmmakers are reaching strong levels of renown at global festivals, amidst the widespread rhetoric that quality is lacking in the mainstream of the more popular African film scenes.
For the co-founders of the African Film Press (AFP), there’s a definite need to elevate the conversations around African filmmaking. Founded in 2024, the AFP is an alliance of three independent African film-focused media platforms, Akoroko, Kenya-based Sinema Focus, and Nigeria-based What Kept Me Up (WKMUp). With a hyper-focus on nuance, the AFP is setting a facts and quality-based benchmark for cataloguing and evaluating African film.
AFP’s next order of business is the AFP Critics Prize, set to launch later this year at the Surreal16 (S16) Film Festival in Lagos, Nigeria. The prize is a way to centralize and heighten critical voices within the African film ecosystem, potentially leading to increased visibility for the invaluable but often slighted importance of nuanced criticism.
“There’s no formalization of criticism in Africa, where people are going to film school and studying film theory, then coming out and becoming full-time film critics,” Akoroko’s Tambay Obenson tells OkayAfrica. “It’s not institutionalized, and this is part of a way to sort of formalize film criticism in Africa and say, ‘Look, we have this critics prize,’ and showcase criticism as something that is active on the continent and needs to thrive, because that’s one of those missing elements.”
Being a film critic in Africa can be a difficult sojourn, because critics often find themselves differing from the public’s tastes, and some filmmakers are hostile to anyone with views that are less than flattering to their efforts. Also, in the post-digital era, where everyone can share their tersely worded, blanket opinions, backlash is never far away.
However, within the context of fragmented film industries across Africa with similar challenges at the perpetual crossroads of commercial ambition and strong quality, the lack of emphasis on critical perspectives isn’t doing that much good.
“What people forget as well is how criticism elevates cinema culture,” Sinema Focus’ Jennifer Ochieng says. “That’s why, for us, the critics prize is coming in because we believe that there needs to be constant and in-depth discourse beyond social media, where everyone is a critic. People forget that we need to engage with film on a deeper level and dissect what things mean, looking at the cultural context of the film, the historical context of the film, not just how a film is in terms of [commercial] performance.”
The AFP Critics Prize will be awarded for the first time in Lagos, Nigeria, at the Surreal16 (S16) Film Festival in December 2025.
Photo by Tambay Obenson/African Film Press
It’s a common sentiment among many African viewers — and even filmmakers — that the primary purpose of film is entertainment, a limiting outlook that makes the diversity and creativity of filmmaking on the continent seem inaccessible. Very often, critically acclaimed films find their way to international — and sometimes local — festivals, and even when they see wider release, public reception may be lukewarm — sometimes assisted by the machinations of the local ecosystem.
Strengthening the connection between filmmaking, film-viewing, and film criticism is no doubt key to fully unlocking the possibilities within African film. “We actually need to cultivate audiences, and part of that work is done by journalists, by critics,” Obenson says.
An integral effect of AFP’s pan-African efforts in the near future could be a better integration of conversations about African film across the continent. AFP is aiming to achieve this through the upcoming Critics Prize. The prize is set to have a rotating cast of judges across the festivals where it will be awarded, an approach that will help in building a pan-African network of film journalists. “Europe is connected, America is connected in a way, the global film industry is connected, so as much as we are connecting within the continent, we’re also looking to connect ourselves to the global film space,” WKMUp’s Ikeade Oriade says.“A lot of times, people say critics or journalists are always complaining that the industry needs to build structure, but what about us? How are we structuring and engaging, and mobilizing ourselves? This is a way to start building the structure that we are telling those filmmakers to build and telling those actors to come together for.”
Oriade also makes a point to add that the prize will not be prioritizing already acclaimed films and the kind of arthouse efforts that some might expect to be favored. He cites Rungano Nyoni’s comedy drama, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, as an example that could’ve won the prize if it were in existence a year ago, because it’s “a comedy drama, accessible, made to steer something in your heart, and speaks to a timely conversation in an African society.”
Similar to the FIPRESCI Prize awarded by international critics at prominent international film festivals, the AFP co-founding trio is working on awarding the prize across multiple African film festivals.
“Ideally, it will be one every quarter, but we don’t know if we’ll be able to do that [because] many African film festivals happen in the last half of the year,” Obenson says. “Within the first year or so, we’ll have a much more grounded understanding of how we want to move forward.”
The AFP co-founders will serve as judges for the inaugural edition at the S16 festival, where the winner will receive a cash prize, a trophy, and a certificate. As the award begins its journey across film festivals, the co-founders are hoping it lays the critical groundwork for structured film criticism and conversations on the continent.
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