Abidjan is preparing to host what organisers describe as Africa’s first professional market dedicated entirely to animation. The ambition is bigger than another festival or industry gathering, but if MAFA wants to become the commercial infrastructure African animation has been missing, its success will ultimately depend on what happens after the pitching ends.
When Simon Adayé stood before journalists in Abidjan on May 15, 2026, to introduce the Marché Africain du Film d’Animation, the language around the event was noticeably different from the language usually used to promote African animation. The emphasis was not simply on celebrating creators, showcasing films or creating another space for African stories to be seen. Adayé, president of the Fédération Africaine du Film d’Animation and secretary-general of MAFA, described the planned market as a meeting point for creators, producers, broadcasters, investors, digital platforms, television networks, training institutions and cultural bodies, with the stated objective of helping African animation projects find financing, partners and international outlets. Côte d’Ivoire Cinéma’s Jean-Eudes Pokou similarly presented the initiative as an opportunity to move African productions into international markets rather than leaving them within a cycle of local recognition.
That distinction matters because African animation has spent much of the last decade answering a question that probably no longer needs to be asked with the same urgency: whether the continent has the creative ability to produce internationally competitive animated work. Across different markets, African studios, filmmakers and illustrators have already demonstrated that capacity. The more difficult question is what happens between having a promising project and turning that project into an economically sustainable production with financing, distribution, licensing, broadcasters and audiences attached to it. In other words, the creative argument has moved faster than the commercial infrastructure around it.
MAFA is attempting to place itself directly inside that gap. Its inaugural edition is scheduled for November 2026 in Abidjan, and its current website describes it as the first professional African market entirely dedicated to the animation industry. Applications opened on June 15 and closed on August 31, with pre-selection results expected on September 15 and the official selection scheduled for October 1. Eligible submissions include short films, feature films, series, student projects and immersive XR works, while projects still in development can enter the pitching process before investors and potential co-producers.
The scale currently advertised by the organisers is substantial for an inaugural specialist market. MAFA says it expects more than 500 professionals from over 30 countries, more than 100 projects in competition and over 50 sessions spread across three days of conferences, masterclasses, screenings, exhibitions, recruitment activity, pitches and planned B2B meetings. The accreditation system even separates producers and distributors from general participants, promising that this category will receive priority access to pitching sessions, advance project information and B2B meetings. For the final project pitch, the public programme says ten finalists will each receive ten minutes to present before an international jury of producers, broadcasters and investors, followed by five minutes of questions.
On paper, that is already more commercially focused than simply assembling animators for panels about the future of African storytelling. The question is whether the structure behind those activities is strong enough to convert access into transactions.
What Makes a Market Different from a Festival?
The word “market” carries a particular expectation within film and animation. Festivals can create attention, legitimacy and discovery, but professional markets are supposed to create conditions in which intellectual property can move from one stage of its commercial life to another. A producer may arrive looking for development finance, a broadcaster may be searching for children’s programming, a distributor may want completed films for specific territories, while a studio may need a co-production partner capable of carrying part of a budget or production workload. The quality of the event therefore depends not only on how many people are present, but on whether the right people have been deliberately placed in conversations where both sides understand what the other is offering.
The Annecy International Animation Film Market, Mifa, provides one of the clearest examples of how deliberate that architecture can become. In addition to its pitch programme, Mifa has a dedicated buyers’ structure that gives acquisition managers, broadcasters, distributors, platforms and investors spaces to explain what they are looking for, arrange meetings and meet selected producers. Its “Meet the…” sessions are built around one-on-one encounters between buyers and producers, while its “Share With” programme allows acquisition executives to explain their editorial lines, purchasing needs and co-production requirements. The market also maintains a large project video library through which buyers can continue discovering works and contacting rights holders beyond the physical event.
Cartoon Forum offers another useful benchmark because it publishes numbers that make its commercial function easier to judge. Its 2025 edition brought together 904 professionals, including 241 buyers, around 75 animated series projects. Beyond the pitching sessions, the event organised 285 matchmaking meetings involving 116 producers and 53 buyers from 29 countries. In a post-event survey, 66% of respondents said the event had generated business opportunities on site, 28% were still in conversations, and 23% reported that they had already obtained concrete results. Those figures do not mean every pitch became a production, but they show an important difference between measuring an event by attendance and measuring it by business activity.
Africa itself already has examples of that more structured approach. The Durban FilmMart is not dedicated exclusively to animation, but its Pitch and Finance Forum combines public pitching with individual mentorship and scheduled one-on-one meetings with potential co-producers, broadcasters, sales agents, film funds and other decision-makers. For its 2026 edition, the market selected 36 African projects, including eight animation projects, and prepared participants through mentorship before they arrived in Durban. Its programme also requires selected teams to demonstrate ownership of their intellectual property rights, while past editions have attached cash grants, market opportunities, consultancy and mentorship awards to projects. In 2025 alone, Durban FilmMart said 39 awards from 31 partners were worth more than R2.6 million (roughly $140,000).
This makes MAFA’s position particularly interesting. It is not entering a continent where animation projects have never been pitched to financiers. What it is attempting to build is something more specialised: a market in Africa where animation is not one category within a larger film industry event but the central business being discussed. If it works, that concentration could matter enormously, because specialised markets can bring together a denser network of buyers, animation producers, broadcasters, studios, technology companies, distributors and financiers who already understand the particular economics of animated production.
MAFA Has Identified the Right Problem
There is a reason the financing question keeps returning whenever African animation is discussed. Animation is expensive, labour-intensive and unusually dependent on long production timelines. A creator can design an extraordinary world and still be nowhere near having a financeable project. A studio can produce an impressive short film and still lack the working capital to scale into a series. A producer can secure part of a budget and remain unable to move without a broadcaster, distributor or co-production partner willing to reduce the remaining risk.
MAFA appears to understand at least part of this problem. Its public material repeatedly places financing, co-production, international distribution and business meetings at the centre of the event. Canal+ Afrique is listed among its media partners, while the Africa Finance Corporation is listed as a premium partner on the current partners page. The site also promotes meetings with decision-makers, investors and distributors rather than limiting the programme to creative workshops.
Canal+ Afrique’s presence is especially relevant because the broadcaster already operates within a market for African and Africa-facing children’s content and animation, carrying African titles alongside international children’s programming. What a logo on a partner’s page does not tell a creator is whether an acquisition executive will attend with a commissioning mandate, what genres or age categories the company needs, which rights it is prepared to acquire, or what budget range is realistically available.
This is where MAFA’s first edition still has important questions to answer. The market promises more than 500 professionals and planned B2B meetings, but the publicly available material reviewed by TheACE as of early September 2026 does not yet provide a detailed buyer book comparable to what mature markets make available. There is no comprehensive public roster explaining which broadcasters, platforms, distributors and financiers are attending specifically to acquire or finance projects, what each company is looking for, the territories they represent or whether the representatives present have authority to move a conversation towards an actual agreement.
The same issue applies to financing. MAFA promotes access to investors and describes financing as one of the event’s central functions, but its public programme does not yet identify a dedicated development fund, pre-buy commitment, minimum guarantee, co-production investment pool or cash-financing mechanism attached directly to the ten finalist pitches. That does not mean such commitments cannot emerge before November or through private negotiations at the market. It does mean that, as of September 2026, the strongest publicly visible promise is still access to people who may finance projects rather than a defined pool of capital waiting to be deployed.
There is a meaningful difference between those two things. Markets need conversations, but the strongest ones develop systems that make those conversations increasingly specific. A producer should ideally know whether the person across the table is looking for a preschool series, an adult animated feature, a completed film for Francophone Africa, a minority co-production position or a project that already has 70 per cent of its financing secured. The more precise that matchmaking becomes, the less a market depends on chance.
The Less Glamorous Part of Closing a Deal
There is another part of market readiness that receives much less attention than pitching technique: whether the project is legally and financially prepared for someone to invest in it.
MAFA’s application form requires applicants to certify that they possess the necessary rights for their work to be screened at the event. That is useful, but screening rights are only one layer of what a serious financier, distributor or broadcaster may eventually need to examine.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation describes the “chain of title” as the documentary record showing who controls the copyright and other legal rights within an audiovisual project. Those rights can involve the script, music, artwork, underlying source material, performances and agreements with different creative contributors. WIPO notes that clear ownership can be essential for obtaining finance and concluding distribution arrangements because investors and distributors need assurance that the producer actually controls what is being sold.
For animation projects built from folklore, independently commissioned artwork, music, character designs, collaborative scripts or pre-existing intellectual property, that documentation can become complicated very quickly. The most exciting pitch in the room can slow down the moment due diligence reveals that a producer does not have the rights required to grant a distributor the territories being discussed.
Durban FilmMart explicitly requires successful applicants to provide documentation proving ownership of the necessary intellectual property rights, while its mentorship structure prepares teams over several months before they enter one-on-one meetings with decision-makers. That approach recognises that market readiness is not simply learning how to perform a persuasive ten-minute presentation. It means knowing the production budget, financing plan, rights position, commercial ask and limits of what the producer is willing to give up in exchange for money.
For MAFA, adding visible legal, rights and deal-readiness support could eventually become as valuable as any masterclass on storytelling or production technique. If the market wants to position itself as a place where African intellectual property can move into international commercial relationships, then helping creators understand how to protect and transact that intellectual property should become part of the market itself.
The Website Problem Is Small Until It Isn’t
There are also less complicated issues that MAFA needs to resolve before November. The current official website repeatedly states that the inaugural market will take place in November 2026, yet the public programme page still labels its three event days as May 21, May 22 and May 23, dates that passed before the project submission deadline. The same website says applications closed on August 31, although other areas still display language suggesting submissions are open.
There is also a notable difference between the scale announced at MAFA’s May launch and the figures currently foregrounded on the official site. Contemporary reports from the launch conference said organisers expected close to 10,000 participants, while MAFA’s current website promotes a more professionally focused figure of more than 500 professionals from over 30 countries. The difference may simply reflect a distinction between general attendance and accredited industry participants, or a later revision of expectations, but that distinction is not currently explained clearly in the public-facing material.
For an ordinary cultural event, those may look like website housekeeping problems. For a professional market asking international participants to arrange travel, prepare projects, schedule meetings and potentially discuss financing, clarity is part of the product. Buyers need accurate schedules, producers need confirmed dates and partners need confidence that the organisation around the market is as professional as the business it wants to attract.
None of this means MAFA has failed before opening its doors. It means the first edition is being watched at the stage where ambition has to begin becoming procedure.
What Should Count as Success?
The easiest way for MAFA to look successful in November will be to show a crowded venue, busy panels, international guests and long lines of creators waiting to pitch. Those things will matter because animation industries are partly built through relationships and repeated contact, and a dedicated continental gathering could itself strengthen professional networks that are currently scattered across different countries and language blocs.
The more important evidence will come later.
If MAFA wants to become infrastructure rather than simply another date on the animation calendar, it will eventually need to track what happens to the projects passing through it. How many finalists received follow-up meetings after the market? How many entered due diligence with a broadcaster or investor? How many secured development funding, co-production partners, distribution agreements or pre-sales? How many were still moving towards production six months later, and how many eventually reached audiences?
Cartoon Forum publishes data about buyers, matchmaking meetings and business outcomes because those figures allow the industry to evaluate the market itself. Durban FilmMart follows the progress of projects and alumni beyond the year they first pitch. Annecy has built structures specifically around buyers, investors and project discovery. These markets have had years to develop those systems, and it would be unreasonable to demand that an inaugural MAFA immediately reproduce institutions that were built over decades. It is reasonable, however, to judge whether the first edition begins creating the mechanisms from which that kind of credibility can grow.
That is what makes MAFA one of the more interesting African animation developments to watch in 2026. Its significance does not depend on pretending that African animation previously had no festivals, markets, pitching programmes or international pathways. Animation projects have already passed through structures such as Durban FilmMart, Annecy’s Mifa ecosystem and other development programmes. What MAFA is proposing is a permanent African professional market in which animation itself becomes the centre of the commercial conversation.
The need for something like that is difficult to dismiss. African creators continue to develop projects, studios continue to train artists and broadcasters continue to search for content, yet those parts of the industry do not always meet within the same commercial system. If MAFA can make those connections more deliberate, prepare projects to survive due diligence, place actual buyers and financiers opposite producers, and then follow what happens after the meetings, Abidjan could become more than the host city of another animation event.
It could become one of the places where African animated projects go when they are ready to become businesses.
For now, that remains an ambition rather than a result. The applications have closed, pre-selection is scheduled for September 15, the official selection is expected on October 1, and the inaugural market is still ahead in November. By then, the most useful question will not be how many people attended MAFA or how many panels filled its programme. It will be whether the market begins doing the difficult work implied by its own name: creating a place where African animation can be financed, bought, sold, licensed, co-produced and carried from a promising idea into something audiences can actually watch.
Written by Nehemiah Osarodion
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