Ifie Sekibo, Heritage Bank Managing Director
Heritage Bank has announced its plans to participate at the 2014 edition of the celebrated American Film Market (AFM) and Conferences, holding between November 5 and 12 in Santa Monica, United States of America as one of the key international Corporates to drive new vision for Africa’s fast developing film industry.
According to Group Head, Corporate Affairs, Mr. Fela Ibidapo, Heritage Bank will be joining some of the world’s renowned Corporate organizations who value wealth creation and preservation to promote intellectual discourse on innovative ways to improve and preserve the growing African Film industry at an exclusive Roundtable Workshop tagged: African Productions: The Possibilities and the Challenges.
He noted that Investment flow into Africa over the years has eluded the Film and TV industry, adding that Investor Knowledge Gaps and Risk Perceptions are largely responsible for this. The AFM “Focus on Africa Initiative”, he observed, would bridge these gaps and drive investments into African Film and TV.
“The Roundtable is part of a series of premium event lined up for this year’s edition of the American Film Market (AFM) and Conferences. It is going to bring together stakeholders in films produced in Africa with cross-cultural appeal, thereby initiating business opportunities that can impact the untapped potential of the African film industry. The talk-shop will witness robust exchange of ideas and technical-know-how on ways of fast-tracking the development and promotion of the African film industry through co-production”.
Continuing, Ibidapo stated that “Heritage Bank is therefore excited to be part of this unique frontier event. The Bank continues to look for platforms, partnerships and counterpart funding to investors seeking to take advantage of the Nigerian angle to Film and TV. Heritage Bank believes that the 2014 AFM marks the transformation of African content to truly global standards”.
On the Bank’s plan for the country’s entertainment sector, he revealed that Heritage Bank has set the goal of raising USD100m in funding by 2016 to directly invest in Nigeria’s film, media and broadcast space in readiness for Nigeria’s migration to the digital broadcast format slated for 2015 where content will be the difference between success and failure for the hundreds of TV stations expected to emerge from the process.
“At AFM 2014, Heritage Bank will be seeking for collaboration, content and ideas that have the capacity to shape Africa’s audio-visual industry for sustained growth”, he submitted.
He further added that one of the expected speakers at the AFM Roundtable Workshop is Heritage Bank’s Group Head, Enterprise Risk Management, Mr. Dike Dimiri who has over the last eighteen months directly advised on nearly USD50Million in funding for a variety of transactions in the film and entertainment industry that Heritage Bank has midwived. These include Bloomberg TV Africa (the Pan African TV by Bloomberg LLP), Free-to-Air TV Broadcast Rights in Nigeria for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, HIP TV (a Pan African TV Music Channel broadcast on satellite TV which was funded from scratch) and a variety of other investments spanning content, platforms and production.
Other expected speakers at the event include Bernard Azria, CEO, Côte Ouest; Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, Regional Director, M-Net/Africa Magic; Jason Njoku, Founder, iROKO Partners and Chris Roland, Owner, ZenHQ Films while Ijeoma Onah, CEO, FISL Global Network will be the Moderator.
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