Turn on any streaming app in Harare and there's a decent chance a Nigerian film is somewhere in the recommendations. Nollywood's reach into Zimbabwean living rooms isn't new, it's just rarely asked the obvious follow up question: if we're already watching this much African cinema, why isn't more of it ours?
How big Nollywood actually is
Nollywood produces roughly 2,500 films a year, one of the highest output volumes of any film industry on the planet, commonly cited as the world's second largest by volume behind Bollywood. It generates an estimated 6.4 billion US dollars in annual revenue and contributes around 1.1 percent of Nigeria's real GDP on its own.
None of that happened overnight, and none of it started with big budgets. Nollywood grew out of the 1990s straight to VHS home video era, moved through DVDs, and only became a global streaming presence relatively recently. Genevieve Nnaji's Lionheart became Netflix's first Nigerian acquisition in 2018, a landmark moment that opened the door to international streaming deals the industry now relies on. Producer Kunle Afolayan has since built KAP Film Village, a 60 acre production hub in Oyo State, the kind of infrastructure a scrappy home video industry didn't have thirty years ago but has since earned.
Where Zimbabwe's industry actually stands
Zimbabwe's own film sector is still working out its basics. The National Arts Council only launched a formal Zimbabwe Film Strategy, covering 2025 to 2030, in November 2024, built around nine pillars including governance, funding, infrastructure and distribution. That's decades behind where Nollywood was already operating from.
Cook Off, produced by Joe Njagu, directed by Tomas Brickhill and released in 2017, remains Zimbabwe's proof of concept, the country's first film to stream on Netflix. But without robust funding mechanisms or a fully formed film policy, most Zimbabwean filmmakers are still self-financing or relying on donor support to get projects made at all, and fair compensation for local television broadcasts remains an ongoing struggle. Continent-wide, only 44 percent of African countries have film commissions and just 55 percent have formal film policies, a baseline Zimbabwe's own strategy is only now trying to catch up to. Piracy compounds all of it, estimated to drain 50 to 75 percent of potential revenue from African film industries generally.
Some of the groundwork is being laid privately. Njagu also runs Film in Zimbabwe, a Harare production house that has been making films for about two decades, from Lobola in 2010 through Something Nice from London, Escape, Cook Off, Tete B and Mirage to Ngoda in 2023, and says its work has screened on Netflix, DStv and Showmax. Alongside its own films, it sells the country to visiting productions as a location and handles the unglamorous work a working industry depends on: location scouting, permits, logistics and sourcing crews, plus adverts, documentaries and post-production. That's the kind of fixing and crewing layer Nollywood built up across hundreds of small producers. In Zimbabwe, a single company is doing a lot of it.
Is local production actually growing?
There isn't much volume to measure yet, but what exists is trending upward. Kushata Kwemoyo, directed by Shem Zemura in 2018, went on to win Best Southern African Film at Zambia's Sotambe International Film and Arts Festival in 2021. Thandie's Diary, a low budget drama directed by Eddie Ndhlovu, had its television premiere in 2021 and screened at the Nepal Africa Film Festival the same year. Cook Off remains the reference point for international distribution, still the only Zimbabwean film to have streamed on Netflix.
The most recent sign came in June 2025, when Rise, directed by Jessica J. Rowlands and produced by Joe Njagu, premiered at the Tribeca Festival, the first Zimbabwean film ever selected there, before going on to play the Indy Shorts, Savannah, Denver and British Urban Film Festivals. Arum Visuals has described Zimbabwe's film growth as "now more promising than ever," pointing to this same pattern, individual films breaking into major festivals without the infrastructure Nollywood or South Africa can call on. It's not high volume production, it's a small number of films punching well above the industry's actual resourcing.
AI is already reshaping the calculus
The conversation Nollywood had about budgets and distribution a generation ago, Zimbabwe's industry may end up having about AI instead, and on more favourable terms than Hollywood is having it. Where big studios have treated generative AI mostly as a threat, African filmmakers have leaned toward treating it as leverage, using AI tools for editing, subtitling, dubbing, storyboarding and visual effects specifically to close the budget gap that's kept local industries small. Makemation, billed as Africa's first AI themed feature film and released across the continent in April 2025, starring Nollywood veterans Ali Nuhu and Richard Mofe-Damijo, is a direct product of that shift, a film about young Africans using AI to solve local problems, made using some of the same tools it depicts.
The upside argument is straightforward: generative AI can shrink the cost of VFX, sound design and post-production to a level a self-financed Zimbabwean filmmaker can actually afford, the same kind of barrier-lowering effect that's driving the inaugural African AI Film Festival, premiering in Hollywood and Kampala in late 2026, built explicitly around that premise. Research cited by the festival found 58 percent of South African creators are already using generative AI tools, though only a third disclose it, wary of backlash from audiences and peers.
The downside argument is about ownership more than jobs. As one analyst put it, commenting on AI's growing role in African creative industries, "the fight is not simply to be seen, it is to own the systems through which we are seen." For an industry that's spent years fighting for funding, infrastructure and distribution it controls, AI tools that lower the cost of making a film are only half the equation, the other half is whether Zimbabwean filmmakers end up owning what they make with them, or simply renting the tools that make it possible.
The audience is already here
What Zimbabwe isn't short of is appetite. Nigerian films, alongside South African content carried on platforms like DStv and Showmax, already draw local audiences every week. That's a demonstrated market for Zimbabwean film, not a hypothetical one. Every time Zimbabweans press play on a Nollywood title, they're showing they want African stories on screen. The industry just hasn't caught up to that demand with enough local supply yet.
Money is starting to move at a continental level too. Afreximbank launched a 1 billion US dollar African Film Fund in 2024 specifically to co-finance productions with major studios across the continent, a pool of capital Zimbabwean filmmakers and producers will need to actively position themselves for.
What Zimbabwe can actually borrow from the Nollywood playbook
The real Nollywood lesson is sequencing, not budget. Start with volume and local distribution before chasing prestige. Build informal production and distribution networks first, then formalise them once there's a track record to formalise. Treat a streaming deal as a milestone to work toward, not a starting requirement. Zimbabwe's new Film Strategy gives the industry a framework, what it needs next is the same thing Nollywood had from year one, filmmakers willing to make films with what's actually available, and audiences already choosing to watch them.
Sources
- UNESCO Spotlights Growth Potential of Africa's Film Industry, UNESCO
- What Is Nollywood and How Did It Become the Second Largest Film Industry?, StudioBinder
- Nollywood: How Nigeria's 6.4 Billion Dollar Film Industry Dominates African Cinema, TechCultureAfrica
- Film in Zimbabwe, official site, projects and services
- Zimbabwe Film Strategy 2025-2030 Launched, IFACCA
- Zimbabwean Cinema Development: Overcoming Challenges, Arum Visuals
- US$1bn Injection Breathes Life Into African Films, Zimbabwe Independent
- Rise (2025 film), Wikipedia
- Kushata Kwemoyo, Wikipedia
- Makemation: A Nollywood Movie That Shows AI in Action in Africa, The Conversation
- African Filmmakers Are Experimenting With AI as Hollywood Debates Its Risks, DevReporting
- African AI Film Festival 2026, iAfrica
Photo: Joe Njagu, via Film in Zimbabwe.
