The Zanzibar International Film Festival has received a solid ten year sponsorship worth Sh84 million from pay TV provider Zuku.
The sponsorship that starts with this year’s festival in July will run every year until 2022 in form of an annual grant of Sh8.4m to support ZIFF’s film and festival promotion, as well as its marketing program.
Wananchi Group CEO, Richard Bell, said the agreement would see Zuku become headline sponsor for ZIFF.
“Of course, as the festival grows and develops we may both see different needs and opportunities – but this should give us a solid footing to start on”, he said.
“We do not, however, mean to lock out other sponsors/contributors and collaborators. On the contrary, we would hope that our long term involvement would help attract greater consistency from other partners.”
Wananchi Group Chairman, Ali Mufuruki added: “It is with pride that we enter into this association with ZIFF, which has for the last 15 years been instrumental in celebrating and enabling film making from the region and around the world.”
Speaking of partnership from Geneva, the ZIFF Chairman, Mahmoud Thabit Kombo said that ZIFF is a huge part of African culture and as a proud Zanzibari organization, they were pleased to extend their relationship.
Zuku’s initial ten-year agreement concludes at the end of the 2022 season and The ZIFF chair said the partnership would by then have evolved into a strong business and community relationship. “While we like seeing the Zuku logo side by side with ZIFF, our partnership goes well beyond branding,” he said. “As ZUKU spreads its wings to capture the pay TV market in East and Central Africa, ZIFF will work closely together with Zuku to develop the film and media entertainment industry”.
Zuku is currently available in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda with plans to roll out to neighboring countries. It has announced plans to show more local content this year, from cooking shows to Parliamentary proceedings and Swahili movies from East Africa.
ZIFF will take place between July 7 and 15.
