Within the age of AI, SAB Studios says Africans should personal their tales

For many years, the query of who will get to inform Africa’s tales has been tied to affect: who controls the cameras, the budgets, the distribution pipelines, and, in the end, the narrative. In the present day, a brand new power has entered that debate: synthetic intelligence (AI). 

As generative AI instruments reshape world filmmaking, African creatives are asking a well-recognized query in a brand new context: when these instruments are developed overseas, who actually owns the tales they assist create?

For Sandra Adeyeye Bello, founder and artistic director of Abuja-based artistic media organisation and content material studio SAB Studios Nigeria, the reply is simple. 

“AI doesn’t inform tales by itself,” she instructed TechCabal in an interview. “It’s a instrument. The storyteller continues to be the human being utilizing it.” 

Bello sees the rise of AI not as a menace to African storytelling however as a chance to bridge the long-standing divide between expertise, expertise, and financial alternative on the continent. With Africa’s AI market anticipated to increase from about $4.5 billion in 2025 to $16.5 billion by 2030, she argues that the second is ripe for creators to form their very own future.

SAB Studios was based in March 2025 to deal with that hole. Bello’s background spans radio, tv, print, and movie, earlier than she moved into digital media and content material advertising and marketing. She based SAB Studios to serve international purchasers looking for quicker, extra versatile content material manufacturing. 

However as demand has grown, so have issues that African creatives are producing content material for world platforms they don’t personal, platforms whose monetisation guidelines are set exterior the continent and infrequently work in opposition to their pursuits.

That concern pushed SAB Studios past company work into neighborhood constructing. In the present day, the studio powers the AI Filmmakers Community (AFN), a rising collective of greater than 500 African creators throughout Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. Their shared mission is to experiment with AI-assisted filmmaking whereas conserving artistic management and, finally, financial worth, inside Africa.

Past Nollywood’s first act

Any dialog about African storytelling inevitably runs by way of Nollywood, one of many world’s most prolific movie industries. Valued at greater than $6.4 billion, the business is understood for producing low-budget but extremely participating movies at an astonishing charge of over 2,500 titles yearly. It was constructed from the bottom up by screenwriters, actors, administrators, producers, and technical crews, not by machines.

Bello is fast to acknowledge its significance.

“Nollywood has executed an unbelievable quantity of labor,” she stated. “It normalised African faces, our languages, our household buildings, and our on a regular basis realities on display screen. That presence is simple.”

However visibility, she argues, is just not the identical as possession. Africa’s world picture continues to be too typically formed by way of exterior lenses, whether or not through Hollywood productions or worldwide platforms that management distribution and income. Even Nollywood, influential as it’s, now faces a brand new check: the necessity to evolve.

“That is the place we are available in,” Bello defined. “We’re evolving by way of AI filmmaking and digital platforms. The prices are decrease. The boundaries are decrease. Distribution is global-first.” 

For her, SAB Studios represents the “subsequent layer” of African storytelling, constructing on Nollywood’s basis whereas adapting to a quickly altering media panorama. 

Creators at SAB Studios produce movies utilizing Elon Musk’s xAI instrument GrokAI for scripting and concept technology, Google’s superior video-generation mannequin Veo 3 for life like, high-fidelity visuals, OpenAI’s Sora 2 for complicated scene simulation and cinematic storytelling, and Wan 2, a artistic AI engine identified for stylised visuals, animation results, and creative video enhancement.

Can instruments constructed elsewhere inform African tales?

In debates about possession of AI instruments for African movies inside manufacturing, Bello reframes the query. She compares AI instruments to a pen. 

“You’ve all the time used your pen to write down,” she stated. “Have you ever ever frightened that since you didn’t manufacture the pen, it gained’t write what you need?” The instrument, in her view, is impartial. What issues is who wields it and with what intent.

Crucially, she argues, AI has weakened conventional gatekeepers. In earlier eras, African filmmakers needed to navigate distributors, entrepreneurs, and financiers who typically formed content material to swimsuit exterior tastes. In the present day, a creator could make a movie on a smartphone, use AI instruments to boost it, and publish on to a worldwide viewers.

That shift additionally adjustments the connection between African creators and large tech firms akin to  Google, which owns YouTube, one of many major platforms by way of which these movies are monetised. Bello recounts reaching out to AI platforms whose groups knew little about Africa past stereotypes. 

“We’re those telling them our story,” she stated. “After they see that now we have 500 African creators, weekly challenges, and a movie pageant, they’re baffled. The conversations are working always.”

From expertise to sustainability

On the coronary heart of SAB Studios’ mannequin are three pillars: expertise acquisition, showcase, and sustainable funding. The studio trains creators in-house by way of workshops, checks, and inner initiatives earlier than they graduate to shopper work. AI has accelerated this course of, permitting creators to experiment quickly throughout codecs.

The outcomes are diverse. AFN creators are producing AI-assisted music movies, brief drama skits, documentaries, animations, and product adverts. In line with Bello, some initiatives transfer  from script to display screen with out conventional manufacturing crews.“The one limitation is your thoughts,” Bello typically tells her college students.

But experimentation alone doesn’t pay the payments. Most African creators nonetheless earn primarily by way of international platforms akin to  YouTube, TikTok, and Fb. 

SAB Studios’ longer-term ambition is to alter that equation by constructing an area monetisation platform: an African market the place manufacturers can collaborate with vetted creators and preserve extra worth throughout the continent.

Constructing an area market that really connects African creators to audiences and types is just not a brand new ambition, and a number of other high-profile makes an attempt have proven how troublesome it may be. 

IROKOtv, as soon as Nollywood’s brightest streaming hope, spent almost $100 million earlier than abandoning its Africa-first mannequin.

Low incomes, costly broadband, piracy, and weak cost methods made an area subscription enterprise unimaginable to scale; by 2023–2025, as much as 89% of its income got here from the diaspora as a substitute. 

Econet’s Kwesé TV confronted an analogous destiny. Regardless of its daring mixture of satellite tv for pc pay-TV and VoD throughout the continent, the platform shut down by 2019 after sluggish subscriber development and cash-flow pressures rendered its content-heavy mannequin unsustainable.

The studio’s streaming app, at the moment 80% full, is ready to launch in beta throughout its April movie pageant. The thought is that companies searching for creators mustn’t have to go looking endlessly throughout platforms, whereas creators mustn’t rely totally on algorithms designed elsewhere. 

“We wish to inform African companies: come right here,” Bello stated. “These creators perceive your tales. They pronounce your names correctly. And the cash stays right here.”

Concern, backlash, and adaptation

The worldwide debate over AI in movie has been loudest in Hollywood, the place strikes in 2023 centered partly on using AI in manufacturing. In Africa, resistance has been extra muted however no much less intense. 

Totally AI-generated movies akin to The Omegamax Conspiracy (Nigeria, 2024) sparked backlash from some Nollywood veterans who argue that AI strips filmmaking of its human essence. In South Africa, actors’ guilds have warned concerning the risks of unregulated digital replicas of performers’ faces and voices.

Bello acknowledges these fears however sees them as a part of a well-recognized cycle. 

“Individuals concern the unknown,” she stated. “We moved from firewood to gasoline, and now to air fryers. Change is inevitable.” Relatively than resisting AI, she believes African creatives ought to adapt early, shaping how the expertise is used as a substitute of reacting to it later.

That adaptive mindset is already seen throughout the continent. By early 2026, no less than 5 outstanding AI-focused movie labs and initiatives had emerged, from Rise Interactive Studios in Nigeria, which produced Makemation, to South Africa’s Movie Runway meetups and the British Council-backed Movie Lab Africa. SAB Studios sits inside this broader ecosystem however differentiates itself by centring neighborhood and possession, not simply experimentation.

Inclusion as a artistic dividend

Certainly one of Bello’s strongest arguments for AI-enabled storytelling is inclusion. Her neighborhood is basically made up of girls and younger folks, teams traditionally underrepresented in movie management. AI instruments, she says, additionally open doorways for folks residing with disabilities, who can now showcase their expertise with out navigating bodily or social boundaries.

“In a standard setup, you present up for an interview and biases kick in,” she stated. “With AI, you arrange a profile, present your work, and let the work communicate.” Belonging to a neighborhood additional reduces isolation, providing peer suggestions, visibility, and a way of shared goal.

The query of who owns Africa’s tales within the age of AI has no single reply. Instruments, platforms, and capital nonetheless largely sit exterior the continent. SAB Studios’ experiment, nevertheless, means that possession is much less about the place expertise is constructed and extra about how it’s used, ruled, and monetised.

For Bello, success would imply constructing a real house for African creators: a platform that pays them to create, helps audiences uncover them, and reduces dependence on international methods. 

“That,” she stated, “is what possession seems like.”