Martin Mhando tells us how the ACP-EU Ignite Culture Programme helped ZIFF deepen its roots and extend its reach as East Africa's most important cinematic platform.
Every June, the ancient streets of Stone Town come alive with something that feels like more than a film festival. The Zanzibar International Film Festival, known across the continent simply as ZIFF, is East Africa's largest multi-disciplinary arts and cultural event. Since its founding in 1997 by celebrated Tanzanian filmmaker Professor Martin Mhando, ZIFF has been doing something quietly remarkable: keeping cinema alive in a region where, by the 1980s, almost every theatre had closed its doors.
"For many years ZIFF was the only space in Zanzibar where you could sit with hundreds of people to enjoy a film," Mhando reflects. "In that way, ZIFF has opened society up to global influences."
But running East Africa's most ambitious cultural festival on a continent where creative infrastructure remains chronically underfunded is no simple task. Support from the ACP-EU Ignite Culture Programme, an EU-funded programme technically supported by the British Council and implemented in partnership with HEVA Fund, provided a critical intervention through capacity building and the ZIFF Equipment Support Project. The grant enabled ZIFF to procure essential screening equipment, strengthen its operational capacity, and expand its reach well beyond Stone Town.
The immediate impact was visible at ZIFF26 in June 2023. The 26th edition of the festival delivered a comprehensive programme of 12 events across four venues in Zanzibar, including film screenings, outreach initiatives, workshops, and masterclasses, attracting 17,493 attendees. On the festival's sidelines, the British Council and HEVA Fund hosted ZanzIgnite, the first in-person regional networking event of the ACP-EU Ignite Culture Programme for Eastern Africa. Over three days, beneficiaries from eight countries joined industry leaders and policymakers for panel sessions focused on audio-visual arts, festival management, cultural tourism, and the future of creative and cultural industries across the region. ZIFF was central to making that exchange possible.
The capacity building and equipment grant unlocked something further still. Between December 2023 and February 2024, ZIFF launched ‘ZIFF Goes Mainland,’ taking film screenings and cultural events to higher education institutions across Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo, and Morogoro. The programme engaged over 2,305 participants, using films from both Europe and Africa to foster cultural exchange and promote creative diversity far beyond the island's shores.
ZIFF now receives close to 3,000 film submissions annually and screens work to schoolchildren, village communities, and international audiences alike. Tanzania's Minister for Culture has publicly credited a ZIFF youth programme with first inspiring her own leadership ambitions as a girl of twelve.
‘No longer is a festival about a place alone,’ Mhando says. ‘It is about its creative structures, its sustainability, and its contribution to the multi-coloured garden of world cinema.’
What the ACP-EU Ignite Culture Programme recognised and invested in, was not simply a film festival. It was a cultural institution that has spent nearly three decades proving that African stories, told by Africans and celebrated on African soil, belong at the centre of world cinema.