Akunna Cook MK Battles Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Akunna Cook found her way to the entertainment sector via an unconventional path. A former career Foreign Service officer who served in China, South Africa and Baghdad before returning to Washington to work on U.S.-Africa policy under President Biden, she first arrived on a Hollywood studio lot thanks to public policy. Working alongside President Obama on an initiative to weave policy issues into mainstream entertainment, she helped shepherd otherwise wonky subjects into hit shows - such as gerrymandering subplots in Shonda Rhimes' Scandal and Kenya Barris' Black-ish. Related Stories Movies In 'London,' Debuting at Berlin, Car-Sharing Is Caring. But How Did Its Director Pull Off the Genre-Bender? Movies 'Iron Sky' Producers Prepping Communists-on-Mars Trilogy 'Deep Red' (Exclusive) Her later work in government further exposed her to the accelerating growth of Africa's media industries, where she championed the reclassification of entertainment exports as strategic assets essential to a nation's soft power. With the youngest population of any continent and more than 60 percent of Africans under 25, Cook argues that the region represents a demographic force poised to shape global media consumption, political influence and economic growth in the decades ahead. Those convictions led her, after leaving government, to found the Next Narrative Africa Fund (NNAF), a $50 million hybrid investment vehicle designed to channel $40 million in commercial equity and $10 million in nonprofit development funding into film and television projects from the continent and its diaspora. The model is structured to address what Cook sees as structural gaps: undercapitalized development pipelines, limited IP ownership for creators and a persistent tendency for global studios and capital to treat African content as peripheral rather than a potential pillar of future growth. For Cook, the question is not whether African storytelling will scale globally, but who will own it when it does. Over the past year, NNAF has moved quickly. The fund recently unveiled a 13-member advisory board spanning veterans of production, finance, tech and talent management, and in March it will unveil its first slate of six to 10 projects, selected from more than 2,000 submissions across 80 countries.
The Hollywood Reporter connected with Cook ahead of the European Film Market to discuss the fund's structure, her team's approach to selecting and positioning projects, and why she believes Hollywood's smartest money should already be looking south.
You've been on a unique career path, moving between government and entertainment. How did this evolution come about for you? Well, I started my career as a foreign service officer. I was a career economic officer at the State Department, focused on Africa for a good chunk of that, but I also served in China, South Africa and Baghdad. Then I left the Foreign Service, went to law school, and graduated in 2016 thinking I'd go back to government. You might remember that there were some changes in government around that time, so that did not work out for me. So I found myself at a law firm here in Washington, D.C., and ended up working on redistricting with President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder. One of the things we were trying to do was figure out how to make gerrymandering - this really wonky subject - palatable to everyday people. One of the things we came up with was to go to L.A. and speak with showrunners and give them background about what gerrymandering is and see if they could start socializing it by writing it into their projects. That was the first time I really saw the power of media in pushing policy. Did that actually work? Yeah, we got it addressed in an episode of Scandal, andan episode of Black-ish. Those are some of the folks we came across. Having been in the Foreign Service, I already understood how other institutions use media - the Pentagon assisting with Top Gun and other military-focused movies, police unions with TV shows. So, more and more, I felt the power of it. Fast forward - I went on to help start the Black Economic Alliance in 2018. Several of the individuals involved were also in the entertainment business. At that time, we were looking at how the portrayal of African Americans in media has direct economic impact - lower participation in tech, lower rates of investment - how powerful media is in shaping ideas and narratives, positively or negatively. When Biden was elected, I went back to government and returned to the State Department, back to foreign policy, working again on Africa. This was 2021. Netflix had come into Africa. Amazon was coming in. The rise of Afrobeats was happening. The creative industries there were e