I remember when I applied for YALI (Obama's program for African leaders), I thought I had impressed the interviewing guy thoroughly. But at the last question, when he asked me whether I wanted to join the business or civic chapter, I chose business. The guy looked disappointed. I wasn't surprised when the axe finally knocked me.
The last thing I applied for was the German EFM Toolbox Distribution Academy, where I laid out my credentials as a filmmaker and software/data engineer. I made a very clear case for why the future of distribution is digital, and why my skillset is the best combination any Ugandan—or human anywhere—can have to innovate in film distribution on the continent. The guys never even acknowledged receipt of my email. In fact, they mistakenly added me to one of the webinars for the program, where I asked if this meant I was selected. Still, up to now, no one has responded to me again.
This program has been running for a while now in Africa, and it has never yielded any results, yet it has not been modified either. Film producers join the program, and they are taken to a fancy hotel in Germany, fed nice food for free, and indoctrinated into the false garbage of the Hollywood distribution playbook that will never work in Africa. After all, what do Germans know about African film distribution that Africans cannot figure out for themselves? Then, they are credentialed with a certificate. This process, in my mind, is meant to induce imposter syndrome. They will teach you things that will never work and set you up to blame yourself when you inevitably fail as a film producer.
And this is the USAID playbook, by the way. So when these NGOs, the UN, and other Western institutions for some reason decide that to qualify for their programs, one has to be between 18 and 35, what they actually mean is that they are looking for someone intelligent but still impressionable and gullible. This way, they can manipulate them with whatever form of indoctrination they have.
Haven't you ever wondered why, for some reason, these guys limit qualifications for their programs—some of which involve finding solutions to real-world problems like global warming—to near-children? The people with the least amount of real-world experience? My hunch is that the goal is to take intelligent Africans who were not poached by Harvard, Google, etc., out of the real-world intelligence market and give them dummy but well-paying jobs and prestigious titles so that they don't focus their intelligence on solving African problems. This, to me, is the most sophisticated form of brain drain.
Anyway, check out my analysis on what I think is wrong with film distribution in Uganda: https://xkmato.com/what-is-wrong-with-ugandan-film-distribution