Uganda’s Fredrick Mayiga sets the pace at MTF East Africa Academy – Sqoop

In a room full of emerging filmmakers from across East Africa, Uganda’s Fredrick Mayiga didn’t just graduate, he stood out.

At the latest graduation of the MultiChoice Talent Factory (MTF) East Africa Academy, Mayiga was awarded the Academy Director’s Award, a recognition reserved for a participant who distinguishes themselves beyond the classroom.

It is an easy accolade to gloss over, but within the MTF ecosystem, where long days blur into longer nights of production, critique, and iteration, it signals something more: consistency, range, and the ability to translate training into voice.

The nine-month programme, run by MultiChoice, brings together filmmakers from Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda for an intensive dive into directing, producing, cinematography, writing, and editing. It is as much about collaboration as it is about craft.

The Academy continues to partner with Kenyatta University, ensuring a blend of academic grounding and practical industry training. Vice-Chancellor Professor John Okumu noted that such collaborations are critical to sustaining growth in the creative sector.

Speaking on behalf of Uganda, Hassan Saleh, CEO of MultiChoice Uganda, encouraged the graduates to translate their training into industry impact:

“We congratulate all MTF 2026 graduates on this milestone. For the Ugandan cohort, the task ahead is to contribute meaningfully to the growth of our local content industry and to support skills transfer that will elevate the quality of production across the sector.”

For Mayiga, the experience appears to have been both.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to grow as filmmakers,” he said at the ceremony. “The programme was rigorous and demanded a great deal of discipline, but it has prepared us for what lies ahead.”

That “what lies ahead” is an industry in motion. East Africa’s film and television sector is expanding, pushed forward by streaming platforms and a growing appetite for local stories. The pipeline, however, has often struggled to match the ambition.

Programmes like MTF attempt to close that gap, not just by training filmmakers, but by shaping how they think about story, audience, and industry.

And that may be where Mayiga’s win matters most.

Because beyond the certificate and the award, what MTF quietly produces are filmmakers who understand that the work is not just to tell stories, but to build an ecosystem around them.

Since its launch in 2018, the academy has steadily fed talent into the continent’s creative industries, with alumni landing festival premieres and nominations at platforms like the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards.

Mayiga now joins that pipeline, not at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle of it, where promise starts to meet expectation.

The next test, as always, will not be the training.

It will be the work.