In 2005 during Sithengi film festival in South Africa, JP Kihara a Kenyan distributor made a presentation trying to persuade African filmmakers to come together and lobby African airlines to screen their content as a new avenue of distribution. "The idea was to organize a good distribution network for African content," says Kihara of Development exhibition Africa Video Unit Africa (DEVU). That idea did not go far anyway. Up to date, Kihara is still pursuing it relentlessly hoping that African airlines will take responsibility to support African content providers. "If they support us, they will be basically ploughing back profits into the continent," says Kihara.

Sample this: Passengers who flew Kenya Airways between November and December last year had a chance to sample an assortment of films; a variety of music. The music was a mix of African classics, Chinese pop, jazz or even some dancehall and reggae from which the passengers could pick.

"While other airlines fly to humdrum hubs," says an editorial on the KQ in-flight guide covering that quarter, "we take you on a journey to the centre of the earth." This is through music and films plus the information on the inflight magazine offered to every passenger, which is an indication of how much premium the airline attaches to inflight entertainment. But even with the opportunity, African artists have not got onboard and earn from the opportunity to supply inflight content.

During November/December season for instance, KQ was offering several Hollywood films and western and American music hits with little African to match. There was an adaptation of Mamma Mia, American film The Love Guru and even a taste of The Girl in the Park directed by David Aubum.

Between March and April this year, KQ whose tagline shines pride of being African was offering Quantum of Solace, Burn After Reading and The Secret Life Of Bees among other films. Just like most of the other African airlines, African films by an African filmmaker were missing in the guide.

Ethiopian airlines- another African airline- was offering a choice of comedy, action, drama, and suspense movies from the recent feature Hollywood films. Besides the Hollywood content, Ethiopian also offered a bit of African content with a series of 30 different films highlighting the history, cultures, and the landscapers that define Ethiopia.
"I imagine you see a lack of African films on African Airways for the same reason there has not been a lot of African programs on African TV," says Cherise Head of Buyer Relations/Africa at Discop. Discop is an organisation that has been facilitating content distribution in 87 countries in Central, Eastern Europe, Eurasia and Africa.

According to Cherise, lack of a mature distribution channel for African content, and pricing could be the reasons why African content remains rare inflight. She says, "Often, it is cheaper for airlines to purchase international content as international distributors cover large territories and can afford to sell it to Africa cheaply as a bonus territory. Also, distribution of African content is just starting to really develop."

"In-Flight Content provision is not as simple a task as it may appear," says a KQ official whose first attempt to air Kenyan films failed to take off due to what the airline refers to industry infighting and ignorance. "It involves a strong relationship with leading studios to ensure funding, licensing, encoding, shipping etc is handled effectively."

Inflight entertainment business remains a very intricate issue for most African artistes.

First, there has to be a reliable distribution network. In Africa, attempts to create a distribution channel for African content are yet to bear fruits- apart from the Southern African region and Nigeria that are slowly coming to into some form.

The other headache when it comes to African content is copyright. Most filmmakers in Africa do not own copyright to their works. This is because, most of their films and programmes are commissioned works.

"The fact that Africa (save for South Africa and Nollywood) does not have a well organized distribution system (covering all costs/rights associated with movie production/licensing) hinders the range of movies I can put on board," says a KQ official who confirmed that the company's content provider is a distributor in German.

Inflight entertainment, though not seen by many African filmmakers as serious film distribution outlets has been around for ages.

It was in 1921 when Howday Chicago, the first inflight film was screened on Aeromarine to passengers flying around Chicago. This was before twelve years later- in 1932- when the first inflight television to screen movies in what was referred to media event boarded the plane and long before inflight entertainment went mainstream and became a popular trend in the 1960s.

Today, airlines are turning to inflight entertainment for product differentiation, spending billions of shillings every year to acquire rights to screen and play music in a highly competitive environment.

In a report Airline in-flight entertainment: the passengers' perspective, Fariba Alamdari of the Cranfield University, reports that airlines spent $1.8 billion on inflight- entertainment in 1998 alone.

According to another survey by Frost & Sullivan, world In-flight Entertainment and Connectivity Market - Investment Analysis, this market earned revenues (top 20 participants) of $1.68 billion in 2007 and estimates this to reach $2.72 billion in 2012.

By May 2006, South African Airways was spending up £7 million a year on in-flight entertainment according to Executive Travel magazine.

These inflight expenses include cost of software, hardware and the content that aired inflight.

Fariba Alamdari attributes the increased interest in inflight-entertainment to a considerable relaxation of economic regulation in many aviation markets, resulting in improvements in airline products, especially in the in-flight services. "One of the areas on which airlines have focused their attention is the provision of personal in-flight entertainment," says the scholar based at Air Transport Group, College of Aeronautics.

"In recent years the importance of inflight entertainment across the typical air travel experience has grown considerably," said Edward Plaisted (CEO of Skytrax) after announcing winners of inflight entertainment awards during this year's Air Travel Awards organized by his company.

Even with this inflight explosion, African filmmakers and music distributors are yet to take it as a serious income stream, leaving Hollywood, Bollywood and Chinese filmmakers in the field.

By Mwenda wa Micheni