About our team

About Me

Joel Chikapa Phiri is a well know Zimbabwean film producer and entrepreneur based in South Africa. Joel has been in the film and television business in Zimbabwe and South Africa having produced both local and international films whose total cost exceed US100m.

Joel’s career has been self made centred on starting, building, developing, growing, supporting and nuturing businesses in which he has been a major shareholder focusing initially on feature film production and financing. Now reaching over 30 years in the film and television business with work experience in projects spanning several countries in Africa, Europe and the USA, Joel has produced many films and developed an extensive global network in Film, Television and Global Media Related Businesses including Major Financial Institutions and Banks.

Joel has also been instrumental in the creation of various support structures in this sector, serving on many industry organisations both local and international as a board member. In his career Joel has had the uniqiue previledge of being involved and pioneering many ground breaking projects.

Joel is an insuperable, catalytic, entrepreneurial, holistic thinking individual, who is a relentless professional, with an ability to be agile and flexible and capable of motivating and leading both small and large teams. A natural people’s person and problem solver, Joel is able to work at ease under considerably insurmountable pressures. Joel is a consummate dealmaker and well versed in negotiating and setting up of complex financial structures, and equally at ease in understanding and setting up and drafting of legal agreements and business processes to support such structures. Joel also has a reasonably good grasp of South African Taxation and Partnership law. Since 2007 Joel has expanded his business interests to encompass Mining /Energy (including Oil & Gas) /Infrastructure /and Logistics (including Rail).

Joel’s primary role in these ventures is capital raising and transaction structuring. Today his family business Known Associates (KAIH) is a small boutique finance house that offers tailor-made bespoke funding solutions, to a handful, prestigious clients whose focus is investing in South Africa Angola, Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa.