Breakthrough for African Animation

By Kevin Kriedemann
Published August 24, 2023

Is 2023 becoming a breakthrough year for African animation?

When Triggerfish, a South African animation studio, launched a pan-African talent search for animated films and series with the support of The Walt Disney Company in 2015, few expected that effort to generate much interest, let alone attract talent that would not only shape the African narrative but also show the world how African stories are told.

Today, eight years later, all of the Triggerfish Story Lab’s TV series winners have major animated series out.

While Marc Dey and Kelly Dillon are co-creators of the pre-school series, Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes on Disney Junior, Lucy Heavens is co-creator of Kiff on Disney Channel. Both shows debuted in March 2023 in USA and are set to show across Africa, with Kiff debuting on Disney Channel (DStv Channel 303) on August 21, 2023 and Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes on Disney Junior (DStv Channel 309) from September 4, 2023.

Malenga Mulendema’s Zambian teen superhero series, Supa Team 4, premiered on July 20, 2023 as Netflix’s first original animated series from Africa and is currently streaming to 238 million subscribers in more than 190 countries around the world.

Mike Scott is co-creator of a series launching soon across the continent on African streamer Showmax, produced by Braintrust and Mind’s Eye Creative.

In addition to helping produce Supa Team 4 and Kiya & The Kimoja Heroes, Triggerfish is the lead studio on the African sci-fi anthology Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire and produced Aau’s Song, the final short film in Lucasfilms’ Star Wars: Visions Volume II.

Next up, Kizazi Moto will screen on Disney Channel (DStv, Channel 303) across Africa, with a double bill of films broadcast at 17:00 CAT each weekday August 28 – September 1, 2023 and 5-film marathons airing at 15:15 CAT on September 2 and 3, 2023, respectively.

“Talent is everywhere; opportunity isn’t,” says Triggerfish creative director Anthony Silverston. “So when you’re the first to open the door, there’s a backlog of talent queuing up.”

The team at Triggerfish are not the only African animators having a good year either.

Directed by Triggerfish alumni Sarah Scrimgeour and Jac Hamman, the Julia Donaldson-Axel Scheffler adaptation Superworm won Best One-Off, Special or TV Movie at the 2023 Kidscreen Awards.

Triggerfish alumni Daniel Snaddon and Samantha Cutler directed The Smeds and The Smoos, which won the Audience Award for 3-6-year-olds at New York International Children’s Festival and Best Animation at the BANFF Rockie Awards this year.

Cartoon Network has just released their first Nigerian animation, Ridwan Moshood’s Garbage Boy and Trash Can. On YouTube, OmoBerry topped 100m views and Sunrise’s Jungle Beat reached 10m subscribers.

Two South Africans, Triggerfish alumnus Mogau Kekana and Leroy Le Roux, were among the co-directors responsible for the Sepedi-language Thaba Ye, which won the BAFTA Student Film Award for Animation.

And Ethiopian Feben Elias Woldehawariat, Ghanaian Razahk Issaka and South African Celeste Jamneck, who worked with Triggerfish on both Kizazi Moto and Aau’s Song, were among the co-directors of The Soloists, which was named Best Student Film at the 2023 Annie Awards.

Triggerfish has also expanded into graphic novels, with Pearl of the Sea, by Silverston, Raffaella Delle Donne, and Willem Samuel published by Catalyst Press this year to rave reviews, as part of an increasingly vibrant African comics scene.

To understand what this sudden wealth of localised entertainment means to African children, just ask Mulendema. The Supa Team 4 creator grew up in Zambia, watching cartoons on TV and wondering why none of her heroes looked like her, and why the adventures she aspired to all happened elsewhere. It’s hard to be what you don’t see, so animation wasn’t even on her radar until she saw the call for applications for the Triggerfish Story Lab.

“With Supa Team 4, I am delighted that we are contributing to the growing number of stories from Africa that put us and our worlds at the center,” she says.

“What do you picture when you think about Africa?” asks Tendayi Nyeke, executive producer of Kizazi Moto. “Kids growing up with Kizazi Moto, and Supa Team 4, and Kiya and the Kimoja Heroes, and Aau’s Song are going to answer that question very differently than earlier generations. As Africans, we have always known who we are even when our media didn’t show it. What is beautiful is being given the power, resources and trust to self-define and express on a global platform. Showing the world our swag, quirks, fun, vibrancy and complexity on our terms is everything.”

Looking for talent where others aren’t has become Triggerfish’s trademark. For Supa Team 4, they launched an all-African-women writing lab with Netflix, which resulted in nine placements on the series’ writing team. In 2021, they partnered with Netflix on a pan-African Story Artist Lab, led by veteran Pixar story artist Nathan Stanton. In 2022, they partnered with The Walt Disney Company and The American Film Showcase on a masterclass series, giving a comprehensive overview of the animation pipeline to 41 creatives from eight African countries. They’ve also launched the free Triggerfish Academy training platform and sponsored bursaries to The Animation School, school outreach programmes, and multiple competitions aimed at getting Africans to make their first animation.

“Parents in South Africa often treat the idea of making a career out of iPopeye [South African slang for animation] with skepticism, but animation is a growing, labour-intensive industry which is struggling to keep up with the global demand for talent,” says Silverston. “Even outside the traditional film industry, there’s demand for animation talent within fields like advertising, app and web design, architecture, engineering, gaming, industrial design, medicine, and the motor industry, not to mention growth sectors like augmented reality and virtual reality. So, in a country like South Africa, with a 32.9% unemployment figure for the first quarter of 2023, animation can make a big impact.”

The year 2023 marks the first time Africans have moved beyond talking animal movies and international book adaptations into telling original stories about Africans.

“Until Marvel’s Black Panther, we were always told there was no market for stories about Africans,” says Silverston. “Then after Black Panther, everyone wanted stories about Africans, but we were told there were no experienced local directors to tell them at the kind of budgets they deserved. After Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire and Aau’s Song, no one can say there aren’t qualified African directors anymore. We have the stories, and we have the directors, and we have the studios. So now we get to open the door to the first generation of African animators to tell our stories, to each other in Africa, and to the rest of the world. That’s an incredible honour.”