The African Animation, VFX and Video Games industry has the potential to emerge as an engine of growth for the continent.
The industry is in a phase where we are seeing the emergence of several African animation companies and animators working on attractive stories and content leveraging the continent’s large potential for stories. Several animation studios in Africa release their content through online channels such as YouTube, which is attracting millions of subscribers both from the continent as well as worldwide.
African studios are making new inroads by launching original locally produced content on Netflix. Several local content productions have been nominated for several global awards including the Oscars. The Annecy Festival in 2020 will be focusing on animation from Africa.
There are a handful of globally renowned animation studios as well as several hundreds of small and medium-sized studios producing content tailored to local tastes. Supply of animation talent, which has historically been limited, is emerging with support and intervention of several governments and industry initiatives to develop and support African animation through university courses and vocational training courses which provide theoretical and practical hands-on learning on Animation, VFX and Video Games.
There are vast sections of the African continent where the potential for Animation, VFX & Video games has not yet been realized and calls for closer participation between government, industry, and academia to catalyse the industry growth. The industry needs support in the form of training, funding, tax incentives, market reach, access to hardware and software, legal support to protect the content IP. access to global distribution and collaboration networks etc.
Source: finance.yahoo.com
