FESPACO's 50th Edition and the first ever Rencontres Africanes du Film d'Animation

This year's FESPACO saw the addition of a 5-day animation workshop program that included mentoring, training and pitching as its themes. Amongst the attendees was Mohamed Ghazala, the Egyptian animation and new vice-president of ASIFA, Cilia Sawadogo, the Burkinabe animator based at Concordia, the Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Moise Toure who established the first animation school in Dakar, and enthusiastic animators from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Tunisia and Madagascar.

The winning prize was awarded to Comfort Arthur from Ghana, known for her animation 'Black Barbie' (2016).

Animation Training in Dakar

BBC World News - 'Embracing Animation in Africa' ran a story on a new initiative based in Dakar that uses EU funding to train 10 African artists in animation. The artists come from various countries including Senegal, Mali, Madagascar, Congo and Comor...Their work includes 2D and 3D animation and upon completion they will return back to their countries with seed funding to make their own films. You can watch the video at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29009063?SThisFB

Animation in Mali...

Described as an animated series of 20 episodes on the hisotry of Mali directed by Ismael Diallo and produced by InMedia, this body of work is another welcome addition to African animation. To read all about the production in more detail click on the article at Journal du Mali.

Inmedia is a corporation originally created in 1999 to address the gap in Multimedia in Mali.Since then great strides were made ​​in the area and many businesses and individuals with real expertise appeared. So after many changes Inmedia became an International Group with several partners and a network of international partners.Today it acts also as a marketing consultancy agent, specializing in developing communication tools, Radio, TV, web, animation and graphic design.