Nigeria: young people develop interest in Animation

In Lagos, the commercial centre of Africa’s most populous nation, young people are developing interest in Animation.

Though there is scarcity of formal training opportunities in the animation space, Nigerian animators are carving a niche for themselves by creating local production and short films.

Adebimpe Adebambo is one the creative directors and animators leading the way. Adebambo is leading the campaign which targets youths or the younger generation to take up animation.

“What I and some of my colleagues have done is that we havestarted going to schools to start animation clubs. So in that way informally, some children who want to learn extracurricular skills like photography, make up and so on… animation is a choice. We are starting from there". she says.

"There is a lot happening, even we working in the space, some of the jobs we want to work on, we don’t have the skill set, we don’t have enough people working on it.” Adebambo added.

A stop motion Animator and Creative Director at RadioxityMedia, Esther Gbadamosi, says animation can also be a way for the younger generation to express themselves.

“When we go out and we tell young people about animation, it’s to say look there is a path here. A lot of people have a story to tell. Animation is an expressive platform. Stop motion, 3D does not require that much. You just need to be able to put yourself together. Sometimes you may just need a PC and things like that which are things that our young people are getting and probably just using for social media.”

For trainees like Ronald Adeniyi, the autonomy of character creation is what sparked his interest.

“I am familiar with 2d, 3d, 3d max animation. Nothing fantastic about them, but for Stop animation you can actually create your own characters that is the most fascinating thing for me.”

For many of these animators, the dream is to see a Nigeria where there are many young creatives passionate about the art and producing films to great local and international acclaim.