F E At U r E
FA ST FORWA R D A F R IC A: By Lien Heidenreich-Seleme, Head of Cultural Prog rammes Sub-Saharan Afr ica, Goethe-Institut South Africa
L
eapfrogging” is a buzzword in Africa. It is being used in the context of technological development in African countries, and refers to skipping inferior, less efficient and more expensive stages of technology, and moving on directly to advanced ones. An example of “leapfrogging” would be how Africa skipped landline phone communication and moved on to mobile phone devices. On a continent where more than 50% of the population is under 25 years old, this is significant. It shows a growing potential in digital technologies and its various uses. In Kenya, for example, farmers are known to successfully use mobile phones in remote areas to do their banking. In view of this, the Goethe-Institut in Sub-Saharan Africa is making digitalization and gaming a focus area in the coming years. The Goethe-Institut South Africa has been working with the A MAZE. Interact Festival on Digital and Game Art in Johannesburg since its inception in 2012. Since 2014, A MAZE. / Johannesburg has been featured under the Fak’Ugesi Festival, run by the Digital Arts Faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand and supported by the City of Johannesburg, amongst others. There is a growing number of interesting game developers on the African continent, with South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria taking the lead. This year, we are proud to be able to support 15 game developers from 6 African countries to join the Gamescom Cologne 2015 as part of its visitor’s program to Germany. The idea is to reach out to a growing industry on the African continent to visit the world’s largest fair on gaming to give them the possibility to not only network with German and international gaming initiatives, but to also meet each other; such opportunities in Africa are rare and traveling on the continent is expensive. To further the exchange, some of the members of the visitor’s programme to Germany will also visit A MAZE. / Johannesburg 2015 under the Moving Africa Programme of the Goethe-Institut. We wish them all an exciting stay and look forward to hearing from their experiences!
Adebayo Adegbembo
adeBayo adegBemBo Genii Games uses gamification to teach kids about various African cultural subjects such as languages and folktales. It has a range of apps under its Asa (meaning “culture” in Yoruba) brand, which caters for the promotion and preservation of indigenous African Cultures using a combination of games, voice, text, sound and colorful graphics.
andrew kaggia Black Division Games seeks to establish itself as an authoritative game development company in Africa through developing high quality, culturally relevant and uniquely engaging products. Our first title, Nairobi-X, is Kenya’s first multiplatform 3D first person shooter experience. Now available on PC and Android platforms, NairobiX can be downloaded for free at and Google play. Making awesome games is our passion.
Our mission is to stimulate the interest of kids in African cultural subjects by providing them a fun way to learn about them. Our work is important as it helps address the declining interests and knowledge of African cultures among kids, especially Africans at home and the diaspora.
www.nairobi-x.com
www.geniigames.com
Lien Heidenreich-Seleme
Andrew Kaggia 22
ayodele arigBaBu I have a background in architecture, arts and digital media, which has afforded me a strong capacity for collaborative work cutting across design, film, digital media, publishing, for producing/curating arts-related events, and more recently, the development of digital applications. The pace at which fast-paced economic growth on the African continent is being matched by ICT growth and demand for media content by the continent’s rapidly urbanizing and youthful population is stunning. At Design And Dream Arts (DADA) Enterprises, our work is informed by the convergence of design and the arts in the creative industries, especially in the digital space. We employ digital tools in creating different creative content for different media and, given the growing adoption of interactive media, we are increasingly leveraging gamification and other interactive elements in our output, hence my interest in Gamescom. And oh, yes, I’m absolutely nuts about digital technologies. www.dadaenterprises.net