Animation for Development in a Terrorized Space: Co-creating Animated Stories with Internally Displaced Girls in Northeast Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examines the ways within which animation can be used for the purpose of development. The paper examines the issues and opportunities in per/forming folklore through the use of traditional animation techniques. In the paper, we argue against the canonical conceptualizations of animation on the premise that existing canonical definitions and concepts do not have functional value for many traditional African societies. In this study, we coined and idealize ‘Animation for Development’ as a sub-genre of Animation Theatre that uses traditional animation to facilitate developmental change in local communities faced with terrorism and banditry. We draw from our experience in designing Rayuwa (‘This Life’), a Hausa animation-folklore intended for the Digital Lab Africa Project, to claim that traditional animation offers a repository from whence community people can find voice or agency to vocalize their developmental challenges. In doing this, we identified the issues in designing ‘animation for development’ as well as the opportunities in folklorizing digital content for animation. We use Media Convergence as a theoretical moor to assess the possibilities in locating indigenous oral media a la folkloric-animation contents in web 2.0 and projecting such contents through the divergent has to offer. Our paper found out that the new media technologies offer possibilities within which folkloric-animation can be used to engage communities as well as stakeholders for meaningful participatory development. We submit that new media technologies is positively modifying the manners and ways folklore has always been conceived, and not reducing its potency as assumed by many conservatives.