Kugali Co-Founders Want to Inspire Africans with Disney-partnered series, ‘Iwájú.’

“We’re going to kick Disney’s ass in Africa,” Hamid Ibrahim giddily proclaimed in 2018 during a video interview feature with BBC. The ‘we’ he was referring to is Kugali, the animation studio he co-founded with two Nigerians, Olufikayo ‘Ziki’ Adeola and Tolu Olowofoyeku. Just over five years later, Kugali is set to make history as the first ever animation studio to partner with Disney Animation on a project.

Way before Ibrahim's bold comments, Kugali started as a way for three young African men to better appreciate the niche corner of African animation. In its infancy, Kugali was primarily a video podcasting space that served as a platform for animators and illustrators to share their stories, and let their equally niche audience in on their inspiration. From there, the seeds for an animation studio began to root itself in the minds of its co-founders, who saw the opportunity to elevate the voice of African animation storytellers, as well as theirs.

Kugali bootstrapped its way into becoming a fixture in the African animation scene, partly relying on generous donations from readers and other beneficiaries, in order to create striking comic books that center African identity, with a futuristic bent. The studio’s work reached Jennifer Lee, Chief Creative Officer at the Walt Disney Animation Studio, after watching the BBC feature.

At the time, Lee was looking to expanding the purview of Disney animation to be more global, and that inspired a collaboration proposal with Kugali. “I want us to not just tell stories of the world but by the people of the world,” she says in the documentary feature that will air a day before the premiere of the much-anticipated Disney x Kugali limited series, Iwájú.

​A Love Letter to Lagos

Premiering first Disney+ on February 28, the series will head to the continent via the Disney Channel, streaming on the DStv platform, this April and May. Iwájú is a distinctly Nigerian story told on Kugali’s distinct terms, with Disney Animation’s consistent, pace-setting nose for quality greatly assisting its execution. Over its six episodes, viewers are engaged by a story that mingles socioeconomic class relations, familial bonds, childlike curiosity and the scourge of kidnapping -- all themes that are treated with a very Nigerian edge that mirrors the Nigerian experience.

“Iwájú is a love letter to Lagos,” Adeola, Kugali co-founder and series director, says in the documentary feature on the series’ making. It’s the same sentiment he echoes when OkayAfrica talks to him via a Zoom Video, seated in the middle and flanked on either side by Olowofoyeku and Ibrahim. “Ultimately, Lagos was the core inspiration behind this and no stone was left unturned in terms of really making sure that it was authentic.”

Watching the series, it’s evident all through there was a hyper-fixation on authenticity, and the specificity pays off in the viewing experience. In Iwájú, there’s no moment away from the "Nigerian-ness" of the show’s setting, whether it’s something as regular as electricity outage or as specifically symbolic as a younger character seeking the permission of his parent before indulging in a treat provided by a host. Even the mainland-island divide is very true to life.

Kugali co-founder Olowofoyeku, who serves as the show’s cultural consultant, plays a huge role in making sure these cultural nuances are reflected in every inch of the show. In the doc about the show’s making, he recalls a scene that had been written to dampen the type of subservient Nigerian reverence between a rich employer and a poorer employee, in favor of a payoff at the series’ end. Olowofoyeku's insistence that the employee always calls his employer “Oga” subtly but profoundly affects the show’s writing, and it’s part of what makes the show coherently Nigerian.

“Obviously, because I’m the cultural consultant, I will bring a lot of information, Olowofoyeku tells OkayAfrica. "Many times it’s minutiae stuff. For example, I saw a wall socket one time and I was like, ‘That’s not what our sockets look like in Nigeria.’ That made sense because the artist would draw what makes sense to them, since they’ve been seeing sockets around them.”

The results in Iwájú reflect the idea that the partnership between Kugali and Disney was a truly mutual creative melding. That collaborative spirit at the center helped render the story on very vivid, enveloping terms. “I think the beautiful thing about animation is that it’s collaborative,” Adeola says. “You often hear the saying that it takes a village to raise a child and I think building an animated story is very similar, and because Lagos itself is an environment or a village, so to speak, I had a village of people to work with. I’ve lived in Lagos, Tolu’s lived all of his life in Lagos, our voice cast are all people who have lived in Lagos.”

“There were even times where I’ll have a recording session with one of the actors and they would say, ‘No, a Lagosian would say it this way.’ I think it’s that collaborative element of our process that really helped us bring the spirit of Lagos to life.”

​An Orchestra in Sync

Visually, Iwájú is as inch perfect as a well-cut diamond piece. Everything pops and pulls you in. There are properly-manicured, artfully-sculpted buildings on the side that represent the island, while the mainland is densely-packed with containers for homes. It’s sci-fi, futuristic-inclined without losing an ounce of Lagos essence. The black-stripped yellow vehicles are still a fixture, even though the tricycles are now hovering and flying. Even street hawkers are any and everywhere.

During his first visit to Lagos, Ibrahim, Kugali co-founder and production designer, was “counting the rhythm of the buildings” in the city while driving through traffic. “Every place you go, there’s a kind of flow to the architecture in the city and I was counting to catch the spirit of that as much as I could,” he says about the meticulousness of the animation designs on Iwájú.

Working with dozens of animators, on the Disney side and several across Africa, Ibrahim likened his role to being the “leader of an orchestra.” Being his first time operating as the lead on such a big project, he embraced the role and he says he thrived because he’d worked on several Hollywood projects at a lower position, which means he could communicate with his team of animators without any need for micro-managing.

“It’s not as difficult as you think if you understand the layers, ‘cause you trust the people and once you can trust them and there’s trust in the leadership, it makes it very easy in that you know everyone has the best intention to get the best result because we demand the best,” he adds.

​Inspiring Generations of African Animation Storytellers

For Adeola, Ibrahim and Olowofoyeku, Iwájú is a catalyst they hope will help other Nigerian and African animators to tell more great stories. “[With this project], what I really had to prove was to the world looking at the continent itself,” Ibrahim says. “The world always looks at Africa like we can’t do some things. You know the quote, ‘Anything that happens in the world, give it two years and it will happen in Africa.’ For this project, I wanted us to lead, and this project validated the fact that we can lead and we can do it in a high-class way.”

In the last few years, more animated stories are being commissioned and premiered by popular streaming platforms. Just last week, South African animation studio Triggerfish celebrated two Annie Award wins, proof that Africa has great animation stories to share with the world. Iwájú will be strengthening that narrative. “I hope Iwájú is a point of inspiration for artists all over the continent,” Olowofoyeku says.