New panel to drive Kenya's local content to digital channels

Kenya has started an ambitious journey for a slice of the lucrative creative industry, expected to see an explosion in local content as the country retires analogue for digital channels.

To drive this agenda, the government on Monday, through the Ministry of Information and Communications, formed a taskforce to look at how the country can leverage on local talent to spur the growth of visual effects and the marriage of information technology, animation, film and music.

Information Permanent secretary Dr Bitange Ndemo said as the world slowly moves towards knowledge-based economy, there is need for Kenya to prepare.

The members of the taskforce include Alex Gakuru, the chairman of the Kenya ICT Consumers Association and Michael Onyango — an animator, among others. Part of their mandate is to create a platform for addressing the sector’s bottlenecks and look at areas where Kenya can quickly move in and leapfrog others.

Dr Ndemo told a meeting attended by animators, movie makers, graphic designers, sketch artists, gamers and musicians that the country has already built infrastructure and put the regulatory regime in shape, however what is needed is local content.

“We have a lot of opportunities in content and applications — film, animation, software, games and ebooks,” Dr Ndemo said, adding that he has been receiving many Indian investors who want to set up e-learning centres, an area that Kenyans can exploit, instead of foreigners.

Exposure

He said that from next month, the government may start to implement the rule that requires broadcasters to have 40 per cent local programming, once two cases in court challenging this are finalised.

A Kenyan, Ms Yvonne Muinde, one of the creators of the epic science fiction movie Avatar which is the highest grossing film in history gave a talk on ways the country can move and reap from this space.

Ms Muinde said local players in visual effects need exposure and production opportunities to grow the industry.

“We need the skill level of those doing the work to improve and build confidence in our ability as a people to create works that rival those made in other countries around the world,” she said, adding that there is need to move beyond animations, since there are many genres in the visual effects that can be exploited.

Ms Muinde, 34, painted the backgrounds for the award-winning movie and has also featured in other box office animated productions such as King Kong and The Fantastic Four.

The 2009 3D movie, which was written and directed by James Cameron, broke several box office records and raked in Sh160 billion ($2billion) surpassing Titanic, which had held the records for the previous 12 years.

There has been an attempt in Kenya to train interested parties in two or three-dimensional (2D or 3D) digital animation concepts, artists and graphic designers as seen by the establishment of several Art and Design schools in the country.

Such efforts to nurture the industry and develop local content have seen the production of Tinga Tinga Tales which is an animation series of African folk tales. Tinga Tinga is a co-production between Homeboyz and UK’s Tiger Aspect Productions.

The growing use of animation and moving pictures of drawn-up images or caricatures has led to opening up of colleges to train animators. Nairobi Institute of Technology and Shang Tao are among the new entrants. While the profession is slowly growing, it is a big business in other parts of the world.