Kugali Media’s and Disney’s “Iwaju” is a Love Letter to Lagos

Two teens begin a friendship made unlikely by their different socioeconomic stations—one lives in the plush Lagos Island, the other in the less glamorous Lagos Mainland. Touring the city’s scruffy parts, the duo encounter a myriad dangers, from which they emerge with new knowledge about themselves and their city. These are the protagonists of Iwaju, an animated series which playfully takes on class conflict, technological invention, and friendship. The miniseries was created by Kugali Media in partnership with Walt Disney Animation Studio, the American company’s first collaboration with an external animation studio.

Given a mild antagonism preceded it, the partnership between both companies was just as unlikely as that between the show’s two youngsters. In a 2018 BBC interview, Hamid Ibrahim, Kugali’s CEO and Iwaju’s production designer, declared that Kugali would “kick Disney’s ass in Africa.” The Ugandan’s vaunt was not without basis: at the time, Kugali Media was emerging as one of the continent’s standard-bearers of comic book culture, launching a comics-related podcast series in 2015, and, using money crowdfunded on Kickstarter, producing a successful comics anthology. Still, Ibrahim’s claim was out of pocket—here was a start-up challenging a global company which had plied the trade for nearly a hundred years. Founded in 1923, Disney Animation is the world’s oldest-running animation studio, and has produced some of the most popular and successful animated films ever, a choice list including The Lion King, Toy Story, The Jungle Book, Frozen II, and Pinocchio, to name just a few.

Disney saw in Ibrahim’s claim not antagonism but an opportunity for collaboration. Joining forces, the two companies decided to make a distinctly Nigerian animation series, their end goal as political as it was artistic. The world’s most popular animated films showcase well-defined Western landscapes, whether it’s Pinocchio’s Tuscany or Ratatouille’s Paris. Whenever African landscapes have appeared in such globally renowned animations, they tend to lack cultural specificity, a prominent example being the fictional Pride Lands in The Lion King. For Kugali and Disney, Iwaju offered a chance to place new generations across the world on a fresh visual diet, to reimagine a real African city, with all its concrete details. “It’s a love letter to Lagos,” Hamid told me on Tuesday, on an open-air balcony, at Lagos Continental Hotel, our conversation a part of a press junket preceding the series’ premiere. Olufikayo Ziki Adeola and Toluwalakin Olowofoyekun, Kugali Media’s Nigerian co-founders, were seated a few paces away.

On Wednesday, the show’s six episodes premiered on Disney+, the home to films and series produced by such outfits as Disney, Pixar, and National Geographic. The problem, however, is that the streaming service is inaccessible in Nigeria and most African countries. Knowing this, why then did Kugali Media choose to showcase its ware there? “The opportunity was too good to pass up on,” Adeola told me. Not only did he direct the series, he co-wrote its screenplay with Halima Hudson (she voiced a character in Frozen II). “I would rather make the series with the distribution problem than not to do it at all, because it’s still going to reach people and make an impact,” said Adeola. 

People without access to Disney+ can watch the show on the Disney Channel (Channel 303) on DStv, when it screens on the platform this April and May. 

Iwaju (a Yoruba word meaning ‘the future’) is set in a futuristic Lagos that looks both alien and familiar: there are flying saucers and all kinds of high tech; but also the airborne public buses are painted in black and yellow, and power outages sometimes plunge the city into darkness, features harkening back to present-day Lagos. Why does Iwaju cast its gaze forward and not on Lagos as it presently is? “Two reasons,” Adeola told me. “One, animated shows are meant to be an opportunity for people to engage the imagination; that’s why such shows have fantastical elements like talking animals. Otherwise, it could just be live action. The second reason is that I find the Island-Mainland divide interesting—that’s the kind of setting that many sci-fi authors imagine, but in Lagos it’s real. I thought it would be interesting to imagine what a future with this kind of setting looks like.”

Reading the screenplay, Olowofoyekun—the show’s creative consultant—concluded that a certain character would be best voiced by the Nigerian actor Ireti Doyle. Unbeknown to him, Adeola had drawn the same conclusion, showing how artistically interlinked both men are. They had first met as students at Whitesands School, a posh, private high school in Lagos Island (the kind of school that Tola, the wealthier of the two teens, would attend). Other cast members include Simisola Gbadamosi and Siji Soetan, both playing the teens; Shaffy Bello, Kehinde Bankole, Bisola Aiyeola, Femi Branch, and Chioma ‘Chigul’ Omeruah.

Iwaju, said Adeola, is a lone Domino piece in a long queue of events that will establish the ubiquity of African animated movies. “This is a long journey, and the first animation won’t completely change the paradigm,” said Adeola. “Still, this project will catch some eyeballs and attract more investments. In about ten years from now, we want to see that African animation has gained solid ground.”