Kunda Kids launches Afro-music-led series, Kunda and Friends

Kunda Kids have taken a huge step towards redefining African children’s entertainment by hosting an official launch of an African based cartoon titled “Kunda and Friends.” The series centers on African characters, and seeks to revolutionise kids’ entertainment by redefining some traditionally Western misconceptions on African culture, with stunning animation and fascinating plot development.

According to the Co-Founder and CEO of Kunda Kids, the makers of Kunda and Friends, Oladele Olafuyi, the inspiration behind the animated series came from looking inward, and from the fervent desire to change the children’s learning and entertainment space.

“When I became a parent, I realised that when it came to programmes available to African children, the quality wasn’t at a world class level. My wife and I sat down and we decided to build a company that will transform children’s learning and entertainment, and we started Kunda Kids. That’s why we started by publishing books, making music and animations, the Kunda Kids app and a lot of exciting things that we are doing,” he said.

Co-founder of Kunda Kids, Louisa Olafuyi, revealed that Kunda and Friends sought to challenge some widely held stereotypes about Africans and African culture through unique character development.

“What we wanted to do is have characters from a lot of African places. I am Ugandan, my husband is Nigerian. It’s produced in Uganda, so everything that we do is from Africa. Sometimes, when people want to portray African characters, they want us to be dancing, they want us to be entertaining, but we wanted our characters to be intellectual.”

In her remarks, Marketing Manager for Kunda Kids, Belinda Nkechi Idimachi, stated that it was important for African children to visualise themselves in positive ways through the audiovisual content they were exposed to, and Kunda Kids has focused on addressing this need for premium Afrocentric children’s content.

“Kunda and Friends is Afro-music based. We are all about improving the representation of African children in media and educational resources. The goal is to ensure that every African child sees themselves in the stories they read, the animations they watch. That’s what we do differently from other children’s shows.” she said.

The Director, Kunda and Friends, Raymond Malinda, said that a lot of work had been put into developing the series, which targeted a unique audience, with a focus on raising a new generation of African children beaming with pride in their African roots.

“Target audience is actually preschoolers. We want the younger generation of African kids, and kids in Nigeria, to grow up seeing themselves and learning about themselves through characters that look like them. It’s been challenging developing this series, but we have gone through a lot of pipelines, developments, figuring out how we could make something like this sustainable for the African continent, so we can make even larger projects” he stated.

Art Director for Kunda Kids, Chike Obasi, believes that the release of Kunda and Friends was a huge step towards raising children who would become mainstays in the global community: “We’re trying to bridge that gap and make our stories heard round the world. That’s why we have Kunda Kids. We’re trying to raise global citizens.”