WRITING IN THE CHILDREN'S BOOK: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICAN ANIMATION STORIES THROUGH DISNEY'S IWAJU AND NETFLIX'S SUPA TEAM 4

Image source: 

https://superprod.net/en/our-projects/supa-team-4

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13623772/

Africa Animates Itself

In the last decade, African animation has been steadily stepping into its own light, no longer waiting for a global nod of approval. 

Platforms like Netflix and Disney+, in collaboration with African studios, are beginning to spotlight stories that emerge from the continent itself, unapologetically African in texture, language, and vision.

However, they are two projects stand out as turning points, which include, Zambia’s Supa Team 4 and Nigeria’s Iwájú. 

What truly captures the eye about these animated series, that are not only entertaining, but are also educational, visionary, and radical in how they write African children as characters. They tap into the authentic nuances of African life, and move a step closer, into helping audiences let African stand on it's own in the animation world, apart from being another mainstream show that drowns in the mass of continuous regular shows or series of kids animation or family entertainment in animation.

No longer passive receivers of Western heroism, these children are themselves heroes, inventors, rebels, and visionaries.

This blog post explores how these two series craft their characters to reflect and reimagine Africa, through the lenses of gender, class, education, innovation, and cultural identity. These are not just cartoons. They are blueprints for the kind of Africa today’s children are being invited to imagine.

Supa Team 4: Writing Young African Girls as the Future

Centering the African Girl: Loud, Brave, and Human

In a media landscape where African girls have often been marginalized or stereotyped, Supa Team 4 breaks ground. The show follows four teenage girls in the neo-futuristic city of Lusaka who double as high school students and crime-fighting superheroes. But more than just giving girls screen time, the series gives them depth.

Apart from other shows like Powerpuff Girls, DC Superhero girls, Totally Spies, K-Pop Demon Hunters and many other shows that center around young African girls, showing strong movement for the female voice in animation, Supa Team 4, offers a unique African perspective, with it's own fresh look at young African girls taking stage. This is a good step, as nuances from the African cultural background, offer fresh looks at the representation of the voice of young African girls and also young girls in the animation world.

Each of the girls, Zee, Komana, Temwe, and Monde, each bring a distinct personality to the team. One is highly intelligent and tactical, another fiercely athletic, one is grounded and shy, while another is fashion-forward and socially ambitious. These are not cookie-cutter “strong Black girls.” They are vulnerable, messy, growing and most importantly, real.

This nuanced representation helps African girls see themselves as complex beings, not one-dimensional symbols of virtue or struggle. They are agents of their own destinies, and that agency is embedded directly into how they are written.

The Classroom as a Story Space

The setting of school is not incidental,  it’s central. Unlike many Western superhero narratives where school is a side backdrop, Supa Team 4 uses the African schooling system as an ideological battlefield. The teachers are strict, the academic expectations high, and the social dynamics familiar to anyone who’s passed through an African classroom.

By placing the characters in this environment, the show addresses how African children often navigate immense pressure, from education systems, from family expectations, from socio-economic limitations. It also reveals how discipline and excellence are celebrated, but also questioned.

Thus, school becomes a metaphor, in that, it is a place of potential, but also a place that needs transformation.

Futurism Without Erasure

The Lusaka of Supa Team 4 is stylized, vibrant, and high-tech. But crucially, it’s still Lusaka. The show resists the temptation of a shiny, de-Africanized future. Instead, it embraces the messiness and beauty of African urban life, blending informal markets with tech-enhanced gadgets, local dialects with AI systems.

This Afro-futurist setting does more than look cool, it positions African cities as places where the future is being built, not waited for. It’s not Wakanda with Western polish, it’s Africa on its own terms.

Iwájú: Class, Innovation, and the Story of Two sides of Lagos

Class is Not an Abstraction, It’s a Character

Iwájú, set in a futuristic Lagos, takes a bold narrative route by placing class disparity at the heart of its story. The protagonist, Tola, is from a wealthy, hyper-surveilled gated island, while her friend Kole lives on the mainland, a place of hustle, ingenuity, and scarcity.

This physical separation of space becomes a direct storytelling tool, in that, Lagos is not just a setting, but it’s a character divided by privilege.

In writing Tola and Kole, the show doesn’t fall into savior tropes or pity narratives. Instead, it presents them as equals, both navigating challenges, both learning from each other. It shows young viewers that wealth does not equate to wisdom, and poverty does not equate to lack of brilliance.

Young Black Genius as Reality, Not Fantasy

Kole is perhaps one of the most important characters in African children’s media. He’s a boy from the lower-class mainland, but he’s also a self-taught inventor, building tech that rivals the city’s corporate elite. This is a radical narrative choice.

In many global stories, innovation is associated with Silicon Valley aesthetics, clean labs, high budgets, formal education. In contrast, Kole’s brilliance comes from necessity, resilience, and raw talent. He represents a paradigm shift, in which, African kids are not just consumers of global tech, they are creators of it. Most importantly, it shows, the side, of the resourcefulness and innovation, that blooms in areas we didn't expect it but also the growth path, in Africa for a majority of kids in the continent.

This is not wishful storytelling. It reflects the very real innovation happening across the continent, from Nairobi’s tech hubs to Makoko’s floating schools.

Wealth, Empathy, and the Growth Arc

Tola’s arc is equally compelling. She begins in privilege but learns to question it. Her journey is not one of charity, but of awakening, recognizing her role in systems of inequality and learning how to dismantle them.

This angle towards expressing the voice of the wealthy, offers a voice that calls on being able to look down, while facing forward, and showing the element, that calls kids not to be consumed by wealth around them despite their naivety in life.

Through her, Iwájú teaches that empathy is not guilt. It’s action, understanding, and transformation.

What Kind of Character Does African Animation Want to Create?

In both Supa Team 4 and Iwájú, we see the formation of a new archetype, the empowered African child, written not for a Western gaze but for the African psyche. These characters are:

• Inquisitive, not passive
• Rooted, not displaced
• Empowered, not waiting for help
• Flawed, not perfect symbols

But beyond their traits, what matters is how these shows locate their characters in very African contexts, such as strict and somewhat unfinished schools, markets with shops selling local fruits in basic building material, class struggles while facing teachers strong in the community beliefs and tech revolutions that celebrate Africa's diverse natural resources. These aren’t just kids in African clothes, they’re kids of Africa, with its complexities and contradictions fully intact.

This is perhaps the most important evolution in African animation writing, which is, the move from representation to authentic character formation. Children watching these shows aren’t just seeing a version of themselves on screen, they’re seeing what they could be, in a proper context of Africa.

Conclusion: Writing Africa Forward

Character writing in African animation is no longer just about inclusion. It’s about bringing out the authentic nuances of Africa, and embracing them to the extent to feel human and elevate the African culture. 

Who do we allow African children to be in the stories we tell? Victims or visionaries? Background figures or central heroes?

Supa Team 4 and Iwájú suggest an answer, not by telling children what to think, but by showing them worlds where they lead, build, question, and grow.

As African animation continues to rise, the characters it writes will shape not just narratives, but futures.

That is the real power of storytelling. What are some of the characters you wish African animation studios could write for African kids animation? Let us know in the comments.