Tejumola Olaniyan founded Africacartoons.com, the first continent-wide digital encyclopaedia of political cartoons by African artists. He talks to African Digital Art about the collection
Africa Digital Art, part of the Guardian Africa Network
Thu 19 Feb 2015 05.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 19 Oct 2022 15.29 BST
Mugabe steals the electionTayo Fatunla Nigeria “The primary motivation for starting the encyclopaedia was to stimulate more scholarly interest in African cartoons,” says Olaniyan. “I wanted to compose an encyclopaedia that is comprehensive in its continental coverage.”
Down with your Isms! GhanattaGhana“I developed an interest in clipping and collecting political cartoons from the newspapers during my secondary school years in Nigeria in the 1970s. Often, I bought the papers because of the cartoons ... Collecting is much easier now, thanks to the internet.”
The People’s Budget GhanattaGhana“Politics is the art of managing the way we organise ourselves in society, how we marshal and distribute resources and responsibilities. Politics, as such, will never cease to be a contentious business, and political cartoons are everyday in-the-moment commentaries on how we could still do better, all things considered.”
Mandarin Lessons JG CurtisSouth Africa“Political cartooning in many African countries has always had a significant influence on popular visual culture and the arts, and vice versa. “In some instances, many cartoonists started out as graphic artists for newspapers — designing advertisements and so on — before shifting to cartooning, and in fact before going to art school and getting any significant formal training in the arts.”
Candlelit Dinner Knowleh MushohweZimbabwe “The post-1990s explosion in political cartooning has also encouraged the growth of allied arts such as standup comics, and forms of street tourist art.”
Jacob Zuma Knowleh MushohweZimbabwe“There are many truly great cartoonists working across the board. We could name the most influential artists currently practicing as Zapiro in the south, Gadon the east, Ali Dilemin the north, and Tayo Fatunla in the west. Sorry, it’s a gentlemen’s club... Within each region or country, there are, of course, many influential cartoonists.”
UNITA’s New Look Lito SilvaAngola“Africacartoons.com is a contribution to forms of wider access for our cartoons, by providing a one-stop site where you can learn more about who is working where, see samples of their work, and see links to their personal websites, the papers they work for, and other useful information about them.”
Zimbabwe’s Cartoonists Tony NamateZimbabwe“There are now many opportunities for African cartoonists in the digital sphere. Many newspapers now also publish online. Anyone anywhere in the world with internet access could view their work.”
Courtship Victor Ndula Kenya“The cartoonists’ visual styles seem to be determined less by region than by the early influences on the cartoonists, and those influences are generally cross-regional.”
Race to Class Victor NdulaKenya “One interesting stylistic issue is the use of single versus multiple panels for political cartooning. It has historically been in single panels across the board in most of Africa’s newspapers. “Multi-panel political cartoons began to appear later, but it remains a minority practice in each of the regions.”
Abacha Tayo Fatunla Nigeria “The political cartoon is a most utopian art in the most heroic and selfless way. It never praises us, because it believes we can always do better, and it pokes fun at us for not aiming higher.”Tejumola Olaniyan is a professor of English and African cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His africacartoons.com is an online encyclopaedia for the promotion and study of African political cartooning. He is also currently writing a book on the history of the art form in Africa.
