Francophone comics by African digital natives

This article explores how African digital natives producing French-language comics generate expanding Afrotopias in their work and through their work by telling locally informed stories in innovative ways. It considers the manga-inspired digital comics of Atemkeng Azankang, the app-turned-digital-comic Narinto by Diabaté Nandy, and Reine Dibussi’s Afrofuturistic hardback bandes dessinées alongside each artist’s innovative approaches to self-publishing that prioritize community building. Through an analysis of their multivalent storytelling, this article argues that their work is best understood as what Achille Mbembe calls a ‘forming’ rather than a form and that their efforts constitute the cultivation and activation of inclusive Afrotopias.

This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence through the support of the Winthrop-King Institute: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .