{"id":227850,"date":"2026-03-26T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T13:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:05:16","slug":"a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"a Nollywood movie that shows AI in action in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/makemation-a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa-277693\">a Nollywood movie that shows AI in action in Africa<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/makemation-a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa-277693\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/makemation-a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa-277693<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-26 12:27:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theconversation.com\">theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new feature film, Makemation, is an African coming-of-age story set in a time of artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n<p>Makemation was produced by Nigerian AI-developer-turned-filmmaker Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji. As conversations about AI are dominated by external global powers, his film offers a different vantage point: an AI story rooted in African realities.<\/p>\n<p>    <strong><br \/>\n      Read more:<br \/>\n      AI in Africa: 5 issues that must be tackled for digital equality<br \/>\n    <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After a successful run in Nigerian cinemas in 2025, it\u2019s now touring internationally and I attended a screening at the Harvard Center for African Studies. It was followed by a discussion with its producer and economist Ebehi Iyoha, who researches AI in Africa. The evening foregrounded precisely what the film so deftly dramatises: that the future of AI can also be imagined, contested and built on the African continent.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Makemation (2025) | Official Trailer\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZQMavvV2CsI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Makemation is about a young girl, Zara, who discovers AI as a tool not just for personal advancement, but for transforming her community. She must navigate poverty, gender expectations and limited access to science, technology, engineering and maths education. In the process, her journey becomes a powerful reflection on youth innovation, digital inclusion and the possibilities of homegrown technology in Africa.<\/p>\n<p>As a scholar of literature and cultural studies, I see Makemation as a vital intervention that challenges the dominance of western techno-narratives. It places AI within local histories of inequality, aspiration and improvisation. <\/p>\n<p>My work also examines popular media as cultural archives through which African futures are imagined and debated. Makemation expands the archive through which we study who gets to imagine and write African futures.<\/p>\n<h2>African tech futures<\/h2>\n<p>The title of the film is a blending of words that combines \u201cmake\u201d and the suffix \u201c\u2013mation\u201d to evoke ideas&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/makemation-a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa-277693\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>a Nollywood movie that shows AI in action in Africa https:\/\/theconversation.com\/makemation-a-nollywood-movie-that-shows-ai-in-action-in-africa-277693 Publish Date: 2026-03-26 12:27:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/725512\/original\/file-20260323-71-aoftcg.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C198%2C1770%2C885&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-227850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227852,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227850\/revisions\/227852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}