The Zebra Comics App And Website At The Bilili BD Festival

Within the impressive halls of Institut Francais, Brazzaville, Congo, lovers of comic books, animation, video games, film and cosplay from the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, France and different parts of the world converged to bring the 6th edition of the Bilili BD Festival to life. The Bilili BD festival is an annual cultural event that focuses on the promotion of comics, animation, video games, cosplay and any other thing that revolves around these sectors. The interesting thing is that the Bilili BD Festival is a platform that prioritizes the promotion of African creations, rendering them more visible and valuable in the eyes of Africans and people from the rest of the world. Celebrating its 6th edition, this festival continues to grow at a tremendous rate, attracting important actors of the 9th art from different parts of our planet. Most importantly, this year’s event was held under the theme, “Transmedia.” This is a very timely theme as we live in an era when the creation and distribution of comics through different media has seen no precedence. And this was clearly made palpable by the presence of Zebra Comics PLC at the event.

Zebra Comics PLC is a Cameroonian comic book publishing company based in Douala, Cameroon. As one of the international guests on this August occasion, Zebra Comics PLC, represented by the dynamic and energetic Mr Njoka Suyru, is a representation of what transmedia in the comic book domain means. In other words, Zebra Comics PLC is a comic book creation company that focuses on the creation and distribution of digital comics. This means that the company works heavily with digital tools to not only create comics but also to distribute them.

The importance of comics in education and entertainment cannot be overemphasized. The use of images in comics renders consumption and retention of information stronger and so makes it a powerful tool for the dissemination of knowledge. Add images that depict the African way of life to the equation and you have a veritable tool to promote African cultures, traditions and entertainment. Zebra comics made this evident at the Bilili BD Festival this year through an exposition of its original comic book IPs. Titles like Anaki, Njoku, Wrong Dial, Totem, Jemiro, Tumbu and Khadija were on display, portraying African storytelling through comics to visitors who admired the exposed boards. These stories treat topics like terrorism, witchcraft, female football, religion and history, and they are dished out in the most entertaining fashion. The icing on the cake is that all of these stories can be enjoyed by anyone anywhere in the world through the android application and website.

With the theme “Transmedia” hanging in the atmosphere of the festival grounds, Zebra Comics PLC, with their latest version tablets, displayed what comic book lovers stand to gain when they get into their digital ecosystem (app and website). Beyond just distributing comics digitally, Zebra Comics provides their comics and manga content in webtoon format, a format which is adapted to mobile phones and therefore makes the consumption of digital comics more convenient. Also, given that the platform is subscription based, users can have unlimited access to all of the content once they sign up. The idea, which is very clear by now, is definitely to provide an excess of high quality African content to fans everywhere in the world at a very affordable price. This, undoubtedly solves the issues plaguing the sector of comics on the continent.