When Sema, a 10-year-old superhero living in Africa, needs to solve a problem, she doesn’t fly, shape-shift or walk through walls. Her superpower? Technovate! She uses her ingenuity and mastery of technology to save the world.
Super Sema, Africa’s first animated superhero series, started streaming on YouTube Originals last year. “It’s more than a superhero story,” says Vanessa Ford, executive producer of Super Sema and chief operating officer for Kukua, the company behind the series. “It’s a celebration of Black Girl Magic and Pan-African culture. We really want to portray Africa as powerful, aspirational, futuristic.”
Sema lives in Dunia, a fictional village that also happens to be home to an AI-powered villain. Science is at the heart of Sema’s heroics. The first season finds her harnessing the heat from decomposing trash to generate electricity and using her knowledge of biomimicry to thwart pollution.
At the same time, Super Sema is steeped in local culture. She often wears the Pan-African colours of red, green, gold and black, and gets help from her computer-whizz brother and her Maasai-shuka-clad grandfather. Mandazi – deep-fried doughnuts commonly sold by African street vendors – make frequent appearances.
Created by a women-led team, Super Sema is produced in Nairobi and features a largely African cast. The series has seen success from the start – it drew 14 million views after launch, and this January garnered an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Image Award nomination.
Like a lot of superheroes, Sema has an unlikely real-life origin story. She’s the brainchild of Lucrezia Bisignani, who is from Rome but travelled around Africa’s rural areas when she was growing up. “My parents wanted to share with us that we were part of this global family,” Bisignani says. “I grew up with a love of diversity and celebrating things that are different.”
To realise her dream of tackling illiteracy in Africa, Bisignani built educational apps that taught reading, writing and basic maths through games. Sema was a game character at that point (with the signature buns she wears in her hair), but she wasn’t yet the fully realised hero you see in the series. It would take a superstar team to make that happen.
Claudia Lloyd, a BAFTA–winning writer and producer who’s lived for more than a decade in Kenya, came on board. So did Ford, who had been an executive at the Weinstein Company in London and produced feature films. Lynne Southerland, the first Black woman to direct an animated feature film (Mulan II), signed on to helm the first season.
“The challenge with a five-minute episode is to find a strong visual and narrative shorthand that keeps the story moving while also allowing for the emotional nuance of the characters,” says Southerland. “Lucky for me, Sema is such an engaging character.”
It’s a celebration of Black Girl Magic and Pan-African culture.– Vanessa Ford, executive producer and Kukua COO
Ford used her Hollywood contacts to connect with Oscar–winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, who was raised in Kenya. “I made the call thinking, well, at the very least she will tweet about it, or maybe she can help us promote it,” Ford says. “When we had the first conversation it quickly flipped to, ‘I want to be involved.’”
Nyong’o voiced the spirit of Sema’s mother, Mama Dunia, for the first few episodes and is now an executive producer and shareholder of Kukua.
“She’s been an incredible source of inspiration and information,” Ford says. “She’s very hands-on to help inform the show, to help localise the experiences we’re talking about.”
Then there’s each episode’s science element – which may be taken to fanciful heights, but always remains grounded in reality, says Ford. That pizza-printer Sema builds? NASA has funded similar food-printing projects. In another episode, Sema builds a drone to replant a forest that the villain, Tobor, has cleared to construct a castle.
“In the Amazon they’re using drones to replant trees,” Ford says. “We wanted these things to be possible and real but also infused with imagination and fun.”
With a second season of Super Sema in production, this is just the beginning for the franchise. There’s accompanying Steam content, including Sema’s Vlogs, which guide kids through science experiments and projects they can do at home. Kukua recently announced a partnership with Just Play, a toy maker that works with powerhouse entertainment brands. Super Sema’s first season – currently available in English – is being dubbed into several languages, including Spanish, French, Yoruba and Indonesian.
In the end, Sema’s reach may be her greatest superpower. “If kids see through Sema that they can do great things, that’s really important to us,” says Ford. “That’s what positive role models inspire you to do.”