We are excited to announce the 3rd Annual Africa’s Ultimate Storyteller Contest has begun. And application to enter the contest will remain open until 25 June 2021.
Last year the global pandemic sent all of us scuttling indoors. This pandemic disrupted lives, canceled events, and threatened our beloved annual contest.
Our team decided to use this opportunity to bring the contest online and open it up to the continent. Unsurprisingly we were completely unprepared for what that meant. Servers crashed, Finances ran dry and workload shot up 30 times. We were left elated to have crowned our first Africa-wide champion but completely exhausted by the effort.
We had to deliberate hard as a team when it came time to decide whether we will continue running the contest online and Africa-wide. In the end, we decided that this contest matters and that it is important that we continue our efforts to nurture and grow the contest.
why this contest matters
As a team, we realised that when the story of Africa is not told by Africans, it leads to an overall negative narrative that creates a negative self-image amongst Africans about their continent. Yes, negative incidences exist, however they are not the defining feature of an African existence.
This contest encourages Africans to take the lead in telling the African story in a balanced way that encourages a positive self-image. We decided that as a team our role through this contest was to reward those that share their African existence in a way that educates or inspires.
To facilitate this we have made several improvements to contest.
what will be different this year
- This year the contest will take a three-stage approach.
For STAGE ONE we have limited the contest at the country level. This means that public voting will promote one representative per participating country into the semi-finals. This was a deliberate decision on our part to prevent over-representation from South Africa as the hosting country, give an opportunity for representation from smaller African countries. It also has the benefit of planting the seeds for rigorous regional competition in the future. - We have created multiple award categories with more winners
Apart from the main category of “Africa’s Ultimate Storyteller” we have created additional awards like “Most Inspiring Story“, “Most Positive Story“, “Best Culturally Dressed Storyteller“, “Best Storytelling Technique“. These awards allow us to reward more contestants than ever before and potentially offer opportunities for like-minded brands to sponsor a category that speaks to their brand values, thus increasing funding and the value of the winner’s prizes. - We partnered widely with like-minded organisations
This year, we approached and invited partnerships with poetry, literature, art, and storytelling organisation across Africa. This will amplify the contest’s reach
Lastly, we spent some time upgrading the contest, our architecture, and websites to better handle the larger volume of participants that we expect this year. With all these changes we look forward to an exciting 2021 contest season and would appreciate your support whether as a participant, a distribution partner, or a sponsor. Every little bit helps.
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Hello. Thank you for this new edition. I only beg you to form the sincere jurry as last year, otherwise it is a good opportunity and a good opportunity to praise our Africa. Please also let us know the criteria for the submission The languages allowed, the format and the minutes for the video to be sent, if not really it’s great that there will also be different categories to promote
We would love to expand the contest to include all languages spoken on the continent, unfortunately, this will require an army of translators that we do not yet have.
For this year, we have restricted the contest to English. We plan to open up to French and Swahili next year and grow languages from there.
We will start running a campaign to acquire translators after this year’s contest is complete.