The field of digital intermediaries in the African context is poorly defined and most intermediaries are not aware that the work they do can be defined as that of an intermediary. Practitioners operating in the CCIs will identify themselves as producers, curators, distributor, aggregators, or any other support role for creatives. Digital intermediaries are those who operate in support roles for digital creatives and their products. The focus on this training programme, which was in partnership with Wits Digital Arts department, was on curation and distribution of African digital products with a clear link to the value chains of animation, gaming and AR/VR.
The animation industry in South Africa has a need to constantly innovate on its pipelines to stay competitive and to reduce the high costs of producing animation products. Thus, the Animation Production Pipeline focused on training women graduates in innovating within an animation production pipeline. Key technical skills taught to participants focused on being able to adequately use software programmes such as Blender, Mocap and Gaming Engine. These technical skills were trained alongside production management as well as soft skills. This training programme was produced in partnership with Animation South Africa.
Given the multiple crises that the world is enduring and many others that may follow, the Future-Proof Monetisation programme provided training on leveraging technology in monetising small creative businesses and building resilient business models. Creative entrepreneurs were trained on how to take advantage of suitable technology to expand and future-proof their business monetisation. This could be from simply having an online presence, digital payment solutions to leveraging more advanced Web 3.0 applications, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and blockchain technology.
The programme included a coaching and mentorship aspect where coaches worked with entrepreneurs to find specific tech solutions to their business monetisation challenges and offered support in integrating these solutions into their creative businesses. Each training cohort of a maximum of 20 women typically ran for 8 weeks including coaching. This programme was implemented in partnership with the South African Creative Industries Incubator (SACII).
Drone Divas was a drone training and internship programme for young township-based women between the ages of 18 and 35. They were trained in drone operation, coding, drone cinematography and entrepreneurship. This was followed by a three-month paid internship programme for at least 10 of the women in creative drone companies. Being a women-only training programme, Drone Divas contributed to women’s participation in the emerging, tech-heavy, and male dominated industry while addressing income generation through support for entrepreneurship and employment. Two cohorts were implemented in Gauteng in 2021 and 2022 and two more cohorts were implemented in the Noerthern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal provinces in 2023 in partnership with Africa Beyond 4IR (AB4IR).