The world has seen many empires rise and fall, but what happens to their heritage when they do?
When an empire falls, its culture and traditions are often lost. However, there are still some organizations and individuals working hard to preserve African heritage so that we can learn from past mistakes and better protect our future.
The Legend of Alkebulan is part of the deliberate efforts made to preserve the African culture. It is an animated series, of ten seasons, telling a story of characters extracted from African mythology and African history.
The storyline is focused on a time when Africa ruled in terms of technology, advancements and thoughts.
The movie is a production by Tribe Temple, a future-tech company merging technology and arts, to retell African narratives. It depicts Alkebulan, an ancient continent of sixteen kingdoms ruled by four great African empires: Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern.
The inhabitants, known as the Tribe, are culturally rich, technologically advanced, and spiritually awakened. Legends among them transcend to the meta world as celestial beings, including Amadioha, Oku Oji, Takah, Sango, and Gleti, who protect the Tribe.
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However, the rulers of Alkebulan’s conglomerate betrayed the celestial beings, joining forces with legendary evil entities called the Other Ones in exchange for forbidden knowledge. This decision sets in motion a series of events that may lead to the downfall of Alkebulan.
Alkebulan is the original name for Africa according to the oldest Nubian and kinetic texts. It is the oldest name for Africa in history, and it means the Cradle of Mankind or the Garden of Eden.
The Alkebulan project was born out of the necessity to do something for Africa that hasn’t been done before,” Adoga Emmanuel, co-founder of Temple Tribe studio told the audience.
“In the Western world, historical preservation is often accomplished through storytelling, featuring characters like Zeus, Thor, Superman, and others. However, Africa’s rich heritage lacks sufficient documentation,” he said.
“This project aims to showcase Africa by highlighting African deities, culture, kings, and queens. Our goal is to bring Africa into the spotlight. The project emphasizes the diverse African cultures, including the Yoruba, Igbo tribe, and various tribes from the Benin Republic.”
Scott Eneje, the co-writer and director, Legends of Alkebulan said the project which took a year to produce was self funded at the tune of over $16,000.
“Legends of Alkebulan started off as an NFT based projects,” he said. “We sold the Genesis collection of our NFT, 101 pieces of that collection and we were able to raise about $16,000 from the sales and then the founders also funded the entire project.”
Scott also shared that he has been writing stories about African gods almost 12 years ago but this particular project was shaped by an encounter he had with his parents.
“I am an art collector with a pricey collection. Although my Christian parents appreciate the expensive and aesthetically pleasing pieces of Thor, and likes, they were surprised when I displayed a 3D-printed statue of Ekwensu, mistaking it for a deity.
“I clarified that I don’t worship it, but rather see it as a character to explore and share stories with my child. This incident inspired me to retell our histories and question why every historical character of ours has been demonized. I cherish these characters for their depth and desire to highlight their positive aspects,” he said.
“During the press conference preceding the premiere of the movie Legends of Alkebulan, Justice Eneje, the executive producer, expressed concern over the gradual erosion of African culture with each new generation.
“We all grew up on stories about our culture yet these stories about our heroes being lost to Western civilization, so there is no better time than now for us to tell the African story,” he said.
Notably, Eneje mentioned the release of a comic book alongside the movie, and also hinted at the development of a video game. The intention behind these multimedia adaptations is to revive the heroes within the African story, catering to the interests and sensibilities of the present generation by incorporating technology. The objective is to ensure the continuous rebirth of heroes for each successive generation.
“Tribe temple, apart from this animation, we are building an entire universe. There’s going to be video games based on the characters we are going to watch and as you would soon see, there’s also a lot of future tech all wrapped in one. So that pretty much covered the aspect of how we got the funding,” Justice said.
Giving feedback after the premiere, Bakare Mubarak, the tallest model in Sub-Saharan Africa, and co-founder, Expedition 54 limited Africanist, advised the team to have a hold on this portion of African history narrative to avoid capitalists and Angel investors white washing it such that it derails from the original ideology.
“This is a very fantastic project,” Bakare said. “First thing got my attention is the name Alkebulan, which is going to be an household name, and what that simply means is ‘mother of Mankind’, is the original name of Africa.”
