A world where African children can learn, imagine, laugh and see themselves at the centre of the story.
Achebe Kids World™ is a children’s storytelling and learning universe bringing together animated stories, songs, activities and educational adventures for curious young minds.
African children should not always have to travel somewhere else to find themselves in a story.
Children should see:
Black children as explorers.
African girls as inventors.
African boys as gentle, curious thinkers.
Families.
Grandparents.
Modern African cities.
Villages.
Scientists.
Artists.
Entrepreneurs.
Teachers.
Adventurers.
Kings and queens, where it is culturally true.
Ordinary children doing extraordinary things.
And ordinary children simply being children.
Africa isn’t the backdrop. Sometimes it is the whole world.
Marie Achebe
Artwork for the world’s characters and places is being created now.
Folktales reimagined
Stories travel when somebody keeps telling them.
Africa has centuries of stories carried through families, communities and oral tradition.
ACHEBE KIDS WORLD can respectfully introduce new generations to folktales, moral stories, proverbs and cultural imagination through contemporary animation and storytelling.
Where a story comes from, we say where it comes from.
Nigeria is not Ghana. Igbo is not Yoruba. Yoruba is not Zulu. Africa is not one culture.
Marie Achebe
Each story carries:
01
Origin
Where the story comes from, named.
02
People & Culture
Whose story it is, and what it belongs to.
03
Story
Told for a child, without flattening it.
04
Words to Discover
The words a child takes away with the story.
05
What We Can Talk About Afterwards
The conversation the story leaves open for a parent and a child.
Meet the family
Characters children can grow up with.
A small number of original recurring characters, rather than dozens at the beginning. Each one carries:
A name.
An age.
A personality.
A strength.
A weakness.
An interest.
A family.
A home.
A dream.
A signature visual identity.
“I want to watch…”
Marie Achebe
That sentence is the whole ambition. A child asking for a name is a child who wants to go back.
Curious children learn differently
Don’t just give them the answer. Make them want to ask another question.
Curiosity
Why?
Language
What does that mean?
Numeracy
How many?
Creativity
What could I make?
Culture
Where does this come from?
Emotional Intelligence
How might they feel?
Problem-Solving
What could we try?
Confidence
Can I have a go?
The goal is not to turn every childhood moment into a lesson. Sometimes play is the lesson.
Watch it. Then do it.
Learning shouldn’t stop when the video ends.
Every strong story can have a companion activity:
Colouring sheet.
Word search.
Counting activity.
Draw the character.
Story questions.
Parent conversation card.
Craft activity.
Matching game.
Trace the word.
Printable poster.
Grown-ups, this part is for you
Children may choose the character. Parents choose what they trust.
Everything a parent is entitled to know before a child watches anything, stated plainly:
What the child is watching.The story, the characters and the theme, described before it plays.
An approximate age range.Guidance, not a gate — a parent knows their own child.
What they may learn or explore.Named up front, so nothing is a surprise afterwards.
How long it runs.A length a family can actually plan around.
Whether there are advertisements.Stated either way, because either answer is a parent's business.
Whether there are purchases.Nothing bought without an adult deciding to buy it.
How personal information is handled.A child's information is not a marketing asset.
How to reach the team.A real address that a real person reads.
The principles behind what is chosen.Why one story is in the world and another is not.
Nothing here will claim that a story will make a child cleverer. A parent can tell when a claim is being made up, and a page that makes one has already lost them.
Built with families
Parents should have a voice in the world their children enter.
I intend to establish a genuine parent feedback panel, and to publish what it says rather than what would read best.
The panel is asked about:
Stories.
Characters.
Episode length.
Activities.
Language.
Usability.
What their children enjoyed.
The useful kind of feedback is specific. “She asked to watch the story again and wanted to colour the character afterwards” tells a producer something. Nothing on this page will ever be written in the shape of “this made my child a genius”, because a parent reading it does not believe it either.
Our toughest critics
What did the children think?
Children are asked the shortest questions there are:
I liked…
My favourite character was…
I learned…
I want to know…
What happens next?
Nothing a child says appears anywhere until a parent has agreed to it in writing, and until it is certain that publishing it cannot identify the child. Privacy and safeguarding come before marketing, every time.
How a story becomes a world
Before the character moves, somebody has to imagine it.
01
Idea
02
Research
03
Story
04
Character Sketch
05
Storyboard
06
Voice
07
Animation
08
Music & Sound
09
Review
10
Screen
The world is a classroom
Come and see something new.
Short, presenter-led episodes that answer a real question:
How does a plane fly?
Where does chocolate come from?
What does a doctor do?
Why does it rain?
How does a camera work?
What happens inside a hotel?
How are clothes made?
“What happens inside a hotel?” can be filmed through Marlex. “How is a dress made?” can be filmed inside House of Zalex. This is where the ventures stop sitting beside each other on a page and start teaching with one another.
Entrepreneurial curiosity
Children don’t need business jargon. They need permission to create.
Age-appropriate ideas about:
Making something.
Solving a problem.
Helping someone.
Saving.
Sharing.
Creating.
Selling at a school fair.
Teamwork.
Ideas.
Confidence.
Not “raise a CEO”. Not “make your five-year-old rich”. Just healthy curiosity about how an idea becomes a thing.
Read · Listen · Imagine
Every child deserves a library bigger than their room.
Digital books.
Read-alongs.
Audio stories.
Printable books.
Original stories.
Cultural stories.
Bedtime stories.
Early readers.
And, in time, physical books.
Parents can browse by:
Age.
Topic.
Length.
Read, watch or listen.
Sing it again
Sometimes children remember the song before the lesson.
The world is being built around original music, written for it:
Counting.
The alphabet.
Movement.
Languages.
Bedtime.
Cultural rhythms.
Confidence.
Kindness.
Clean-up songs, and morning routines.
I would rather write a child a song of their own than hand them a copy of somebody else’s.
Marie Achebe
Take the world home
From the screen into their hands.
Once the characters are real to a child, everything they carry means something:
Storybooks.
Plush characters.
Colouring books.
Activity books.
Pyjamas.
Backpacks.
Lunch boxes.
Water bottles.
Puzzles.
Flashcards.
Posters.
Educational games.
T-shirts.
Bedding.
Character dolls.
The order matters. Characters children love first, and merchandise afterwards — never the other way round, because a bag with a face on it that a child has never met is just a bag.
Discover Africa
54 countries. Millions of stories.
An interactive, child-friendly map, where a country opens into what lives inside it. Each one will be researched properly and checked for cultural accuracy before it is published:
Nigeria
Stories · people · language · food · music · places.
Ghana
Stories · people · language · food · music · places.
Kenya
Stories · people · language · food · music · places.
And every other country on the continent, in time. A map that shows a child the size of where they come from is worth more than a paragraph telling them it is big.
Why this one is personal
Some businesses begin with a market. This one began with a child.
ACHEBE KIDS WORLD grew from watching my own young son learn.
His curiosity made me think differently about education. About imagination. About what children absorb. About the worlds we place in front of them. And about the responsibility adults have when we create for children.
I am building many things. But this one asks me a particularly important question: what are we putting into the minds of the people who will inherit everything we are building?
That question is bigger than entertainment.
Lolo Marie AchebeFounder
One family of ventures
Kids World doesn’t stand on its own. It draws on all of it.
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