Paris (AFP)
A woman who decides to fight against corruption every day: this is the positive story of "Dianké", a modern and feminine African tale, the first fiction podcast created in West Africa, and put online by RFI on June 1st before a very wide broadcast in FM.
The story is beautiful and positive: Dianké is an employee of a transport company, in an unidentified West African country, who, after being dismissed for refusing to grease the leg of a police officer , will decide to rebel in a peaceful way, by entering politics.
She will try to rally citizens to her cause, while facing opposition from a part of her family and society.
"Dianké shows the strength that a person can have, by having values and staying focused on his convictions," said AFP Senegalese singer and model Aida Sock, who plays the title role.
"She is not going to give up, but everything she does is not to take revenge or do harm, it is always with good intentions and a lot of respect, even if she makes decisions that can be hard or sometimes badly accepted, "she said.
If radio soap operas are common and successful throughout Africa, Dianké constitutes a first in the world of audio content, because it is the first fiction podcast produced in West Africa, in this case in Dakar, with the Senegalese NGO RAES.
To guarantee the authenticity of the subject and to ensure that the fiction corresponds well to the local reality, the members of the team and in particular the executive producer Romain Masson and the screenwriter Insa Salé carried out a field survey in several countries.
- Adaptations in several languages -
"We went to meet men and women to tell us about the situation of women today, about corruption, we notably visited NGOs, associations, activists, a whole bunch of people from civil society , to feed this story ", explains Romain Masson.
What give a wide echo to "Dianké", whose 12 episodes of 20 minutes were written giving a large place to narration, poetry (Dianké becoming in turn a lion, a baobab or the embodiment of the 'Africa, in the mouth of the narrator), and music signed Ka'B.
This allows the project to register, rather skillfully, in the great tradition of African stories.
A choice assumed by the scriptwriter Insa Sané, novelist and follower of slam. "The narration takes precedence over the dialogues, and that allows you to create this poetry there, and also to install the music," he explains.
A musical dimension which reinforces the universality of Dianké's words, because rather than drawing on African rhythms, it is inspired by Cuban music or French song.
"We especially did not want to tone on tone," says the screenwriter, who also took the side to tell the story by "a modern storyteller, a poet-slameur".
The project is large-scale because adaptations of Dianké in African languages are planned: in addition to French, the podcast has already been recorded in Wolof in Dakar, and, probably next year, versions should be created in Mali, in Niger or Burkina Faso, in Bambara, Hausa, and Fulfulde, according to Romain Masson.
And the operation will take on an additional dimension this summer because, in addition to its podcast broadcasting, "Dianké" will be broadcast from the end of June on the RFI antenna, and may also be picked up by its 500 partner radios in Africa .
For Alexandre Plank, co-director of "Dianké" with the Senegalese Tidiane Thiang, this double broadcast should give a large echo to the fiction, because the radio is widely heard throughout Africa.
On this continent "radio is part of the culture of people, I came across markets on Sunday mornings where people listen to the radio, stories or stories". And "maybe some will plug their phone into a speaker", to listen to "Dianké" with others, he says, while elsewhere in the world, podcasts are eaten mostly solo.
© 2020 AFP