Portrait
Dakar Games Festival: meeting with Yambaye Marième Seck, creator of board games
Audio 01:20
Marième Seck presents the board game she created, Waalo, at the Dakar Games Festival, in December 2022. © Juliette Dubois
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Board game designers and enthusiasts are in the spotlight this weekend in Dakar with the first edition of the
Dakar Games Festival
.
If the sector is trendy, distribution is still difficult on the continent.
Meeting with Yambaye Marième Seck, Senegalese game designer.
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With our correspondent in Dakar,
Juliette Dubois
Around a table, players exchange cards and colored pawns.
They play Waalo, a board game developed by Yambaye Marième Seck.
It has 15th century Senegal as its backdrop.
“
There are six characters in the game
, explains the designer.
They are kings, queens, a ship captain and also a liberator.
Each has a completely different mission from the other.
The mission is always to seek from others something that they have and that we didn't have at the beginning
”.
Waalo is a competitive game which also develops
an educational aim
.
Marième Seck presented it in CM2 classes.
“
In the Senegalese program, in CM2, we learn a lot about the kings, the queens of Senegal,
she explains.
It's a way of (making more concrete) that period.
".
Distribution difficult
Marième does not live from the creation of games, she is responsible for a leisure center and has developed Waalo on her own funds, as often in
Senegal
.
Designed and illustrated locally, the game was printed abroad, for lack of machines.
Today, Marième is struggling to distribute it.
“I went to large retailers, to French brands too, but they did not agree to take the game and put it on their shelves,
regrets the young woman
.
Perhaps because the theme of slavery seemed delicate to them.
There are even brands specializing in board games that will prefer games that come from the West, rather than games that come from here
”.
Waalo and a hundred games from around the world are presented and sold during this first edition of the Dakar Games Festival, which is being held this weekend at the Maison de la Culture Douta Seck.
A permanent toy library is also planned.
► To read also: Senegal: "Afriqu'challenges", a board game to understand Africa
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