ESMOD announces a partnership with LAFAAAC to train a new generation of professionals in Africa in the basics of fashion entrepreneurship.
LAFAAAC (the Franco-Anglophone Academy of Audiovisual Arts and Cinema) was co-founded in 2017 by Olivier Pascal, a former strategy consultant in the telecoms and audiovisual industries, along with Julien Boeuf and François Catala. The academy publishes a training platform aimed at creative professions (audiovisual, radio, cinema, web, etc.) whose primary market is Africa. The platform comprises 6 technological components, the most important of which is a mobile app that provides access to training courses relating to various professions in the field of audiovisual creation.
This is LAFAAAC’s response to a problem that had been clearly identified by Olivier Pascal, notably when he co-directed the think-tank on the development of the film industry and production for AfricaFrance, an association chaired by Lionel Zinsou and Stéphane Richard: there are 5 million people currently working in the creative industries in Francophone and Anglophone Africa, and 90% of those were self-taught through the Internet or peer-to-peer exchanges. With this in mind, the platform aims to provide a target that has already undergone training - professionals operating in the sector, companies developing a training policy, institutions and newcomers to the market - with a general overview of the sector and of the interaction between the various professions involved in the production chain.
Testing a booming market
While the African creative scene is pulling out all the stops and really thriving to achieve fair international recognition, as proven by the increasing number of African fashion weeks being held in the West and the emergence of designers from the continent, the ESMOD International group has decided to turn its attentions to Sub-Saharan Africa by joining forces with LAFAAAC. This partnership, supported by the French Embassy in Nigeria, aims to support a new generation of professionals in their ambition to create a brand and to allow talented young Africans to develop new skills.
It will also allow the ESMOD International group to test-drive a rapidly expanding local market and LAFAAAC to add a new vertical to its blended learning offering. This collaboration will involve the creation of a course of five training programmes devoted to fashion entrepreneurship and developed in close collaboration with successful Nigerian fashion designer and entrepreneur Lisa Folawiyo. “The ‘Entrepreneurship in Fashion’ course is designed to give future professionals working in the sector on the African continent all the tools they need to launch a project and a business in the fashion industry”, the ESMOD group summarises in a statement on the initiative. This mobile course will be complemented by a call for applications that will result in a dozen or so learners being selected to participate in virtual and face-to-face class sessions led by industry professional Jean-François Leguay.
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