Ivory Coast company brings coloured dolls to African children
Aremou Karima holds a doll named Lola in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Reuters
Gulf Today Report
We are living in a world where colour shapes reactions — and bias. The principle that applies to people even includes dolls and toys, which is unfortunate.
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If it's fair and beautiful, it must be good, goes the thinking. However, one entrepreneur in the Ivory Coast decided to buck the trend and has decided to manufacture dolls who are dark-skinned.
Frustrated by seeing store shelves in Ivory Coast lined with almost exclusively light-skinned dolls, Sara Coulibaly decided to create alternatives in which local children could see themselves.
Five years on, Coulibaly's company Naima Dolls employs around 20 young women who were scrambling on a recent afternoon to package 32 models of dolls with dark skin in time for Christmas.
"Our hope today is to give children the means to make good decisions," she said in her office in Abidjan, decorated with African masks and colourful wax prints.
"I want them to be conscious of the fact that they are beautiful, that their culture is beautiful and their culture is rich," she said, ruing the widespread use of skin-lightening creams across Africa.
The names of Coulibaly's dolls all come from different regions of the Ivory Coast. The most popular is Adjoba - or "Born on Tuesday" in the Akan language of the southeast -- a two-year-old girl with plump features.
An architect by training, Coulibaly says she draws inspiration for her designs from ideas and people she has met.
The dolls are manufactured in China and Spain, although she hopes to open a factory in the Ivory Coast in the next few years to satisfy rising demand. She currently produces 150,000 dolls per year.
