Africa’s Best Animators Rewarded at Lifanima 2025

Lagos International Festival of Animation, LIFANIMA, at its just concluded 9^th edition, has announced the winners in the festival’s five award categories. The festival received 1,337 submissions from 114 countries.

The award for Best Visual Effects went to FIRE REGALIA, directed by Enose Emmanuel while Best Animation Commercial was awarded to BANKING NEVER STOPS WITH KEYSTONE BANK, directed by Chinagozim Abraham. THE TRAVAILS OF AJADI, directed by Adetunji Adeoye picked up the award for Best Stop Motion Animation. Francis Brown’s BLINDED BY THE LIGHTS won in the 3D Animation category while Damilola Solesi’s HADU won the award for Best 2D Animation.

At this year’s festival, the National Orientation Agency, NOA also unveiled the NOA ANIMATION AWARD, with a total cash prize of N22,500,000. This contest is implemented in partnership with LIFANIMA and call for entries will open soon.

The panel sessions were engaging with panelists drawn from government, private sector and animation professionals from Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa.

Kids were not left out of LIFANIMA 2025 as the festival’s Kids Animation Park came alive with numerous activities and animation screening for them.

LIFANIMA’s amazing outing in 2025 has been made possible by our fantastic sponsors and partners, including Embassy of France in Nigeria, National Orientation Agency, Bank of Industry, Checkers Custard and Sovereign Trust Insurance. Our media partners are The Cyber Crew, The Culture Newspaper, TCN, The Art Hub, Comic Panel World, Brand Crunch, 3P Primaa Promotions, The Podium and BreezyNews.