Valérie Kaboré: Regards au féminin | Women's perspectives

Valérie Kaboré

Valérie Kaboré has made an important contribution in the area of audiovisual communication and her role in girls' education and awareness building is undeniable.

Trained at INAFEC Institut Africain d'Etudes Cinématographique (Ouagadougou), she went on to obtain a diploma in Audiovisual Sciences and Techniques at the University of Ouagadougou. She is the director of Média 2000, a media communications company which she founded in 1991.

Valérie Kaboré received the Millennium Development Goal MDG3 Champion Torch in 2008 for her successful television series “Ina” and her commitment to girls’ education. Similarly, during our 1997 interview, Valérie Kaboré talked about her series "Nâitre fille en Afrique" (To Be Born a Girl in Africa, 1993), which also focuses on girls and the importance of their education. Her comments highlight her ongoing commitment to girls' rights.

 

In our interview published in the book Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa in Film, Video and Television (Beti Ellerson, 2000) she had this to say: 

I think, generally speaking, that African women have much to bring to the development of our continent. It is for this reason that we fight more and more so that women may be trained and educated and have at least a minimum amount of instruction. Because to put a woman in school is to teach her how to open the door to life. Even if she does not go to school for a long period of time, she can at least acquire a minimum amount of knowledge to be able to manage her household and communicate values to her children for their future. In general, the development of Africa depends on what we will do for women of our generation and those of the future.

 

To encourage women to go into cinema would not be a bad thing.  Unfortunately, it is an area where training is expensive, which means that it is not necessarily a priority.  However, it is absolutely necessary that there be more women trained in this area in order to have a complementarity between women and men.  Beyond the problem of training, perhaps, it is women themselves who do not venture into cinema.  I think this is because working in the media is considered a profession occupied by people who are not very serious, who frequent too many people, who go out a lot.  And for an African woman this is not particularly encouraging.  As long as this attitude persists, women will continue to rebuff the possibility to go into this area.
I think that more and more, however, especially in our country that organizes and houses FESPACO, people understand that a woman in the cinema is not vulgar, nor is she someone who is not serious.  I think that the mentality is changing.  People of the younger generation come when we have screenings.  Afterwards we meet many high school students who express an interest in going into the cinema like us, and I think it is very encouraging for the future.

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Ina Episode 2 (2010)

The young Burkinabe Ina, like all modern women, seeks to balance her family and professional, though not without difficulties. Her success garners a great deal of jealousy that causes her to question the place that Africa reserves for the modern African woman.

This second season of the popular TV series is composed of 40, 26-minutes episodes. 

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Also view a film portrait of Valérie Kaboré by the World Intellectual Property Organization

Portrait de Valérie Kaboré en français