Emojis on mobiles devices have failed to represent Black people, until now. An African company has released the world’s first set of black emojis, following complaints that different races are not represented in the current set used on mobile devices and computers worldwide.
Oju Africa, a division of African mobile company Mi-Fone, launched the collection of 15 emojis this week in face of growing criticism of Apple, which introduced much of the current set to the US market.
Alpesh Patel, CEO of Oju Africa and Group CEO of Mi-Group International Ltd says: “We had a dream of digitally uniting Africa, liberating Africans from digital exclusion. And with the launch of the Oju Africa Afro Emoticons we are sharing African soul, funk and unparalleled smiles with the world.
Oju translates as “face” in the Yoruba language of Nigeria. The emojis are available now for Android (search for “oju emoticon app” in Play Store), and will be released soon for iOS.
“We follow global trends but we are differentiated by our authentic African voice. So as a brand we wanted to do something that only Africa could pull off, something that could become so iconic that it would have the world talking. I believe what we have created will ensure that every African on the planet won’t be able to help but love it!” said Creative director Eserick Fouché.
Currently Apple’s iPhone features only two cartoon emoji that represent non-white people: One could be said to be Asian-looking man, the other is a man with a turban.
Apple knows this is a problem. Last week, a company representative told MTV that “there needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set” and that Apple is “working closely” with the Unicode consortium, the group that specifies how all text and characters show up on computers, to make changes.
While we are waiting for them to sort that out the new emoticons have been designed for use on Android platforms, and will be available on IOS after its official release.
