Raymond Malinga is building Uganda’s Pixar, one frame at a time
In this Offscript conversation, Raymond Malinga, co-founder and CEO of Uganda’s Creatures Animation Studio, shares how he built one of East Africa’s largest animation studios.
“I just found out that people use animation to do ads and stuff. So I told my dad, ‘I’ll go study animation, come back to Uganda, start a company, and make ads.’ I only said that because I thought it would make sense to him.”
That’s how Raymond Malinga began his pitch to his father. He was nineteen, a computer programming student at Makerere University, desperate to convince his parents to let him abandon coding for a career in cartoons. Animation sounded frivolous in mid-2000s Kampala, so he framed it as advertising; something serious enough for an African parent to believe in. That moment became the first scene in what would turn into a decade-long odyssey, one that would make him a central figure in East Africa’s emerging animation industry.
Today, Malinga is the co-founder and CEO of Creatures Animation Studio, one of Uganda’s most recognisable animation outfits. His short film, “A Kalabanda Ate My Homework” (2017), was one of the first Ugandan animations to earn international acclaim. But that success began, as most unlikely dreams do, with one uncomfortable conversation.
Malinga was born in Uganda but spent his early years in Belgium, where his father worked for the World Customs Organisation. “I grew up in Belgium from age one to eight,” he said. “It shaped how I see the world — that mix of European and African perspectives.”
Returning to Uganda in the late 1990s was a jarring experience. “It’s like travelling in a time machine,” he said. “All your friends are gone, and you have no one here. I was teased for my accent; it was trial by fire.”
That culture shock between the disciplined structure of Europe and the rougher edges of Kampala life would later influence his creative outlook. “I think that’s where my imagination really took root. When the outside world felt confusing, I built my own worlds inside.”
He devoured Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, enchanted by the way the books could open up new worlds. At school, he filled notebooks with stick figures and imaginary creatures, fragments of worlds that existed only in his head. The idea that adults could make a living doing animation arrived by accident, through a cousin who mentioned it offhand. For the first time, the dream felt real.
But dreams don’t always survive practicality. Despite his creative instincts, Malinga followed a familiar script: he excelled in science, so he pursued a career in science. He ended up in Makerere’s computer programming department, and almost immediately knew he had made a mistake.
So he pitched the animation as a career idea to his father. His father wasn’t convinced at first. “He made me go through the most,” Malinga said, grinning. “He told me, ‘Find the schools, find out how much they cost, show me your plan.’”
Malinga spent hours at internet cafés researching animation schools. He eventually found one in Malaysia that fit his father’s budget. “My dad said, ‘If you really want this, it doesn’t matter where you go, just work hard.’” Armed with that advice, he headed to Malaysia.
For Malinga, Malaysia was a rude shock. Most of his classmates could draw better than he could. They were younger, faster, and more confident. By contrast, he was the awkward older student struggling to keep up. “I couldn’t draw,” he admitted. “Everyone around me was so good it was intimidating.”
He compensated with effort. He stayed late in class, built relationships with professors, and asked questions until he understood everything. His lecturers came to know him as “the Ugandan who wants to start an animation studio.” After graduation, he landed a job at Wau Animation, a small Malaysian studio which was then working on Ejen Ali, a Malaysian super-hero which would later become a national hit.
Working at Wau taught him what animation could look like as a profession. But even then, the idea of home lingered. He had made a promise to return to Uganda and build something of his own. In December 2014, he fulfilled his promise.
Malinga arrived back in Kampala with one computer and a head full of ambition. He and his brother Robin set up a workstation in their parents’ garage. “That first year was brutal,” he said. “We made no money. My brother looked at the first animation I did, and I could see the dream leaving his eyes.”
Still, Malinga kept going. “It’s very hard to get people to buy into your dream,” he said. “Most of the guys who joined us at the beginning weren’t chasing the dream; they just wanted to leave the house so their parents could say they were working.”
He started paying small stipends out of his own pocket, from the little money he made teaching part-time at an art school, to cover costs. “I walked to and from the school to save money.”
Their first real break came through a friend’s sister, who connected them to a producer on MiniBuzz, a popular Ugandan comedy show. The work was modest but validating. They impressed the client, who referred them to others. Those small jobs, explainer videos, educational clips, and experimental ads, kept the studio alive long enough to move out of the garage and into a space at Design Hub Kampala, a co-working centre for creatives. “We finally had a real address. It felt like we’d levelled up.”
During a short trip back to Malaysia, Malinga met his former boss at Wau, who asked if he had made any of the stories he used to talk about. The question haunted him long after he returned home. So he decided to take the shot.
The story he chose was inspired by a childhood myth about a mischievous creature called Kalabanda that eats children’s homework. It became the studio’s first original short film, A Kalabanda Ate My Homework. Initially intended as a six-month project, the short film stretched for two years. When Kalabanda premiered in 2017, over 200 people attended the event. It was the first time an animation team in Uganda stood on stage to present their work. But after the premiere, there was silence. No calls, no commissions, no investors. Malinga wondered if that was the end.
Then, recognition slowly arrived first from a film festival in Côte d’Ivoire, and then from the African International Film Festival in Lagos. “Those small wins kept us alive,” he said later. “They reminded us that this mattered.”
By 2019, “A Kalabanda Ate My Homework” had earned Malinga a reputation as one of East Africa’s most promising animation voices. That year, he travelled to Cape Town to speak at the International Animation Festival, where he met executives from DreamWorks and Triggerfish, as well as Spider-Verse director Peter Ramsey.
Months later, Triggerfish CEO, Stuart Forrest reached out about a new project, a collaboration with Disney called Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, an anthology of futuristic African sci-fi stories. Malinga was invited to direct one episode, The Herders, set in a reimagined East Africa.
It was the studio’s first time working on a global production. Five members of Creatures joined him on the project. For Malinga, it was both validation and education. “Before, it took us three months to make one episode,” he said. “After Kizazi Moto, we could do one a week.” The experience changed everything, not just their skills, but their sense of what was possible.
Years after that first conversation with his father, Creatures Animation is no longer a dream or a proposal. The studio recently partnered with the United Nations Development Programme to train young animators across Uganda. This time, Malinga isn’t the one teaching; his team is.
“When you teach what you’ve learned, it concretises it,” he said. “You grow into a manager.”
These days, Malinga spends more time thinking about policy and advocacy than production. He sits in meetings about creative economy frameworks, trying to ensure that animation has a seat at the table. “Someone has to be in the room,” he said. “If we don’t build the system, no one will.”
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