Awww, aren't they cute?
Taofick Okoya, the son of billionaire industrialist Razak Okoya, told Reuters that he sells between 6,000 and 9,000 of his Queens of Africa and Naija Princess dolls a month. This quantity accounts for 10 to 15 percent of the small but fast-growing market in Nigeria.
The 43-year-old entrepreneur, a chip-off-the-old-clock, has created the Queens of Africa dolls and Naija Princess dolls that are outselling Barbie's classics.
For some background into this story, according to npr.org, dolls have become a big issue in America lately. Last year, American Girl Doll discontinued some of its nonwhite dolls — Ivy Ling, an Asian-American doll, and Cecile Ray, an African-American doll — due to much controversy. In 2013, Mattel, the company that produces Barbie, came under fire for its Mexican Barbie, which was marketed with a passport and a chihuahua.
The Queens of Africa dolls are based on Nigeria's three largest groups — Nneka is Igbo, Wuraola is Yoruba, and Azeezah is Hausa — and each has traits that are meant to empower the girls who play with them. On the company's website, there's a photo of the three dolls holding a #BringBackOurGirls sign.
Taofick who has a daughter, said he came up with the idea in 2007.
"All the dolls in the house were all white, and I was like, 'Oh, OK, that's a problem, because when you load a child with all this, it becomes an acceptable form of ... how you should look. And so I thought, I want to use my dolls to teach Nigerian culture, African culture."
He also tells Elle magazine:
"The 'Queens of Africa' definitely fill a void in the market. I say this because the first reaction we got from retailers was resistance. They said, 'black dolls don't sell.' I then embarked on an educational campaign via various media, telling people about the psychological impact dolls have on children, and dolls in the likeness of the African child can have on them. It took almost three years for the idea to get accepted."
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