Jennifer Lufau

Jennifer Lufau (born in in Togo) is a gamer, and an expert in digital marketing, who is based in Paris, France.

She is the founder and president of the Afrogameuses, an association which fights against racism and sexism (see: misogynoir) in the field of video games and tries to promote better representation of black women. Active and involved in the field of video games, she is also the author of the blog "Call me Jane Bond".

Life Jennifer Lufau was born in Togo in 1993. She grew up in Benin, then moved to France around the age of seven. She played a lot of video games during her childhood.

She worked as a Social Media & Content Manager at Ubisoft for two years. She is an expert in digital marketing, and now works as a consultant in diversity and inclusion (D&I) and sensitivity reader in the field of video games. In 2016, she defended her thesis on video games at the Sorbonne for her master's in international project management.

As a child, she frequented a cybercafé every day after school to play Prince of Persia. Later she played League of Legends, Mortal Kombat and Tekken. Around her, there was no girl to share her passion, and it was not a subject addressed by her classmates. Once she arrived in France, she remained without a computer for a long time, and it was only around the age of seventeen that she began to play regularly again. Once again, she found, that she was one of the few young women to play. As an adult, another question arose for her: “Where are the black women in video games? ». She realized that as a player, she saw herself as a kind of anomaly: female and black. She met extraordinary people on multi-player game platforms, and appreciated the socializing aspect which allowed her to make many friends. However, “this is not the world of Care Bears, far from it”. Too often a witness, but also a victim, of discriminatory behavior, she reported being often the victim of racism in the world of streaming and deplored the fact that the only possible action to counter insults is to ban, report and block people. However, these people retain “the possibility of endlessly reproducing these same insults". For her, it is up to the platforms to take their responsibilities; for example, she cites Twitch. In fact, the players develop many avoidance strategies to dodge this harassment. For example, by modifying their nicknames, by deactivating their microphones or by playing male characters, because these are “reputed to be stronger, more virile”, the female characters being considered as weak characters.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, she embarked on writing an article on the Afrogamer community, which she has been running since April 2020. Her meetings with other women in the same situation allow her to discuss their respective experiences. This is how she created, with three other women, on 14 July 2020, the "Afrogameuses" collective, with the aim of remedying this lack of visibility, by contacting concerned women through feminist networks, such as such as Women in Games, and anti-racist groups, such as Black Geeks.