AFDA, The School for the Creative Economy

AFDA celebrates its 31st year of operation in 2025 and has established itself as one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world today. AFDA currently has over 2700 students on its four campuses in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Gqeberha. AFDA’s 7000+ alumni continue to have an unmistakable impact on the local and international entertainment industry, with an illustrious list of acclaimed industry awards.

The AFDA Educational Promise
To provide students with the conceptual, perceptual and concrete skills that will enable them to originate meaningful narrative concepts and human behaviors that are relevant to target audiences, and to truthfully and accurately deliver these narratives through appropriate use of medium and aesthetic form and the employment of resources to accurately and economically produce and sell the completed production.

AFDA Educational Objectives
To provide conceptual, perceptual and concrete skills that will enable students to originate meaningful narrative concepts and to understand why these might be relevant and the impact they may have on target audiences and society in general.
To understand why human behavior and culture are the agent through which narratives are embodied and made emotionally relevant to target audiences.
To understand how their chosen medium of expression can be considered and used to truthfully and accurately produce their narrative.
To understand how aesthetic elements might be used to establish and produce the appropriate form of the world in which the narrative is set.
To understand how to plan and employ resources to economically produce and sell a production to achieve return on investment.

What makes AFDA unique?
AFDA offers a learning system that utilises a diverse number of learning strategies and methodologies which include tacit learning, learning by approximation, collaborative learning, scaffold learning and learning through socialisation.
The AFDA learning and assessment system caters to what Howard Gardner refined to as ‘Multiple Intelligences’. These diverse intelligences are:
Visual-Spatial
Bodily-kinesthetic
Musical
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Linguistic
Logical –Mathematical
The creative industries require diverse specialization (intelligences) that are able to collaborate in an economically viable manner to achieve high standards of production.
AFDA students are given the opportunity to explore and discover their aptitude and by extension their career path.
AFDA uses a learning system designed to deal with the opportunities and challenges of the knowledge economy and the future. It is a market related learning system focusing on the audience and the target market.
We offer an outcomes-based learning system which requires a hands-on approach, focusing on leadership, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. This mimics the industry and takes place in an authentic learning environment.
AFDA focuses on the goals of the learner.
AFDA students do not write traditional exams. Students are assessed on a individual basis and team/group focused research. An application of theory and research in the creation and exhibition of entertainment content or in development and monetisation of entrepreneurial business and disruptive technologies is what primarily constitutes assessment at AFDA.
AFDA’s learning process is highly effective and creates a network of skilled graduates who are able to forge careers in the entertainment, media and other creative industries.

Faculties & Departments
Film,
Television,
Performance,
Business & Innovation,
Creative Writing