Fruits
What I produce
The thread that connects the scattered fragments. Novel, research work, films, music, platforms, media. So many ways of doing the same thing: telling stories.
Storytelling is not one activity among others. It is what connects everything else.
I write novels - my ultimate passion. I direct documentaries and music videos. I host radio, and lately podcasts. I make data speak through story maps and interactive platforms. I build immersive narratives. What can look like dispersion is in fact a single practice.
In the complexity of the world, what matters is no longer knowing the data, but the ability to connect it - to give it a meaning that isn't visible at first glance - depth, direction. To tell a story is to gather the scattered fragments into something that holds together.
01 · Writing
The novel, my ultimate passion
Fiction as the first form of storytelling: holding a whole world inside the length of a book.
Novel · 584 pages · Éditions Mélanzé
Que la terre nous soit légère
Two destinies intertwine against the backdrop of a drama in an African forest: a child heir to a lineage of warrior-musicians who takes the road of exile to Europe, and a young humanitarian climbing the ranks of an international organisation, to the point of overflow. A first novel about land, exile and the contradictions of aid.
A second novel, nearing completion, is set in the drylands of the Ewaso Ng'iro corridor in Northern Kenya - the same landscape as the Savannah Express expedition.
02 · Film, documentary & music videos
Giving voice through image
From feature documentary to music video - directing and producing images that tell the real with the people who live it.
Documentary short · 13'45 · 2026 · co-directed with Thomas Grand
White Forest
Destroyed by limestone quarrying, the Bandia forest is losing its bees. Despite the white dust and the wildlife that has fled, Abdou Seck, a 72-year-old beekeeper, refuses to leave and keeps fighting out of love for his land.
Feature · in post-production · co-directed with Thomas Grand
Les veines ouvertes de la terre
A documentary on land grabbing and the agroecological transition in Senegal. The film gives voice to those on the ground - farmers, researchers, decision-makers - and questions the links between land, food and sovereignty.
Co-directed with Thomas Grand, a director-producer whose films have received more than 80 international awards.
The project behind it · Agora / CREATES
AgroVoiceS - voices of the transition
A documentation and advocacy device that surfaces the voices of the agroecological transition, from farmer to policymaker: documentaries, participatory videos, photo reportage and theatre forum. Stories that touch, inform and mobilise - the same intent as Savannah Express.
The AgroVoiceS projectMusic videos · SomOne Music
Clips - directed & produced
Directing and producing music videos between Senegal, Mali and Kenya, with artists like Titoh Star and Sammy Ramaz - building bridges between the continent's music scenes.
03 · Sound, radio & podcasts
Storytelling for the ear
Radio, podcast and music as ways of carrying the culture, politics and stories of a territory.
Radio host · 7 years
WaGwaan Station
Seven years, in Geneva and Bamako, a show on African and diasporic music and culture - and their politics. Giving a stage to voices and sounds that rarely circulate in mainstream media.
New · CREATES
Podcast studio
A podcast studio recently launched at CREATES, in Senegal, to carry the voices of research-action, climate and food systems to new audiences.
Production · SomOne Music
Soundtracks
Producing artists and composing soundtracks and instrumentals. Sound as a narrative layer in its own right.
04 · Photography & curation
Giving a frame to other people's vision
Designing and directing photographic formats that surface the stories carried by communities and local artists.
Dak'Art Biennale 2024 · via the ARTS project
Yaay Dund - Regenerating Life
As co-director of the ARTS project (Agroecology for Resilient Territories in Senegal), I designed and led the national photography competition and the public programme of this exhibition-event presented at the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art 2024, hosted by DyTAES around the photographs of Raphaël Belmin.
The competition surfaced three award-winning visions - Marie Bop (Jury Grand Prize), Elimane Diao (Public Prize) and Yolenn Flaux (Young Photographer Prize) - around women, care and agroecological knowledge. The photographs remain the work of their authors; my role was artistic direction and narrative framing.
Explore Yaay Dund & the laureates05 · Data & interactive
Making data speak
Turning research and cartography into explorable narratives - because data says nothing until you connect it.
Interactive atlas
CREATES Atlas
Participatory mapping of agroecological initiatives across the Sahel. Field data becomes a visual, navigable story.
atlas.creates.ngo →
National geoportal
OneMap Myanmar
Democratising a country's land information through a national mapping platform. Data storytelling at state scale.
Learn more →
Sites & platforms
Story maps & sites
Dozens of websites, story maps and interactive platforms built for research, culture and the environment.
See the work →
06 · Immersive narratives
To make people feel, not only understand
Building narrative experiences that pull the audience inside the story, where data and narrative meet.
Scrollytelling · photography by Fabrice Monteiro
The Prophecy - Nefertiti and the Eleventh Plague of Africa
An immersive scrollytelling narrative on resilience and resistance amidst Mother Nature's fury. Building on Fabrice Monteiro's photographic series The Prophecy, I wrote the text and built a scrolling narrative experience that pulls the reader into an African climate fable - from the disappearance of a queen to the great exodus and the pockets of resistance.
Photography: Fabrice Monteiro · Text & narration: Joan Bastide. Exactly the kind of curated interactive story Savannah Express will produce online.
What's next
Savannah Express
All these forms converge into an 18-month climate storytelling expedition in Northern Kenya: writing, film, sound, photography, data and immersion, co-led with young Kenyan creators.