Janvier Kifyati
Janvier Kifyati - Learning, Growing, Becoming
Janvier is a 22-year-old Congolese national who has spent more than a decade in Kakuma Refugee Camp. His arrival in 2013 was the end of a harrowing journey: a family conflict in Congo escalated into violence, leading to the heartbreaking loss of his father. In the chaos that followed, Janvier fled with his mother and siblings—he is the eldest of six—along with another child whose mother had been killed. “My mother couldn’t leave her behind,”
Today, Janvier is a husband and a father, navigating adulthood in the same camp where he grew up.
In 2016, his mother began working at the small salon next to the Season of the Time Media Productions (STMP) centre. Janvier would help her, and during breaks he wandered over to the studio where his friends were learning film. Those visits planted the first seeds of curiosity. A year later, in 2017, mentor and filmmaker Fidele Wabenga, approached him, telling Janvier he could see the spark—an interest in film—and encouraged him to join the next training class.
From that moment Janvier immersed himself. Every day after school he would go straight to STMP, first learning computer skills, then photography, although his true passion was always video - the more experienced videographers he spoke to advised him to begin with still images—to understand composition, light, colour, and the foundations of editing; so Janvier committed three years to photography training—two years of structured learning at STMP and one year of practical work, borrowing cameras from STMP, all of which Fidele would critique.
“I filmed music videos for my friends in the community – wedding’s / ceremony videos, anything to get as much experience as I could.”
Janvier studies constantly. If he isn’t shooting, he’s watching tutorials on social media, breaking down music videos, pausing and replaying scenes on his phone to understand how professionals shape their frames.
“I want to know why an image works Not just copy it, but understand it.”
For Janvier, Fidele remains his biggest inspiration—the mentor who believed in him, who gave him a chance, who continues to advise and challenge him… and who is now his bother-in-law, following Fidele’s marriage to Janvier’s sister in 2024.
Janvier dreams of working in the global film industry. If an opportunity arose to relocate, to study, to grow his craft, he says he would take it without hesitation. Above all, he hopes people can learn something from his work—whether in video or photography;
“I want someone to look at my work and feel that it came from a place of truth.”