WAFRIC Awards 2026 Nominee Spotlight | Actress of the Year | Côte d’Ivoire
Acting is an art of transformation. It requires an artist to step beyond personal experience, inhabit another person’s emotions, and bring a character to life in a way that makes audiences believe in the story unfolding before them. For Ivorian actress Yedidia Adadoh, this craft has become one part of a wider creative journey spanning acting, costume design, fashion, entrepreneurship, screenwriting, directing, and film production.
Known professionally as Evodie Yedidia Adadoh, she is part of a generation of Ivorian audiovisual talents expanding their roles within the country’s film and television industry. From appearing in popular television productions to receiving acting recognition and developing her own feature film, her journey reflects a determination to participate in different stages of storytelling.
Her nomination for Actress of the Year at the West African Citizens Awards 2026 offers an opportunity to recognise her work in front of the camera, the professional development behind her performances, and the artistic ambition driving her career.
From Marahoué to the Ivorian Screen
Yedidia Adadoh originates from the Marahoué region in west-central Côte d’Ivoire. Her professional journey has developed across several creative disciplines, with fashion and costume design forming an important part of her experience before and alongside her acting career. According to Fraternité Matin, she spent five years working as a costume designer before expanding her activities in the audiovisual sector.
Costume design is an important but often less visible part of screen production. Clothing helps communicate a character’s personality, social environment, circumstances, and development throughout a story. It also requires collaboration with directors, actors, and production teams to ensure that a character’s appearance supports the world being created on screen.
Experience in this area can provide an artist with a deeper appreciation of the details that shape a production. For Adadoh, costume work formed part of a broader professional foundation before she became increasingly visible as an actress.
Her transition into acting brought her into direct contact with audiences, allowing her to contribute to the interpretation of characters and the emotional storytelling that drives television drama.
Building Recognition Through Television Drama
Adadoh has appeared in several Ivorian audiovisual productions, including Charles Ornel , broadcast on A+ Ivoire, and Castes , broadcast on NCI. Her screen credits also include Les Coups de la vie, according to a profile published by the cinema magazine Cinelifes.
Television drama occupies an important place in contemporary African entertainment. Series bring stories into people’s homes over extended periods, allowing characters and relationships to develop across episodes. For performers, this format calls for continuity, emotional range, and the ability to make a character’s experiences believable within the wider narrative.
Working across different productions also gives actors opportunities to explore varied characters and collaborate with different creative teams. Each role presents its own demands, whether through emotional expression, dialogue, physical performance, or the interpretation of a character’s relationships and motivations.
Adadoh’s participation in these productions has contributed to her visibility within Côte d’Ivoire’s audiovisual landscape. Rather than defining her career through a single screen appearance, her body of work reflects a developing professional path across multiple productions and creative responsibilities.
Recognition at the Ivoire Talent d’Or 2025
A notable milestone in Adadoh’s acting career came in 2025, when she received the Prix de la Meilleure Actrice du 7e Art at the Ivoire Talent d’Or. The recognition was reported by Fraternité Matin and other Ivorian media outlets covering her career.
Recognition for acting celebrates the work that happens both on screen and behind a performance. Actors must interpret scripts, understand character motivations, respond to fellow performers, and make choices that communicate a character’s inner life to the audience.
Awards can also mark an important point in an artist’s professional journey, drawing attention to work that might otherwise be encountered only through individual films or television series. For Adadoh, the 2025 distinction provided a documented milestone in her development as a screen performer.
Her subsequent nomination for Actress of the Year at WAFRIC Awards 2026 creates another opportunity to highlight her acting career within a wider West African recognition platform.
Beyond Acting: Fashion and Entrepreneurship
Adadoh’s creative work is not confined to the screen. She founded Yedy Collection, a fashion brand that reflects her interest in style and entrepreneurship. Her experience in costume design and fashion connects naturally with the visual dimensions of film and television, where clothing, appearance, and character presentation work together to support storytelling.
Entrepreneurship also involves a different set of responsibilities from acting. Building a brand requires developing an identity, communicating with customers, managing practical decisions, and finding ways to turn creative ideas into sustainable activity.
For artists who pursue several disciplines, these responsibilities can intersect. Knowledge of fashion can inform costume choices; experience in front of the camera can deepen an understanding of performance; and entrepreneurship can create opportunities to develop independent projects.
Adadoh’s career illustrates this willingness to move between creative roles while continuing to build her identity within the Ivorian audiovisual industry.
Pile ou Face: Taking Creative Control of the Story
In 2026, Adadoh reached a significant new milestone with ** Pile ou Face **, her first feature film as a screenwriter, co-director, and executive producer through her production structure, Eya Studio. She shares directing responsibilities with filmmaker Boris Gobou and also plays the central role of Inspector Kassandra. The film was announced for theatrical release through the Pathé cinema network in Abidjan on September 24, 2026.
The psychological thriller centres on a mysterious poisoning during the final day of a film shoot. Inspector Kassandra and her colleague Marc Assane investigate the incident, uncovering secrets, old wounds, rivalries, and tensions within the entertainment world. The story uses a criminal investigation to explore the difference between public appearances and hidden realities.
The project represents a major expansion of Adadoh’s responsibilities. As an actress, she interprets a character created within a larger production. As a screenwriter, she helps develop the narrative itself. As a co-director, she participates in shaping how the story is translated to the screen, while her executive producer role places her among those responsible for advancing the production.
She is therefore involved in several distinct stages of the film’s creation while continuing to perform in it. This combination of responsibilities demonstrates her interest in understanding storytelling as a complete creative process rather than limiting herself to one position.
The film’s setting within the entertainment industry also creates a connection between Adadoh’s professional experience and the subject of the story. Its themes of ambition, competition, secrets, and recognition explore tensions that can emerge in a world where careers, reputations, and personal relationships intersect.
Contributing to the Next Chapter of Ivorian Cinema
Adadoh’s journey reflects a broader development in contemporary African filmmaking: performers are increasingly taking on creative and production responsibilities that allow them to participate more directly in the stories being told.
Her transition from costume design to acting, and from acting to screenwriting, directing, and production, illustrates how experience in one creative discipline can provide a foundation for another. Each role brings a different perspective to filmmaking, from understanding the visual presentation of characters to interpreting their emotions and constructing the narrative in which they exist.
Through Eya Studio and Pile ou Face, Adadoh has taken a step towards creating and producing stories of her own. This development matters because the growth of a film industry depends not only on performers, but also on writers, directors, producers, designers, and other professionals who contribute to the creation of original work.
Her career continues to evolve, and the feature-film project adds a new dimension to the record of her professional achievements. It places her not only in front of the camera, but also among the creative professionals helping shape the production itself.
Why Yedidia Adadoh Is a WAFRIC Awards 2026 Nominee
The Actress of the Year category celebrates performers whose work contributes to the growth and visibility of the screen industry. Yedidia Adadoh’s nomination recognises her acting journey, including her appearances in Ivorian television productions and her 2025 Best Actress of the 7th Art distinction at the Ivoire Talent d’Or.
Her professional story is also notable for its range. From five years in costume design to fashion entrepreneurship, television acting, and the development of Pile ou Face, she has pursued several connected paths within the creative sector.
Her experience behind the scenes provides additional context for her work as a performer, while her move into screenwriting, directing, and production demonstrates a growing interest in the creation of stories as well as their interpretation.
At the West African Citizens Awards 2026, Adadoh’s nomination provides an opportunity to celebrate her contribution to Ivorian screen storytelling and the continued development of her artistic career.
The 2026 edition carries the theme “Recognizing the Unseen. Celebrating the Exceptional.” It celebrates individuals whose work and contributions deserve wider recognition across West Africa.
Support the Nominee
Public voting for the WAFRIC Awards 2026 runs from October 12 to November 15, 2026. Supporters can visit the official voting page to find the Actress of the Year category and cast their vote.
Official voting page: https://wafricawards.com.ng/official-public-voting/
Voting procedures and criteria: https://wafricawards.com.ng/wafric-awards-2026-voting-procedures-and-criteria/
Public votes contribute to the process but do not solely determine the final winners. Final selection follows WAFRIC Awards’ published procedures and criteria.
WAFRIC Awards 2026 — Recognizing the Unseen. Celebrating the Exceptional.