In 2014, Zain Verjee, arguably Africa’s most prominent figure on the international news scene, left her job at CNN. In what she described as a plateau of her career, the Kenya-born news anchor felt she had no further goals to reach, after a 14 year career that saw her interview the likes of Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Angelina Jolie and Graca Michel, to name just a few.
Since leaving the newsroom, Verjee has embarked on a number of more personal, Africa-focussed projects. Most recently, she has launched an open source platform for African stories called aKoma, with her business partner and ex-CNN alumnus, Chidi Afulezi. The mission behind aKoma was to highlight and bring to the fore the stories that are frequently forgotten, or mostly not even discovered by Western media, who largely narrow in on war, famine and corruption when telling African stories. Not content with this version of events, Verjee and Afulezi started the new platform to re-tell Africa’s narrative, whilst simultaneously launching Africa’s first paid Fellowship for Content Creators, called Amplify. Their goal was to nurture the next generation of influencers who would be able to accurately relate the ‘Africa narrative’.
For the inaugural Fellowship, the Amplify team received over 1,000 applications. The top 25 writers, photographers, animators, and videographers from Nigeria, Rwanda and Kenya were chosen and put through a rigorous six-month course, held predominantly online.
From the start, Verjee brought on board The MasterCard Foundation and GE Africa to work with and support the Amplify team for the six month process. The graduation of the Fellows was held on Friday 7 April in Nairobi, Kenya, where each country cohort was tasked with creating a branded content campaign for GE Africa. On the day, the all-star judging panel comprising Professor Bitange Ndemo, Pamela Sittoni of Nation Media Group, Patricia Obozuwa of GE Africa and Google Kenya’s Charles Murito, awarded the top spot to the Kenyan team.
Here, I speak to Zain Verjee and Patricia Obozuwa, Director of Communications & Public Affairs of GE Africa, to look at the relationship between big business and content creation, and to see why GE not only worked with Amplify on this first of its kind Fellowship for Content Creators in Africa, but also why the multinational has become an early adopter of using hyper local digital content to to connect with African consumers.
What is Amplify’s Mission?
Zain Verjee:
Our mission is to develop a fellowship of young, dynamic multimedia content creators who will craft compelling stories about Africa. In real terms, this means we want to build a pan-African tribe of highly skilled, savvy and impassioned content creators and storytellers who understand their true value and who can go forth and build a career or business for themselves. In the West, writers, filmmakers and storytellers across all media have a hard time of making it in ‘the media’ – pay cheques can be infrequent and more often than not, do not reflect the true value of what is being produced. In Africa, the situation is even harder. We believe that developing a network of content creators, training them with new skills, offering a space to share ideas, creating new experiences for them, and introducing collaborations with global brands, will position them well in a tough industry.
What is GE’s interest in content creation and storytelling in Africa?
Patricia Obozuwa:
GE is committed to empowering Africans by helping build valuable skills on the continent. We are also very passionate about telling Africa’s story…whether it’s GE’s story in Africa or Africa’s story to the world. The Amplify program combines these two passions perfectly and we are pleased to play a part in making it happen.
What African stories in particular are GE interested in?
Patricia Obozuwa:
We are very interested in telling that story of the amazing innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that exists on the continent. We are constantly looking for opportunities to show this real side of Africa instead of the more common narrative of poverty and corruption that is often seen. A story of immense progress, hope, resilience, new thinking, new ideas and new solutions that help tackle the challenges in Africa that we hear so much about.
In terms of a business case, how does GE see the relationship between local, Africa-focussed content creation and GE as a brand, developing?
Patricia Obozuwa:
Our interest in this program is more about providing these talented content creators the opportunity to develop their skills. But in doing this, we have also been able to tap into their incredible creativity and get some great content that would help tell GE’s story in Africa.
How can you monetize content creation in Africa – what’s the business model you work to?
Zain Verjee:
Many of the big brands have not yet come round to the notion of using authentic African stories to promote their companies or products. But, out of necessity, they will have to. Millennials are becoming increasingly more sophisticated when it comes to the media they consume. They neither react to or read static advertisements in newspapers. They connect with people, with stories, with video content, blog-influencers and powerful pictures. And they connect via mobile. Through our open source content platform, aKoma, and our newly launched content studio, Tribe, we are essentially connecting businesses and brands with curated, authentic, uniquely African content; content that resonates with audiences and that makes a real impact. So companies can connect with us and we will source for them original, 100% African content, produced by some of the continent’s most talented storytellers.
This is a paid Fellowship for African Content Creators – the first of its kind on the continent. Why is this significant?
Zain Verjee:
Creative media in Africa is, traditionally, hard to monetise. The journey to becoming a ‘creative’ is even harder. It is widely expected that people should work for free. Or that if you want to train to be a creative writer or documentary producer, it should be on the side and something that you do for free. We reject this – totally. We pushed our fellows very hard during a very intensive six months – and we felt that they should be paid for their work during the fellowship. We wanted to set the tone, that their work is valuable. They are telling stories to the world as a service, and they deserve monetary recognition for their skills and work.
What value can a company like aKoma, and the Amplify Fellows, bring to a multi-national company like GE?
Patricia Obozuwa:
We are strong believers that Africa’s story is best told by Africans. By supporting these innovative platforms that showcase the best of Africa, we hope to help attract more positive attention to the continent that can translate into new opportunities and a thriving economic environment.
Why do brands, especially those operating in and/or looking to move into the African market, need to think about local content strategies?
Zain Verjee:
You hear this a lot – Africa is not a country. However people still fall into the trap of speaking about the ‘African’ consumer. Under this homogenized umbrella, this means a teenager in Senegal has the same reactions to messages as one in Tunisia. This isn’t the case. So if companies really want to become smart and see their marketing and advertising campaigns actually make an impact to their bottom line, they need to make sure they are connecting with people in a more targeted way. Local content, is the most powerful and effective means of doing this. And the Tribe we are building is the only platform doing this on the continent, as we speak.