No. 12: 👋👋 Hi again
What I’ve been up to the last 9 months
Hey folks,
I’ve been gone for a LONG time.
What I thought would be a brief hiatus turned into a 9-month disappearance. I was so swamped with work I pushed the newsletter to the back burner.
Even my violin lessons got the shaft.
Here’s what I’ve been up to:
I created Africa Crossing Borders, a 3-part multimedia series on Togo for MFS Africa, a South African fintech connecting fragmented payment systems across the continent.
I led a flurry of PR campaigns landing coverage in TechCrunch, the FT, Economist and Bloomberg among others.
I penned a spicy op-ed.
In December, I wrote how I travelled to Togo for a multimedia production.
It was the biggest, most creative, audacious work I’ve ever done: 21 hours of raw footage, hundreds of photos, and 10,500 words of original content.
Shout out to my amazing collaborators, Bankole Oluwafemi and Tom Saater.
*I cut my teeth on this project.
I met incredible people who generously gave their time and shared their story:
Mauko, a Ghanaian fisherman who has lived in Lomé for 40 years.
Benjamin, a Nigerian Igbo clothing trader. In the 1990s, he showed up in Togo not knowing a soul and slept in a dormitory for 100 FCFA a night. He now owns two shops and has 4 full-time employees.
Ibrahim, a Burkinabè tea seller who sells delicious omelette sandwiches and mint tea in the Lomé market. His family still lives in northern Burkina.
Joy, a Ghanaian who had a rags to riches story. She started out hawking meat pies in the Lomé market and now runs the largest English language private school in Togo.
*Clockwise from left to right: Benjamin, Ibrahim and Joy. (Photo credit: MFS Africa)
While making the series, I saw first-hand the problems MFS Africa, as a mobile money payments gateway, was solving. Let’s start with remittances.
Ghana is Togo’s largest trade partner. Lomé literally sits on the border with Ghana. But, this is how Mauko sends money to his family:
Cross border payments for small businesses are equally a hassle. When Covid broke out, Benjamin ran into problems paying his suppliers in China.
Normally, he’d give a wad of dollars to a middleman who’d fly to China to pay his suppliers. It was an informal method that worked beautifully….until international air travel ground to a halt.
Benjamin was stuck. He couldn’t buy more clothes or pay for his inventory.
Simply put: payments don’t work in sub-Saharan Africa. If a company can solve that problem, it has a huge ripple effect on people’s everyday lives.
That’s why bringing these stories to life matters.
I have two big announcements:
I’m growing my agency, No Filter PR. I’m hiring a mid-level account manager with preference for someone based in Lagos. If that sounds like you, check out the JD. Or maybe you know someone who’d be a great fit? I’m all ears.
I’m revamping AK/NF. I want to create even better PR and brand storytelling content for tech startups.
To create content that is helpful and practical, I’d love to hear from you.
Would you take 5 minutes and fill out this survey? I’ll pick five at random to win a $20 Amazon gift card or cash equivalent for Nigeria-based readers.
Until next time,
Victoria
Victoria Crandall | African Startups | Communications & PR Strategist | Lagos 🇳🇬