And Finally, I Went Back To the Beginning!
So I got a little bit confused.
Somewhere between the idea of Her Africa and trying to segment a paying market for Her Zimbabwe products, the dots failed to connect. After my initial blog post, and a very informative class about events, I began to think of hosting events as the most viable revenue stream for monetisation for Her Zimbabwe. We would host exhibitions of our work in cities where Zimbabwe’s diaspora is prominent (London immediately stood out) and hope that their emotional ties to home would resonate strongly enough with our events. The idea was exciting and sounded quite feasible… until I did some research with the intended target market.
“Maybe if these events happened once a year, I might attend,” said one respondent, Chipo (34) who has been living in London now for almost a decade. “I’m just not that into Zim stuff anymore.”
“Do you know how much it costs to put an event together in this city?” asked another.
I didn’t actually. So I set about talking to some Zimbabweans who run events in the UK to get some insight. As they rattled off costs, including hiring an events management team and hiring a venue that would appeal to the sort of audience that such an event requires in order to make sense (an audience willing to pay for a ticket of at least £50, they reckoned), I came to the quick realisation that:
1) without starting capital to set this idea off, it would burn money rather than create any and that
2) events weren’t quite the cash cow that could be relied on for a Zimbabwean population, even one that is abroad.
It’s hard to come by scientific data on Zimbabwe, and my searches yielded little, but what is known (from the Draft Migration Management Diaspora Policy of Zimbabwe) is that by 2007, remittances from Zimbabweans living abroad (largely sent back home to sustain their family members) constituted 7.2% of Zimbabwe’s GDP. And with an economic situation that remains inhospitable for most, it remains likely that most Zimbabweans abroad are still sending money back to Zimbabwe to subsidise their family’s living expenses.
Therefore, asking people to pay £50 periodically might not be as lucrative as it seems at first thought. Of the 11 people I polled about this, four said they might pay that — but only once yearly. The other seven said they wouldn’t, citing cost and the fact that with new (and free) news sites mushrooming across Zimbabwe’s internet space, there are now cheaper ways to keep abreast of information.
And so events have been put on the back burner for the time being. But let’s see. Perhaps there is still a way to think around them.
After more conversations, I became inclined to think through the idea of a print publication, a magazine of sorts that would appeal to a particular demographic (the beloved diaspora again!), featuring sponsored advertising that would make sense to this target. I then consulted some Zimbabwean friends I know who are in production of various items (clothes, e-magazines and cosmetics) in the diaspora to understand if and how they integrate advertising into their work. Yes, they all tried to, but they were largely relying on Google Ads and other such tools to generate small amounts of revenue. And sales of their products were still too low to create evidence to attract more stable and targeted advertisers.
And, sigh, the question returned. Would a diaspora with resources spread so thin find value in a print publication telling them about the issues of Zimbabwean women in Zimbabwe? It seems not from the opinions I gathered, or as Barbara Mhangami — a US-based Zimbabwean — once wrote in an article for Her Zimbabwe;
“This year [2013, after an election with greatly debated results] was significant because I am now in my forties and have four children to think about. This is no longer about what I or my husband want for ourselves, but more about what is in the best interest of our children. Living in a state of limbo — with one eye trained on Zimbabwe and the other navigating life here — is no longer a viable option… I can no longer continue living with the expectation of a future back home. Home is here, where I am right now. Home is where my children and my husband are. Home is a deep yearning; not for a geographical place but a state of being at peace.”
With these sobering reflections, I went back to my initial idea of Her Africa.
My very helpful mentor, Kelly, and I had a long Skype call in which the idea became clearer to me. Rather than tap into a very tiny audience of Zimbabweans, there was probably more to gain from looking at how to gain access to audiences across Africa, and in particular the higher-performing nations of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Estimates of GDP growth in 2016 in Kenya and Nigeria are put at 6.3% and 4.4% respectively . Zimbabwe’s GDP is expected to grow just 0.4% this year, bearing in mind that Zimbabwe is a nation of a population of just 13 million; Nigeria is home to 181 million, South Africa 53 million and Kenya 46 million. At the same time, global brands like Microsoft, Facebook and Google are investing more and more into these markets creating new technological opportunities, while internet and mobile penetration in these same markets also offers attractive opportunities to experiment with digital media.
Rather than make Zimbabwe the target of a very limited market, there is certainly more opportunity in looking at Africa and its big players, and then integrating Her Zimbabwe’s monetisation stream into this larger framework.
But what does that look like in real terms?
We create a highly engaging news site whose news and opinion focus is Africa, with verticals focusing on east, west, north and south Africa as regions. We talk about feminism and issues that affect us as women in general, but we also write news about mainstream issues that women are normally sidelined from; politics, business, sport. In effect, we create a news label that is all-female but diverse in its news lens.
But because we want to attract quality, we need to have the resources for this.
And that means we need big sponsorship. I am still working on getting to the sweet spot of this concept, but it looks like a lot of work mapping out the terrain across the continent will need to be done to understand the various sectors to whom this idea might be interesting. Also, identifying the right sort of quality editorial team will need much thought and a healthy salary budget. I will also need to explore and understand further the legislative and media environments in these different parts of the continent; and whether and how these may serve as serious inhibitors to business.
A Kickstarter campaign sounds like a good place to start with fundraising. But before I delve into that realm, I need to conduct some high value research and awareness raising to ensure some form of substantive audience engagement with such a fundraising campaign.
Or a venture capitalist somewhere just needs to put their hand up!
