Trying To Build an African Next Gen Media Startup
Last month, Tech Nova GH ceased to exist. In September 2023, I officially decided to rebrand Tech Nova GH. For the past six years, I’ve been writing about tech in Ghana but decided to that it was time for a change. The world is moving fast, and there are developments happening in other parts of Africa which I think are in our ballpark. With that in mind, we decided to fully pivot.My day job is a UX Designer. I’ve worked for companies including Flutterwave and Jetstream Africa, designing interfaces and conducting user research. But when my work is done, I’m late deep into the night working on media. I’m like the Batman of Media. For the last couple of years, I’ve been drawn more into “media”. I consider myself a news and media junkie, constantly checking updates around the world. But I’ve always thought something was missing in the Africa side. My Twitter/X feed is dominated with US news. I’ve tried to look for more African tech content but it’s mostly at times inconsistent.If you’ve been following my writing, you would know I’ve tried diving into different media stuff. After I worked on Tech Nova, I wanted to see if I could work on media partnerships. I looked at examples like “Vox Media” and “Conde Naste” and how they were building their own media and wanted to try that experiment locally. I didn’t want to start another site. I just wanted to join forces with other. And so I did. And then the Labari Media Group was started.Since running Tech Nova (now Tech Labari), we haven’t made a profit. The business model for most media platforms is advertising and subscriptions. But in Africa, finding people to subscribe can be a hassle (Believe me, I tried). But it can work once you build the audience. Right now, I’ve relied mostly on bootstrapping with sponsored content and ads for our business model.
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