editorial director, digital content strategist, journalist
Have been lusting over Nigerian designer Eva Sonaike’s version of decadent Ankara interiors for a few years now, so it was such a treat to get to interview her for this piece on Essence.com. She’s such a dynamo, in a tough industry to crack for Black people like decor.
Love an unapologetically luxe, unapologetically African brand!
One of my favorite things to do… writing about awesome women who inspire me. This travel piece for Essence.com was such a labor of love and admiration for my passport gang woman crush Lerato Mogoatlhe.
Travel Diaries: Johannesburg Journalist Lerato Mogoatlhe Details Her Travels To Over 14 African Countries https://t.co/MJwJqfrbhr#Vagabond coming out this September. Please entertain my excitment…This article made me think about hitting the road again!
— Lerato Vagabond Mogoatlhe (@MadamAfrika) June 5, 2018
Oh and I can’t wait for her book Vagabond coming out later this year.
I was invited by the Vodafone Americas Foundation and Internews, to be part of a panel discussion about empowering women and girls with tools to make their voices heard, but also we explored how we can keep girls and women safe in these digital spaces.
Alongside me on the Panel was Kat Duffy, Vice President of Global Technology Programs at Internews, Emily May, co-Founder of Hollaback!, Alli Maloney, the News and Politics Editor at Teen Vogue, and Solange Nyasoso, a human rights advocate and journalist from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They are all inspiring women who are doing great work to amplify the voices of women and girls online, and I was honored to share a platform with them!
We wanted to adapt the successful Save the Children’s Skills to Success program curriculum into a fun mobile-friendly experience for girls.
Using User Centered Design we worked with girls to design a product and content that would help them save money and reach their financial goals.
Understanding the constraints of low-income girls for whom banks are inaccessible or untrusted, it made sense to create a personal money mentor. Dooit guides girls in setting financial goals and then helps them to track savings.
Plus, it wouldn’t be a Khwezi content strategy for girls without fun quizzes, and games. Dooit encourages and supports girls while helping them to shift behaviors and improve their financial literacy.
Girl Effect Mobile (GEM) has been shortlisted for a Glomo (Global Mobile) award for its work on connecting girls to important information, engaging content, and to one another.
GEM has been nominated for the ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets’ award in the Social and Economic Development category. The awards will be presented at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
My amazing friend and NYU classmate Claire Ward recently completed a documentary film about ColaLife, an innovative non-profit using the Coca-Cola distribution system in Zambia to distribute an anti-diarrhea kit, called Kit Yamoyo.
I voiced the film and couldn’t be more proud of the end product, it’s so well made and such an important story that needed to be told!
In other news, I love doing voice work because it keeps me connected to my radio roots, so doccie-makers… call me!
I’m not one for industry hot air blowing and bro-butt-slapping (which tech has a lot of) but it’s something special when the work you do makes you feel something deeply. I am so proud to have had Facebook’s Founder Mark Zuckerberg highlight Girl Effect Mobile today with a touching video about the impact Internet.org has had in Africa. It was also how Facebook chose to launch its global incubator for Free Basics project (which is also coincidentally being lead by the amazing South Africa team at my employer Praekelt Foundation).
The moral of this story though is that when your work gives you warm, fuzzy and inspired feelings you know you’re on to something good, and Girl Effect has been that and so much more for me. #Grateful to get paid to do what I love AND do my bit to change the world in the process.
Guess who made it onto BET’s 10 Inspirational South African Women to Know list…me that’s who! Being honored by BET and in the company of legends like Lira, Bonang Matheba, Nandi Mngoma, and Lebo Mashile is actually somewhere on a bucket list I made once. So thank you BET for making this little African girl’s day!
I love working on projects that raise the game in innovation so I couldn’t be prouder of the online team’s contribution to Primedia’s groundbreaking coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial, #OscarExtra, an online pop-up radio station running for the duration of the trial.
The idea came to us a way to run trial audio within all 4 of our station’s radio station apps and thanks to our team’s creative powers it quickly turned into an amazing full-service 12hr radio station. Sounds simple right? You optimize on the biggest media event of the year by providing dedicated coverage without cannibalizing on your regular radio programming, well yes… and no.
The operation of a live feed from the courtroom, a board operator, and a great radio presenter who did call-ins and commentary was pretty standard by radio standards and the online side of setting up a dedicated stream and quick turn around podcasts was one we already had waxed. However, convincing all the station heads that it was better to do this cool groundbreaking content thing online only turned out to be the most challenging task of all.
You have to understand this in an environment where podcasts are still relatively new to our audience it looked like this massive risk…
It’s a good thing I’m charming because our ‘launch it now and apologise later’ strategy… well, it could have gone sideways. But it didn’t because as it turned out radio listeners like to listen to things online too, especially when at work and the internet is easily accessible. Oscar Extra was one of our most popular online projects of the year with streams surpassing any of the numbers we had ever done in online audio before!
It was also really exciting to see the attention it got from the industry who thought it was groundbreaking too.
UPDATE: #OscarExtra nominated for Bookmarks in the Integrated Multi-platform campaign category
I love it when a calculated risk pays off!
So proud of how well our team at Primedia Broadcasting did at this year’s Bookmarks Awards, South Africa’s digital industry’s very own Oscars.
Our awards included a Silver for Publisher sites (mass appeal) – Eye Witness News, a Bronze for Editorial – 947. And the biggie for the night an Honors Award for Best Publisher – Eye Witness News!
Beating out the biggest news websites in the country for this accolade was such a thrill for the small but amazingly talented and committed EWN team. As the digital content (mama) manager that watches over just how hard they work to push the envelope every day, I couldn’t be any prouder!
khwezi magwaza 