CYLS 196: Africa X Podcasting - The Emergence of Industry with Dan Aceda, Kim Fox, Molly Jensen, Anthony Fraser and Kevin Y. Brown

2023-08-07

Episode Summary In this special episode of the Africa X series, Kevin Y. Brown moderates a discussion on The Emergence of the African podcast industry with a panel of four experts who all contribute to content in the African podcasting ecosystem: Dan Aceda, Kim Fox, Molly Jensen, and Anthony Frasier. The panel goes through statistics on African creators and their listenership, giving their takes on where the industry’s strengths lie, areas for growth, and what needs to happen to get there. They discuss how the organizations that they are a p...

Episode Summary

In this special episode of the Africa X series, Kevin Y. Brown moderates a discussion on The Emergence of the African podcast industry with a panel of four experts who all contribute to content in the African podcasting ecosystem: Dan Aceda, Kim Fox, Molly Jensen, and Anthony Frasier. The panel goes through statistics on African creators and their listenership, giving their takes on where the industry’s strengths lie, areas for growth, and what needs to happen to get there. They discuss how the organizations that they are a part of–Afripods, SemaBOX, PodFest Cairo, and ABF Creative–are working to meet the needs of both their creators and listeners, encourage and support underrepresented voices in media to share and distribute their stories and reduce barriers to entry so that creators have the resources they need to consistently create audio content. They answer audience questions from current and aspiring podcasters and end with a call to action to support and uplift African creators.

Kevin Y. Brown

Kevin is a seasoned multi-media executive who is passionate about Africa’s digital future. As an award winning entrepreneur, podcast producer (over 1,000 episodes across different genres with over 30 million downloads across clients) and tech veteran, Kevin is the Chief Content officer and Head of Strategy at Afripods leading their multi-country strategy and product vision.

Kevin is the host of the Create Your Life Series podcast and has been featured or spoken in Forbes, Black Enterprise, Essence, Podcast Movement, Podcast Sessions, Ted X, Sirius XM, Inc. magazine and many more…

Dan Aceda

Dan Aceda is an activist, entrepreneur, actor, and award-winning musician. He is the founder and CEO of SemaBOX, a podcast studio based in Nairobi, Kenya that helps emerging podcasters create and distribute their stories across the world and is the largest podcast production company in Africa, producing over 700 different episodes with 200 podcast creators. In 2021 they launched the DADA Podcast Incubator, a program to upskill, to publish and create a platform specifically for women and non-binary people whose stories and storytelling ideas can resonate globally. Dan is a board member of the Music Publishers Association of Kenya and co-founded Studio Tisa, an online live music platform that acts as a virtual concert venue to showcase live music from the people of East Africa and beyond.

Kim Fox

Kim Fox is a professor of practice in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication (JRMC) at The American University in Cairo (AUC) in Cairo, Egypt, primarily teaching Audio Production and other journalism courses. She spent decades working in the US radio industry in various positions at WOUB AM/FM/TV in Athens, Ohio; WIZF in Cincinnati, Ohio; WBLK in Buffalo, New York, WAKR in Akron, Ohio and many more. In 2020 Kim founded PodFest Cairo, Egypt’s first podcasting conference, hosting nearly 100 podcasters for learning sessions and a podcast pitch competition. As the executive producer of the award-winning Ehky Ya Masr (Tell Your Story Egypt) Podcast, a narrative nonfiction podcast about life in Cairo, Egypt, she works with young freelance producers, many of them former students, writing and editing audio content. Kim is also the Vice President of Academic Affairs for the Broadcast Education Association and the Co-President of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio.

Molly Jensen

Molly Jensen is the Chief Executive Officer of Afripods, a free pan-African podcast hosting platform building the largest library of African audio stories on the planet, based in Nairobi, Kenya. With the ability to categorize in over 50 languages and with content from over 30 countries including that from individual podcasters, radio stations and media houses, Afripods is the home for African podcasting across the continent and within the Diaspora. As a Ghanaian-American born in New York, Molly is extremely excited to help digitize African stories and wants to see African creators take up as much space as possible while creating avenues to help them get paid for their work. She has over ten years of experience across people management, sales, marketing and technology. Molly has spoken at Podcast Movement, Africa Podcast Day, Africa Media Festival, BBC Media Leaders conferences, and Advertising Week Africa as well as most recently featured in Forbes, The Guardian, Reuters, JamLab Africa, Podcast Sessions and Apple Podcasts.

Anthony Frasier

Anthony Frasier is a tech entrepreneur, digital strategist, and the CEO and founder of ABF Creative, a multicultural podcasting production company that produces kids and family podcasts for people of color. Frasier also currently serves as the entrepreneur in residence for Newark Venture Partners, a fund created by Audible & Amazon to help bring more tech startups to his hometown of Newark, NJ. Anthony's mission is to tell and amplify stories that bring entertaining and positive transformations to as many lives as possible.

Insights From the Episode

Insights into the relationship between radio and the emergence of the podcasting industry in Africa
Thoughts on how to get more creators to record podcasts in their native vernacular languages
How platforms can evolve to improve discoverability both within Africa and outside of the Continent to highlight African stories
Discussion on how to raise the awareness and quality of local content to get the same kind of listenership as international podcasts
How we can support, empower, and connect with the African podcasting ecosystem
Why we should care about content coming from Africa

Quotes From the Show

On the relationship between radio broadcasts and podcasts: “We are a continent of orated history. We’re comfortable getting information from our ears, and radio is the most prevalent medium on the Continent. As the digitization of internet media, technology, and podcasts becomes more popular, it’s important to meet people where they are.” - Molly Jensen, Create Your Life Series, #196
“In the existence of our studio, the early adopters were female. They were the first ones who came and the first ones to try a new technology, telling new stories. They were also the ones with multiple different vulnerabilities that needed to be highlighted; stories that needed to be told. As soon as that became clear to us at SemaBOX, we were mobilizing as much as we could to find ways to discover more voices and make sure that those are on the right platform. Even though women–as Thomas Sankara said–’hold up half of the sky’, their voices don’t represent half of what you hear on radio or on the internet. They are valid, fantastic, and they need to be out there.” - Dan Aceda, Create Your Life Series, #196
On breaking into podcasting in Africa: “My advice would be to find someone who you can collaborate with, especially on the Continent where there are so many universities you can tap into, to help bring your resources and get some resources from them as well.” - Kim Fox, Create Your Life Series, #196
“We all want to see African creators take up as much space as possible, but also get paid for their genius.” - Kevin Y. Brown, Create Your Life Series, #196
“Podcasting is a low-cost way for us to be able to preserve history, culture, traditions, and language. Other languages will die if we do not preserve them or if we are not using them, so for future Africans, no matter where they are throughout the Diaspora, in order for them to have an authentic history they need to hear their language, culture, and traditions from themselves.” - Kevin Y. Brown, Create Your Life Series, #196
“One of the biggest focuses for Afripods is that we’re making sure we’re building a product with the African creator in mind, but also with the African creators’ input.” - Kevin Y. Brown, Create Your Life Series, #196
“You have to have an Africa strategy. If you don’t have one, there’s a problem. You’re missing out on a billion people, a huge market to not be talking about. There needs to be more investment in local platforms–Afripods, SemaBOX, Africa Podfest, Podfest Cairo–because we are the ones that have granular knowledge of the market and can lead the world towards what can work because we work with it every day.” - Dan Aceda, Create Your Life Series, #196
“If you don’t have an Africa strategy, you do not have a growth strategy. And that’s on everything.” - Molly Jensen, Create Your Life Series, #196
“Podcasting has hit a wall when you think about listeners. There’s only a few growth areas where more listeners can come in–people of color in the U.S., kids and family, and other continents like Africa. That’s the reason why you need that strategy. The only way you’re going to grow podcasting in general is if more people start to create outside this continent.” - Anthony Frasier, Create Your Life Series, #196
“If you want to craft an Africa strategy, you need Africans. A lot of times Africans are not the ones telling our own stories, and that has to change. We need to be a part of the development strategy for the things that affect us. If it’s about me, it needs to include me.” - Kevin Y. Brown, Create Your Life Series, #196
“I think it’s important to be an advocate, to be an ally, to a lot of the people who are already on the ground creating content.” - Anthony Frasier, Create Your Life Series, #196
“More is more. We need more visibility, we need more press, we need more money, we need more resources, we need more people speaking, yelling, talking about Africa–especially when we’re not in the room. We need more being curious, reaching out to people on the ground, and making sure we’re taking up space.” - Molly Jensen, Create Your Life Series, #196
“There is no better opportunity at this point than Africa. If you’re looking for content, it has to come from Africa. Everyone is under 19 years old. There needs to be a shift into what’s happening with Black people. Fundamentally I think Black women, Black American women, are the curators of culture, and I think Black women need to get more credit for that. The entire Black experience is not seeing the value they create financially, and that’s exploitation. Exploitation is not capturing the value you create, so making sure that African creators are getting paid the same in bringing stories to the forefront. … We cannot take a piece of the pie right now; we need the pie to get bigger.” - Molly Jensen, Create Your Life Series, #196