We the founders, Eyob and Clive, created Harambee Africa after a discussion we had about the best holiday destinations in Africa. This conversation led us to the realisation that there was little or no promotion of all the wonderful travel and cultural experiences that were available on the continent and that our own travel experiences on the continent had only been undertaken because of our personal connections.
We were both born in Africa but have spent a large part of our lives in the diaspora. However, both of us still retain a strong personal connection to the continent through friends and family who now live in different parts of the continent.
Despite the strong interest in Africa and travel in general, we noted how difficult it was to research and undertake a trip to a new country in Africa. It was much more difficult than it was for almost any other continent.
Apart from the lack of promotion of African tourist attractions, we also noted a lack of coverage of what African life is like. The increased prevalence of Africans online has not been matched by a corresponding increase in the media services dedicated to serving this large but nascent market. To date, Africans have been given no other option but to consume media and lifestyle content from mainly western media sources. While these media outlets do produce content about and for Africa, this is not their major focus, so the amount, breadth, and quality of this coverage is usually lacking.
As such, Africans and the world are starved of quality curated content about African lifestyle and travel experiences. Unfortunately, many do not even realise that there is a lack of specific content about Africa as they use internet search tools to find the information that they need for anything African related.
All this inspired us to create a platform on which African travel and lifestyle stories could be brought to Africans and people around the world. We at Harambee feel that promoting exclusive African content will make it significantly easier for Africans to connect with relevant content and have a more enriched life as a result.
The name we chose for the platform was Harambee Africa. Harambee is a Swahili word meaning ‘all pull together’ and this seemed to be the perfect word to embody what we wanted to create. The vision for Harambee Africa is to be an African lifestyle publication that pulls together the best of African living. Our focus is to tell African lifestyle stories by Africans so that our readers get an authentic experience that reflects our love for life.
Our Mission Statement is “Showcasing the best of African living”. This means we will highlight stories and vision of African stories from around the world. This will provide young African creatives a platform on which they can reach a wide audience with their lifestyle stories. Harambee Africa aims to provide a unique, positive, and inspirational perspective on the best of African lifestyle. To date, this is an unmet need in the media landscape which does not have adequate coverage of stories from Africa, let alone lifestyle stories. Therefore, we believe Harambee Africa will be a truly unique media platform.
Our primary target audience will be Africans in Africa and around the world. The stories covered will be across several different lifestyle topics, primarily travel, lifestyle, culture, entertainment, money, and sports.
