Afripods has recently announced on Twitter and Instagram that they will be partnering with Naija Pod Hub. They have released a press release detailing what the partnership holds for Pan-African Podcasters and what they plan to do in collaboration with them.
If you have not heard of either of them, Afripods is an Afrocentric podcasting platform where listeners can find podcasts made by Africans for Africans, and podcasters can host their podcasts, and advertisers can advertise on the forum.
Naija Pod Hub, on the other hand, is a Nigerian community podcast that is about all things related to the Nigerian podcasting space. They circulate different Nigerian Podcasters, connect Nigerian Podcasters and allow each other to share trailers and links to interviews, and they even host events for and by several key podcasters.
Seeing partnerships and collaborations by African podcasting platforms is such a meaningful step towards harmonising the ecosystem of African podcasters. If more African Podcasting platforms can work together and circulate each other’s databases, the reliance on external platforms to access African content will be smaller and allow African podcasters to start profiting from African listeners.
We spoke to Afripods and Naija Pod Hub to learn more about the partnership. Odudu Efe, AKA FayFay from Naija Pod Hub, expressed why they were excited about the collaboration by saying, “Nothing brings me more joy than seeing innovations for African creatives by Africans. Who better to understand our needs and pain points than we the people.”
FayFay raises such an integral point that The Podcast Sessions as a philosophy often tries to emphasise, we need African spaces made by Africans for Africans because we are Africans, and we understand what that means. Part of being African means community. South Africans call it Ubuntu and this philosophy is based on the idea of community. African creators can not exist in isolation. We need partnerships and collaborations to help each other grow and succeed.
Afripods definitely got the memo because, as their press release reveals, they have “recently announced other partnerships with TraceFM East Africa, Dada Incubator by SemaBox, Nation Media, Africa Podfest and Podcast Laundry”. A big challenge African Podcasters face is overcoming the technical difficulties of creating and distributing their podcasts. If more platforms can work together to provide digital spaces for podcasters to create and distribute their podcasts, the caged African voice will finally be set free and roar across the continent and even the globe.
FayFay explains that the benefit of this partnership for the community is “providing Afripods as a hosting solution to podcasters in the community while helping Afripods understand the needs of podcasters and ways they can help fulfil that. It will involve a lot of cross-promotion, data collection and combined events”.
Using the people who are integrated into the community as your target audience is so vital and almost always overlooked by big corporations, and it’s impressive that Afripods sees and recognises the value of using our people to share and educate the masses.
Naija Pod Hub will be hosting monthly virtual events sponsored by Afripods to bring together Nigerian podcasters and give them a space to connect and support one another.
