Africa True Story, Enabling Chinese And African Content Creators To Obtain Income Growth And Digital Opportunities

The Africa True Story Project is a digital brand project implemented by The Youth Café in collaboration with Pumbaa Eco thereby empowering the future leaders of Africa and give these young men and women in Africa an opportunity to create a piece of work about their lives or the societal issues they are concerned with. 

Undertaken under the Shenzhen Green Impact Consulting Company, the program invites leaders in different industries, young people, and Chinese people living in Africa to share stories about their lives in Africa, and is committed to making the Chinese Internet see a thriving Africa and linking China to sustainable investment in Africa. In doing so, the information gap and bias is reduced and enables Chinese and African content creators to obtain income growth and digital opportunities. 

Recognizing the problem of unemployment and realizing the potential of young people in Africa, The Youth Café aims to increase contribution to socio-economic stability, sustainable development, and economic growth through cultural entrepreneurship, increase access to efficient, high-quality education and training systems to facilitate young people’s access to education and integration into the job markets and increase training/mentorship opportunities for young people to leverage and create self-employment and job opportunities for other young people thereby promoting The Youth Cafe’s thematic areas on Sports, Art and Culture, Education, skills & Technology and Business, Job Creation & Entrepreneurship. 

This novel initiative is aligned with The Youth Café’s mission which is to empower the youth in Africa. While active on a number of cross- cutting issues since its founding in the year 2012, The Youth Café supports the next generation of leaders in eight priority areas to which it brings a multidisciplinary and multi-perspective approach: Peace and Security, Including Preventing Violent Extremism; Governance and Political Inclusion(Remittances and Accountability); Culture, Arts, and Sports; Education and Skills; Business, Job Creation and Entrepreneurship, Universal Health Coverage, Environmental Preservation, and Climate Change.

The Eight Pillars of The Youth Café provide an essential organizing structure for the development and implementation of its various programs and initiatives, which all play a critical role in reducing youth deprivation and socio-economic and political empowerment in the continent. In doing so, The Youth Café collaborates with governments and international organizations, supports initiatives by the youth, and utilizes research, policy, and advocacy actions. 

Who is looking to benefit from this? Through this 4 month project (September 2021- December 2021) content creators will be supported to produce works of writing, video, and audio and publish over 100+ articles, and achieve 1,000,000+ views. These works will then be posted on both African and Chinese internet, including platforms like Top Buzz, Wechat, thepaper.cn, and the Peace Information Platform to be launched in late 2021 by the Nanjing government.

In return, the content creators will get partial profits generated by their works. The project activities include: Recruitment, where TYC will develop terms of reference, conduct interviews, make the selection, onboard new members, document writers’ information and interests through regular surveys or conservations. Once the 20- 50 individuals are recruited, they will be taken through a standard recorded training curriculum sessions which will be developed by the partners. 

We will then help the writers to brainstorm and find topics. Writing will be done independently by the writers. The final topics will be chosen on past statistics as well as the topics the writers are interested in. The first article will be a personal story then explore more topics from culture, politics, and society after the first collaboration.

Some of the suggested topics under potential themes include: (1)  UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [Poverty reduction, Healthcare, Quality Education, Infrastructure, Sustainable and Innovation- Driven Economic Growth and Eco- environmental Protection]; (2) Humanitarian Challenges [Providing Emergency Disaster Relief, Public Health, Famine, Post- Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction and Disaster Preparation and Mitigation]; (3) International Exchanges and Tripartite Cooperation [Exchanges and Tripartite Cooperation and Advancing Dialogue, exchanges and pragmatic cooperation] and (4) Tech for Good [Case stories of Technology for Good of international companies and local enterprises and Case stories/ research reports on the practice of technology for good in Chinese enterprises]. A criteria for evaluating the drafts and standard editing process will be developed and used to ensure the articles drafts are as per the required standards. 

These articles will then be translated to Chinese and Kiswahili. During translation of the articles, Pumbaa Eco will build a team of translators and give them basic training. The translators will communicate with the writers in translating the article and also assist in structuring the article, find pictures, add an intro, and brainstorm articles.

These articles will then be published on various platforms such as Wechat, Baidu, thepaper.cn, Topbuzz, and 163.com, TYC’s social media networks (website, monthly newsletter, and social media platforms). After the statistics and reviews for each article comes out, we will provide feedback to the writers. Pumbaa Eco and TYC will provide feedback to its team of editors, translators, and project managers after each publication or every half a month.

Before the writers submit their articles, they will own the copyright of their articles. Once the writers submit their work and are ready for publishing, they will receive their first payment of Ksh 500. At this time, they will also license the copyright to Pumbaa Eco and TYC, including compilation rights, reproduction rights, distribution rights, database inclusion rights, etc. The second payment to the writers will be made after the profit is calculated by the content platforms (usually 2-3 weeks after publication). Pumbaa Eco and TYC teams will be meeting once a month to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

To be able to achieve the above deliverables of the project, we have a very strong team to work with. From the Pumbaa Eco team under the able leadership of its founder, Quingan Pan, who will provide the technical leadership of the entire project. Hongyu Pan is the Project Manager and will lead the planning, execution, monitoring, controlling and closing out projects. Kagima is the local contact person for this project. From the TYC team, Synthia Ontita, Project Lead,  will manage the project dynamic through the project process. Maureen Amuhinda, Project Coordinator, will coordinate the project activities and report on the program’s progress and Malika Pyarali, Communications & Digital Engagement Associate, will be in charge of developing, organizing, guiding, and managing the communication plans of the project. 

We are currently in the recruitment phase of the project which is currently in circulation for interested individuals to apply. The link to the application form can be found here. Incase of any questions in regards to the project of facing challenges in applying to the program, feel free to reach out to Synthia Ontita (synthia.ontita@theyouthcafe.com).