Influencing Africa: Kenya’s Wowzi open doors for creators

Desperate for inspiration, entrepreneur Mike Otieno and his partners had locked themselves in a co-working space in the heart of Africa’s “Silicon Savannah,” aka Nairobi, in 2019.

Their mission was simple but urgent: Build a business to create much-needed jobs for the region’s digitally-savvy young population to help defuse what’s been dubbed as Africa’s “demographic time bomb.”

With 70% of sub-Saharan Africans under 30 and the continent’s population set to double by 2050, they needed ways to lift people out of low-paid informal work and boost inclusive economic growth. And, as with all time bombs, the clock was ticking.

During those intensive brainstorming sessions, Otieno and his co-founder, Brian Mogeni, zeroed in on social media. Young Kenyans spend hours each day scrolling through Instagram Reels and TikToks.

Why not redirect Gen Z’s fixation on social media to promote and support young African influencers? Why not help “nano-influencers,” who have just a few thousand followers, grab a sliver of the estimated $17 billion global influencer market?

With that in mind, in 2020 Otieno and Mogeni launched Wowzi, a platform that links brands with the continent’s most dynamic social media creators.

In Africa, influencer marketing is fast becoming essential for companies looking to grab the attention of Gen Z consumers, who tend to shun mainstream media and flick past ads. Increasingly, Otieno says, they’re losing interest in heavyweight celebrity endorsements and paying closer attention to authentic-sounding influencers who are more attuned to their reality.

For many brands looking to increase their foothold in the 54-country continent, finding the right influencers to promote their products in individual markets has proven to be a lottery.

Now, more than 200 companies, from Coca-Cola to Netflix and East Africa’s Safaricom, are using Wowzi’s AI-driven platform to sift through its 200,000 influencers and rich datasets to find creators who fit their profile.

“It’s almost business critical for them to have influencer marketing in the mix in Africa, more than anywhere else in the world,” says Otieno, previously a development consultant and an Uber brand ambassador. “Leveraging nano- and micro-influencer communities is giving you more return on investment; they’re more energetic, they’re more affordable.”

So far, Wowzi has created some 500,000 gigs for its creators, and it’s giving the small businesses that make up some 90% of African ventures a chance to use influencer marketing to promote their stores, products and restaurants. Individual music artists are even tapping into Wowzi to find creators to devise new dance challenges that could potentially go viral and boost their Spotify downloads. 

The platform makes it easier for brands to build multi-country influencer campaigns, but it also allows them to pay people in fragmented markets through a single portal. Now Wowzi is partnering with Mastercard to issue digital payment cards to ensure its army of creators can get paid quickly and better manage their finances in a region where more than half of the population lacks bank accounts.

The cards are a step toward boosting financial inclusion for Wowzi’s lifestyle, fashion and mom influencers, who can use payments from creating TikToks or Instagram posts to build credit profiles.

Wowzi also recently joined Mastercard Start Path Emerging Fintech, a startup engagement program that is giving the company access to a combination of hands-on mentoring, innovation opportunities and engagement with Mastercard’s global network to help scale its business. In turn, Wowzi is bringing fresh perspectives on the influencer industry and cutting-edge solutions to the table, fostering a culture of mutual growth and learning through the program.

Next on the list for Otieno and Mogeni is increasing opportunities for brands and influencers, from farmers to dancers, in South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt.

“Through technology, we’re aggregating the world’s largest brands with significant marketing budgets, which is flowing back to the pockets of young people who are creating forms of connectivity,” Otieno says. “And when these two meet, a lot of magical stuff happens.”