19 minute read
Opinion shapers
SIERRA LEONE CHEF
Fatmata Binta Fulani foodie
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KENYA TV ANCHOR
Larry Madowo Africa’s anchorman
TOGO MEDIA MOGUL
Claude Grunitzki Avatar of African inventiveness
Fulani chef Fatmata Binta made history West African chef to be awarded the Basque Culinary World Prize. Created in 2016 by the namesake culinary centre in Spain, the award is given to a chef who is using their talent and creativity to transform society through food.
The judges said Binta was chosen out of 1,000 nominees for her “ability to showcase sustainable nomadic culinary culture and explore the diaspora of West African cuisine” through Dine on a Mat.
Now based in Ghana’s capital city of Accra, Binta launched Dine on a Mat in 2018 – a pop-up restaurant that has travelled to cities in Europe, the US and Africa, giving people around the world a chance to experience her home culture. She also started the Fulani Kitchen Foundation to empower and support women in rural communities across Ghana and West Africa.
The 37-year-old chef says every dish she serves pays homage to her Fulani heritage. Binta says their plant-based cuisine, which often includes sun-dried vegetables and ancient grains like fonio nomadic lifestyle.
She has described sharing meals with Fulani elders as a child, saying they would sit on mats and “bond over food”, discussing morals and values – a sense of community she’s seen change over the years. on cultural trends and perceptions of Africa should not be underestimated. He started his revolutionary career in journalism writing for publications like Dazed and Confused, The Big Issue and The Guardian while studying in the UK.
In 1995, at 24, he founded TRUE, an international fashion and music magazine, which became an immediate hit. It was renamed TrACE shortly after.
‘transculturalism’ – referring to those individuals who, in their lifestyles, transcend all traditional sociological notions of race, class or gender.
In 2003, he launched TRACE TV, the channel in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Groupe Lagardère. The platform, now broadcast in over 150 countries, was sold to European investors in 2010. His other ventures include TRUE Africa, a media-tech platform on the next thinking on culture and lifestyle. The Equity Alliance, launched in 2021, is a womenfocused investment fund. Claude is an avatar of the new African inventiveness and celebrated around the world and his continued success will inspire other creators coming up on the continent for years to come.
Larry Madowo, Kenya’s most famous TV anchor, has set the bar for aspiring African journalists by proving that no stage is too big. Starting out at the Kenya Television Network (KTN), he has since worked his way through almost all the big TV channels.
After several years with Kenya news channels he moved to CNBC Africa as one of the main anchors of market day shows Open Exchange, Power Lunch and Closing Bell.
In 2018, he joined BBC News Africa as its Business Editor and went on to become the North America Correspondent in 2020 during Covid-19. correspondent was reporting on a nonAfrican country for a major news outlet.
Madowo took a break from journalism in 2019 for a fellowship at Columbia Journalism School. He graduated from Columbia with a Master of Arts in Business and Economics Journalism in 2020. His master’s thesis on African e-commerce pioneer Jumia’s tumultuous Stock Exchange won the Philip Greer Scholarship Award for Financial Writing.
Madowo was selected as the World Economic Forum in March 2020. He was nominated as World Journalist June 2020. He is currently international correspondent for CNN after being promoted from Kenya correspondent in 2021.
GHANA-UK EDITOR
Edward Enninful fashion
Edward Enninful OBE is never too far away from the limelight. Regularly snapped next to today’s hottest stars on the red carpet in Milan, New York or Paris, he is a heavyweight in global fashion as the editor-in-chief of British Vogue and European editorial director at Condé Nast.
Enninful was born in Ghana but moved to London at an early age. His mother was a seamstress, which inspired him with the vividly patterned colours and fabrics she used while creating clothing for her British-Ghanaian friends.
At the age of 16, Enninful was spotted on a train by a stylist, who encouraged him to start modelling and helping out at an up-and-coming fashion magazine called i-D.
On his 18th birthday the director of the publication gave Enniful the position of fashion director, which made him the youngest-ever person to hold the position for an international magazine. Since that moment, Enninful has gone from strength to strength in the fashion world.
In 1998, he became contributing editor to Italian Vogue and then in 2006 he became contributing fashion editor for American Vogue. In 2011, he was cherrypicked to take over W, a struggling highend Condé Nast publication.
Under Enninful’s direction, W generated considerable attention for its riskier editorial, including the March 2012 cover shot by Steven Klein featuring model Kate Moss depicted as a nun, as well as another cover featuring singer Nicki Minaj dolled up as an 18thcentury French courtesan. Enninful was British Vogue on 10 April 2017, making magazine.
His hugely entertaining as well as moving memoir, A Visible Man was published in September 2022 and became an instant bestseller. It was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and drew record audiences.
ZAMBIA ECONOMIST
Dambisa Moyo Standing orthodoxy on its head
Dambisa Moyo’s is the voice in the room challenging comforting, long- held assumptions with incisive and uncomfortable alternative opinions. And that is exactly what makes her such a valuable presence in the boardrooms of major companies and in the Presidential world.
Her line of thinking is far from whatever is the orthodox view but it is this approach that makes her such an and to challenge the status quo.
In 2009, she grabbed the world’s attention when she published Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, in which she argued that the years and the billions spent on aid to Africa had achieved precisely the opposite of what was intended.
Subsequent books including How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – and the Stark Choices Ahead and Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What It Means for the World, as well as Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It and How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World (published in 2021) presented similarly challenging views but also engaged in solid argument and companies can get far better results. ‘establishment’ when as part of the UK’s 2022 Special Honours, Moyo received a life peerage – and in November, she was created Baroness Moyo of Knightsbridge in the City of Westminster.
But whether sitting in the house of Lords, company boardrooms or touring the lecture circuit, you can bet that Dambiso Moyo will continue to challenge established opinions with even more vigour.
NIGERIA JOURNALIST, PUBLISHER
Moky Makura Portraying Africa at its best
Nigeria-born Moky Makura is focused on telling the African story from the African perspective and changing the narrative template set by the Western media of consistently portraying the continent in a negative light.
Makura has a great deal of journalistic experience, which includes being a TV presenter, producer, author, publisher, entrepreneur and currently, Executive Director of the Africa No Filter website.
Through research, advocacy and grant-making, Africa No Filter, based in South Africa, supports contemporary stories of and from Africans.
From presenting on South Africa’s actuality show Carte Blanche, she co-produced and presented Living It, showcasing the lifestyles of Africa’s wealthy elites. She wrote Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs, published by Penguin (with a foreword by Richard Branson). She even graced our screens as a lead character in the popular MNET series, Jacob’s Cross.
Moky compiled and published a number of books that showcased the continent under her imprint MME Media, including South Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs. She started a mass book series called Nollybooks aimed at getting young Africans to read and adapted the series for television, coproducing over 21 low-budget movies for the South African TV station etv.
The latest development, under her imprint MME, Women on Top, is a weekly podcastwhich highlights stories of African women who punch through the glass ceiling.
MOROCCO-FRANCE WRITER
Leila Slimani The grand lady of letters
Born in Rabat, Morocco, Leila Slimani moved to Paris in 1999 to study political science, but later fell in love with journalism. She worked for Jeune Afrique until 2012, where she received critical including the Arab Spring.
However, after her son was born, she decided to give up journalism as she had only recently been arrested while reporting in Tunisia. She published her In the garden with the ogre,
with French publisher Gallimard in 2014. The novel fared well with French critics and won her the La Mamounia literary award in Morocco.
Two years later she followed up with the psychological thriller Chanson douce, which won the Prix Goncourt, turning her into a literary star in France and making her known to international audiences as well.
Slimani is a brilliant mind who loves a good argument. She’s at the centre of numerous intellectual debates around gender, the question of identity and today’s fractured world, not least in North Africa.
Her French grandmother met her Moroccan grandfather in World War to liberate France. of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. She is also a French diplomat in her capacity as the personal representative of the French President Emmanuel Macron to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, and is a close adviser to the President who doesn’t shy away from making her thoughts known.
Her novel Chanson douce won the Prix Goncourt, turning her into a literary star in France as well as internationally.
NIGERIA STRATEGIST
Nkiru Balonwu Mentoring business know-how
Nkiru Balonwu is a Nigeria-based entrepreneur and activist. Her provides expertise on organisational strategy and stakeholder engagement through social outreach, government relations, investor relations and reputation management.
Prior to starting RDF Strategies, Balonwu was the CEO at Spinlet, an award-winning leading international digital music platform for African music Africa.
In 2017 she created Bukkipa, a user processes for individuals and SMEs. She advises various creative industry and technology start-ups on go-tomarket strategies, and is a mentor at the Founder Institute, the world’s largest pre-seed start-up accelerator.
A champion of women-led solutions, Balonwu has advised government agencies, political parties and private sector organisations on womeninclusive policies and strategies.
In the same vein, she founded and co-chairs African Women on Board (AWB) and sits on the boards of Girly Essentials and Rele Gallery. She regularly provides assistance and support to young women seeking to enter executive roles. Balonwu received the Powerlist 2020 International Award in recognition of her work with African Women on Board.
Her latest innovation is the Africa Soft Power Project, created to leverage the continent’s ‘soft’ power in the creative and cultural industries.
NIGERIA JOURNALIST
David Hundeyin Fearless speaker of truth to power
If you are at the head of a tech company in Africa, chances are that you have heard of David Hundeyin but if you discover he is investigating your company, it will probably make you very nervous.
The Nigerian journalist broke one of Africa’s biggest business stories this year, exposing a toxic culture of fraud and harassment at the multi-billion The story went viral after he posted it on his newsletter, West Africa Weekly.
Recently, he has been taking aim at Nigeria’s Presidential candidate Bola Tinubu. His latest exposé claims that Tinubu has committed perjury due to identify theft and fraudulent documents.
He describes his job as “irritating powerful people for a living” and therefore must live in exile under asylum protection. He is the recipient of numerous awards including The People Journalism Prize for Africa 2020 for his work unravelling predatory legislation that was being rushed through Nigeria’s House of Representatives.
In December last year, he was named the GRC (Governance Risk Compliance) Nigeria’s GRC Awards. Most recently in March 2022, his Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) investigation Who Killed Hiny Umoren? made the global shortlist at the 2022 Sigma Awards for data journalism.
Journalist David Hundeyin describes his job as ‘irritating powerful people for a living’, which means living in exile under asylum protection.
CAMEROON ACADEMIC
Landry Signé Thought leader extraordinaire
Landry Signé is a thought leader and academic career of working and teaching in prestigious institutions across Africa, Europe and North America.
He taught an award-winning course at Stanford, presenting Africa as a continent of economic opportunities (Emerging African Markets: Strategies, , winning the African Network Outstanding Visionary Leadership Award and the Stanford University’s Center for African Studies Distinguished Leadership Award “in recognition and honour of distinguished contributions to African studies, innovative teaching, outstanding mentorship, and exceptional service to the community.”
He is currently a senior fellow on the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution.
He was previously a David M.
Rubenstein Fellow at Brookings.
His career and research span the areas of global political economy, global governance and sustainable development, global business and emerging markets, strategic management and leadership, fragility, state capacity and policy implementation, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Globalisation 4.0, and the political economy of Africa and developing countries. Signé was also a visiting scholar or has taught at the universities of Oxford, Stanford, Georgetown, Montreal, Ottawa,
Witwatersrand, as well as the Sub-
Regional Institute of Statistics and
Applied Economics in Central Africa,
Mohamed VI Polytechnic University and HEC Paris School of Management.
SENEGAL-ITALY / SOCIAL MEDIA STAR
Khaby Lame The TikTok king with the golden smile
It has been a crazy few years for Khaby Lame, Senegal’s TikTok sensation. In 2020, the 22-year-old was working in a started making TikTok videos.
Two years later and the internet star is the most followed person on the social media platform to date, accruing an estimated $12m in wealth along the way. Lame became popular through his trademark smile, which he would use in silent videos while looking at things.
He was born in Senegal but his parents relocated to Italy when he was one year old.
Reviewers Taylor Lorenz and Jason Horowitz of the New York Times attributed Lame’s success to his “universal exasperated everyman quality” and described his rise to fame TikTok stars in being “entirely organic”. Samir Chaudry, the founder of The Publish Press, a newsletter focused on the creator economy, stated that Lame’s appeal derived from his emphasising “authenticity over production” and “not trying too hard”. Christina Ferraz, the founder of American marketing agency Thirty6Five, stated, “His exasperation is relatable, and the feelings are universal.”
Lame has credited his popularity to his humorous facial expressions and his silence, which he has described as “a way to reach as many people as possible”. In February this year, six of the 25 mostliked Tik-Tok videos were his.
Two years after starting to make TikTok videos, Lame is the most followed person on the platform, with an estimated $12m in accrued wealth.
NIGERIA MEDIA MOGUL
Mo Abudu Explosive creative energy
Mo Abudu has been described by CNN as Africa’s ‘Queen of Media who conquered the continent’. She is the CEO of the EbonyLife Group, which includes all EbonyLife Media assets and entertainment resort.
Abudu gained recognition for her successful talk show, Moments with Mo, which began in 2006. She had the vision to develop a Pan-African platform, EbonyLife TV, launched in 2013 on DSTV.
What originated as a desire to change the negative stereotypes of Africa on 2014. She has since produced a string of blockbusters such as: Fifty, The Wedding Party, Chief Daddy, The Royal Hibiscus Hotel and Your Excellency.
She was the executive producer of 2020. EbonyLife Media is currently in production discussions with the BBC and Hollywood greats, Will and Jada Smith’s Westbrook Studios.
In 2021, the EbonyLife story made study of a media company led by an African female to be taught at the Harvard Business School. She was also selected to be a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars) in the producer category, and is the only African woman to have achieved this feat.
The EbonyLife story recently made history when it became the fi rst case study of a media company led by an African female to be taught at Harvard Business School.
GUINEA-BISSAU ECONOMIST
Carlos Lopes At the forefront of Africa’s economic policy
Carlos Lopes is one of Africa’s foremost economic thinkers, having spent years in the engine room of the continent’s economic policy. He is the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) where he served from 2012 to 2016.
He continues to have a massive a regular contributor to the media and
A specialist in development and strategic planning, he has written or edited 22 books and has taught at universities and academic institutions in Lisbon, Coimbra, Zurich, Uppsala, Mexico City, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
In addition to belonging to a large number of academic networks, he has contributed to the creation of non-governmental organisations and research institutions in the social sciences, particularly in Africa.
He currently sits on the board of directors or on the advisory or editorial board of a dozen institutions, the International Institute for Educational Planning of UNESCO, and the African Sociological Review and African Identities.
He started his career in the civil service of his home country, GuineaBissau, where he said the numerous challenges inspired him to want to Africa.
KENYA JOURNALIST
Zain Verjee Crafting and changing narratives
Zain Verjee has one of the most distinguished and recognised careers in journalism, with a background as a storyteller, entrepreneur, communicator and interviewer.
She is well-known as a former CNN anchor and State Department correspondent, who has made a successful transition into the world of communications and creative Group, builds communications products for emerging markets that empower citizens.
She has worked with a deep line-up of organisations and entities such as Bloomberg Media and Philanthropies, the Mastercard Foundation, the UN and many more on their communications and public relations delivery and strategies via advisory, consulting, and content production. Today she has the ear of some of the most high-ranking Africans in politics and business, including at the highest echelons of the UN. Executive producer of the recent Unstoppable Africa event during the UN General Assembly, she is a highly sought-after facilitator and interviewer and has spoken on platforms such as TED and Africa House.
A serial entrepreneur who believes in changing the narrative, she cofounded aKoma Media, a continental network of workspaces for Africa’s creative and cultural economy, in 2015. Other ventures in the creative space include Amplify, a content creator fellowship with participants from East and West Africa and the US, in partnership with Mastercard Foundation. Zain resides in Nairobi and LA.
Verjee is well-known as a former CNN anchor who has made a successful transition into the world of communications and creative entrepreneurship.
BURUNDI-BELGIUM CHEF
Chef Coco Reinarhz Michelin Man
Burundian ‘Chef Coco’ has reinvented African soul food with a French gourmet twist.
After learning to cook from his mother in Kinshasa’s most fashionable restaurant Pili Pili, Coco Reinarhz has gone on to lead Africa’s culinary renaissance.
The 54 year-old graduate from the Ecole Hotelière de la Province de Namur in Belgium, cut his teeth in kitchens from Antwerp to Abidjan, before basing himself in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Having gained celebrity status with Epicure in Johannesburg, he now plans to open branches in Michelin hotspots from London, Dubai, Paris and New York.
Chef Coco was the star of the Dubai Expo where he put African culinary specialities at the centre of the cultural experience.
The go-to chef for African cuisine will be cooking up a storm in Chanel’s upcoming Africa launch in Senegal in December. TV news analyst and hard-talk interviewer Sonia Mabrouk sharply divides opinion, but love her or loathe her, you cannot ignore her, say the millions who have been watching her on some of the most popular French channels.
Born in Tunis in 1977, she is the granddaughter of a Trade Minister and the niece of a Tunisian ambassador to France. Her childhood was dominated by the Habib Bourguiba era with its emphasis on education and modernity.
She attended a business school in Tunis (both as student and teacher) before moving to Paris to try her hand at journalism. In 2005, she joined the Jeune Afrique.
She quickly moved on to become the news on a French channel, Public Sénat. In 2013, she joined Europe1, where she now presents the Sunday morning political programme. In 2017, she joined the news channel CNews, where she hosts the midday slot.
Today she has one of the most sought-after ‘black books’ in the country. In France, the political elite are queueing up to be on her show.
Her interview technique is said to be ‘sharp’ although she has also been accused of going ‘soft’ on some her interviewees. She’s also criticised for being ‘too close’ to many right-wing says she represents French common sense. next year with the eagerly anticipated release of her book of essays that she says “may raise some eyebrows” – and plenty of blood pressures, one would think!
TUNISIA MEDIA
Sonia Mabrouk for a living
