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RAPT BizTrendsTV: Li Ndube on Afro-optimism - African growth vs Western degrowth
An example and proponent of Afro-optimism is pioneering entrepreneur and strategist, Li Ndube.
With over 15 years of experience in the ad agency and advertising space, Ndube’s award-winning generative AI project, Blawa Samurai has attracted global investor interest and collaborations.
He says Afro-optimism is simple to contextualise for a South African. “Think of yourself dealing with people who feel they have nothing to lose, and it is here that Afro-optimism starts."
Two things have brought this trend to the fore for him.
“One, when you also look at how saturated the world is with conventional ideas, there is a niche for hearing new voices that sound more positive about the future because Africans have nothing to lose.
“Two, when you start from a place of lack, technology is an opportunity.”
This interview is also available via downloadable App, Apple Podcasts and IONO.FM.
AI levelling the playing fields
He says technology, AI, in particular, is levelling the playing field. “Now everyone with a great idea can participate in this new economy.”
For him, it started three years ago when he lost his father and wanted to tell his story.
“I visualised it through a graphic novel called Blawa Samurai because, I envisioned my story captured as a hero's journey of this African samurai, but the whole plot is about this boy whose dad disappears.
“He goes on a journey to find him, and that is linked with my personal story and the relationship I had with my dad."
After this, he kept exploring what else this journey could be, from fashion to an animated series.
“Conversations are happening with global investors as we speak. And it started as a story,” he says.
A new narrative
When you look at entertainment, stories move the needle. He also thinks that people have seen the old stories to death.
“Africa is the one continent that hasn't been properly covered. Now there is this interest from outside the continent to hear this new narrative simply because consumers love them.”
Take Black Panther and what it has done for Marvel. It shows this appetite for African stories but reimagined. Gone are the days of Shaka Zulu.
He says that partly interlinked with Afro-optimism is this idea of how can we envision ourselves and present ourselves differently, be it through science fiction or fantasy or what has never happened before because stories that used to come out of Africa were based on folklore and history.
Generate local growth
The trick, he says, is to be able to take this for us, rather than kind of a new form of intellectual property colonization, to balance framing a new narrative for how Africa works with the rest of the world.
“We need to be smart around how we circulate that revenue within our economies to uplift and build our industries, or else, your ideas will get taken and produced offshore, and you grow nothing.”
Advice to creators
Ndube comes from a storytelling and advertising background. He says he is grateful to the industry because people don't appreciate working and pitching ideas for a living daily.
This he says meant that over time he became good at hearing no. “I spent time thinking about these barriers and how to get around them.”
He says he also knew what people were receptive to and positioned himself, accordingly.
“From this, my default setting became a guy trained how to sell ideas and envision ideas, with some commercial acumen who turns up in a world of storytelling.”
He wants to bring stories to light with other storytellers, who have great stories to tell, but because they don't have the network and don't know how to put themselves out there as well as don't know how to build business cases, their stories sadly won't see light of day.
“I trying to address this, with my project where I can now become an enabler because I understand the technology, the consumers, the trends, and I know how to build cases,” he says.
His advice to other creators includes:
- Do due diligence. Whatever story we create it needs to be tight because if you've got a tight story, you will have people.
- Be close with your target audience.
- There is a community for everything so find your tribe. You need to focus on your tribe and connecting and collecting with people that speak to whatever that vision is that you're trying to build.
- Invest in the technology. It can be costly, but I'm sure you'll find help along the way as well, plus technology is getting cheaper. But he warms cheaper also means more competition.
How we view ourselves
For him, it is about building on this journey.
“And if it inspires someone, I think that then spreads the optimism.
“If I could get one person like me in each African state, I think that could be a great thing because then you have 50-plus visionaries, and we're all working towards the same goal.”
He adds that it is about creating this idea do we view ourselves as Africans, how do we view entertainment, and then we can establish our own.
RAPT BizTrendsTV
BizTrendsTV is a collaboration between Bizcommunity, Rapt Creative and The Real-Networks consortium, and the first-of-its-kind trend show focusing on global topics impacting future socio-economic trends from a uniquely Afrocentric perspective.
Hosted by a leading voice in the African business trend ecosphere - fast-talking, fast-thinking Bronwyn Williams - futurist, economist, future finance specialist and business trends analyst - in conversion on trending topics such as AI, influencer farming, billionaire bunkers, distraction democracy, Gen Bees, hyper-capitalism, trade wars, exclusionary geopolitical policies, hot wars and more with leading PanAfrican futurists.
A new episode is available on the last Tuesday of every month at 8 am on Bizcommunity’s official website and via The Real Network digital platforms.
About Danette Breitenbach
Danette Breitenbach is a marketing & media editor at Bizcommunity.com. Previously she freelanced in the marketing and media sector, including for Bizcommunity. She was editor and publisher of AdVantage, the publication that served the marketing, media and advertising industry in southern Africa. She has worked extensively in print media, mainly B2B. She has a Masters in Financial Journalism from Wits.
