Hope everyone has had an enjoyable Labor Day weekend. For today’s issue of Hot Pod, I have a Q&A I conducted with Afripod’s chief content officer and head of strategy, Kevin Y. Brown. The— headquartered in Kenya — is considered the largest in the continent and is in the middle of an interesting partnership with radio stations. I got to hear Brown’s thoughts on the new initiative and — as well as how Afripods is spreading awareness of podcasting as a medium throughout Africa.
Well, one of the big things is barrier to entry. There are gatekeepers that exist in all industries, right? And so I think that podcasting allows people to be able to tell stories — no matter whether they’re in major metropolitan areas, more rural areas, on the coast — in a low-cost way.
Other barriers to entry can sometimes be data, and then also, it’s an access thing. Even in the West, podcasting is seen as an upper-echelon activity — whether you’re listening or you’re creating. What we’re trying to do at Afripods is make it accessible so that anyone can be a storyteller. We’ve seen something similar happen in the US, with radio stations gradually embracing podcasts. What factors led to this transition in Africa?
We were talking about the challenges, and one of the things that’s happening here — and I’m sure this is happening in the West — is that you might have a good podcast and you can advertise it on digital. But in order for it to take up airspace, like actually take up air, the advertisers have to underwrite both the digital and the on-air version.