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This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on May 30, 2024. Listen to the podcast here.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Welcome to Into Africa. My name is Mvemba Phezo Dizolele. I'm a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is a podcast where we talk everything Africa, politics, economics, security, and culture. Welcome.
The biggest challenges that Africa faces today is not lack of economic development, is not lack of economic growth, is not technology. It's none of the above. The biggest challenge that Africa faces today are the narratives that we've created around Africa.
Africa is seen as another planet altogether. We still talk about Africa in so many ways as the dark continent. You talk to investors, they will tell you why they cannot go to Africa. They give you all the risks. The reality is Africa is a place that is booming with opportunities, with creativity, with an entire spectrum of all the good stuff that anybody will want. Good demographics, good weather, resources and so on. It behooves us then those of us in the policy space to start reflecting the realities on the continent. It's not all rosy, that's not what I mean. I mean that there are challenges, but then there are challenges everywhere.
But if we continue freezing Africa into the 15th century, talking about it today in the 21st century the same way the "explorers" talked about it, then we've not made any progress. And this is a big challenge, particularly in the West. The Chinese, the Indians, the Arabs, they look at it slightly differently because often it reminds them of home. Today, on Into Africa, my host is Claude Grunitzky, who is the founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa, a media tech platform championing young African voices all over the world. Claude should not be a stranger to Into Africa audience because last year Claude joined us on an episode where we discussed ways African investors can support African creatives and move that narrative forward. Today's Claude is joining us again in his capacity as the host of Limitless Africa, a podcast that asks the questions that matters to Africa. Claude Grunitzky, welcome to Into Africa.
Claude Grunitzky: Wonderful to be with you again, Mvemba. I really was listening to you and when you referred to me as the host and I felt like in this case I'm the guest and not the host. I'm the host of Limitless Africa, but it just reminds me that Into Africa and Limitless Africa, we really are on the same beat with the same mission. So it's a great pleasure to be with you again.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Fantastic. So when I was introducing you and said Limitless the podcast that ask questions that's married to Africa, I'm like, what does this guy think? What do we do? We ask questions that matter to Africa. (laughs).
Claude Grunitzky: (laughs).
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: So, so, so well…
Claude Grunitzky: The more so the merrier (laughs).
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Exactly. We need this. That's exactly what we need. Claude, Limitless Africa, what is it? What do you do there and what should we know about your work?
Claude Grunitzky: Well, Limitless Africa is a podcast that I launched with a wonderful team and with the support of the US Department of State in 2022. And what we do is very simple. We let Africans have their say. So I'm the host and I talk to guests from all over the continent about the issues that matter to Africans. As an African, as a native son of Lome in Togo, I've been fortunate enough to travel all over the world to launch businesses, to sell businesses, to actually do very well. And I really want to shine a light on the people that I met throughout these journeys. And I really feel that there's so many interesting Africans who don't get given a microphone so they can tell the story from their perspective as opposed to the western perspective on Africa, which is the predominant narrative and always has been.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: When you say Africans are not given the microphone to tell their stories, our friends in the press will say, we are on the continent, we're in Africa, we interview Africans all the time. What is it that is missing?
Claude Grunitzky: What's missing is lived experience and real understanding of African history, African challenges, African solutions, and African mindsets. So a lot of my friends are journalists because I started out as a journalist when I was in my early 20s. I started TRACE when I was 23 years old. And that magazine, which then became a television network, was all about giving a voice to Africans, whether they're in Africa or outside of Africa. But what I find is that many of the people who report from Africa, they just hop in and hop out. What do I mean by that? They show up for three, four days, they speak to four or five people, usually always the same people, and then they write their story and they go back to London or Paris or Washington or wherever they might be living. And I got tired of reading those sort of articles from people who are just, in my view, just tourists reporting on Africa as opposed to Africans who really know how things are going and what the real challenges are on the ground, and also what the real solutions to these challenges might be.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: There've been talks for a while now that a lot of the large newspapers and media outlet, they've reduced their presence in Africa. So whereas in the past they may have had a lot of journalists, reporters across the continent. Now they may have one person Nairobi, one in Dakar, maybe one in South Africa. What I'm hearing you saying is that that is problematic because they hop in come for a few days and leave. How do you remedy that?
Claude Grunitzky: Well, I feel like there's a void and we're trying to fill that void. I read The Economist, I've been reading The Economist for the past 25 years. And now their Africa section is really just lumped in with the Middle East. And as you can imagine these days, the Middle East and Africa section is 95% Middle East and 5% Africa. And that void we need to fill it. To me, it's an opportunity for Africans to really have our say in these issues that relate to the future of Africa. That's why with Limitless Africa, we have actually doubled our frequency. We have a 15-minute episode that drops every Monday and also an extended interview that drops on Thursday.
And when people subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we get them to kind of come back to our perspective on Africa versus always relying on what The New York Times is doing, what The Economist is doing, what the Financial Times is doing, what Le Monde is doing, what the Guardian is doing. And so I feel like there's an opportunity for Africans to have our say in these very important topics that I consider to be important not just to the future of Africa, Mvemba, but also to the future of the world, given the fact that Africa is the fastest growing continent and also the youngest continent with what is in- inevitably gonna be vitality as to what kind of promise the world holds for young people.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: So there are two elements there. On one level is the dearth, if you will, the limitation of the way the Western media may be approaching Africa. A lot of these journalists, you and I know them very seasoned. They understand the subtleties, they understand. So on one level what you're saying is there need to be more depth of the coverage, but at the same time I also hear you say it's not just about depth, you know the depth of of that. It's about the substance, the nuances, the subtleties. Is that gap being bridged in one, in the newspapers themself? Are this how this conversation that you've had with your friends or do we need to go to the Limitless of the world, to the Into Africa of the world, to the Chimamanda's of the world to bridge that?
Claude Grunitzky: Well, I'm obviously biased because I've spent my entire adult life reporting on African culture, right? So this is what I've done throughout my 20s, 30s, and 40s, and now also into my early 50s. And what I'll also say is that I feel like a lot of people are getting tired of this reporting that they see in the newspapers that you mentioned or in the magazines that you mentioned. I mean, as I said, I'll give The Economist as an example again because I really love The Economist, but when I read their story a few days ago on how war and climate change are overwhelming Somalia and how they report in the three decades of conflict in Somalia, it just always kind of reinforces the same perception that Africa is just war in conflict everywhere. Of course there's war in conflict in Africa that needs to be reported on in the same way that journalists report on the war in Ukraine or the war in Gaza.
But the people that really are living through this war in conflict are often misunderstood in this reporting, which is usually always so kind of one-sided because the people who are writing these stories do not understand African mentalities. And so I feel like the Into Africa's the Limitless Africa's, I feel like this is our opportunity to finally express ourselves on these issues and also kind of balance the view that is being portrayed by these very kind of established media entities that have in some cases become conglomerates and are all about what kind of story will attract more advertising or more viewers versus we have a different model. Our model is to really find ways to broadcast our podcasts also via radio partnerships all over the continent so that even people who do not have access to the internet can still listen to our reporting.
So we're not just trying to influence the elite readers of these publications. We're also finding ways to bring this Limitless Africa to people all over the continent in three different languages, in French, in English, and also in Portuguese. And in the future we're gonna add African languages as well because that's the only way we can be truly inclusive as opposed to living in an echo chamber, which is always about influencing the people in the know and the people who are super highly educated and who subscribe to these very important broadsheets that we've been talking about.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: The name Limitless, why?
Claude Grunitzky: I wanted a name that felt very positive and that spoke to the unlimited kind of limitless potential of Africa. People always talk about Africa's potential, but they don't actually really explain that Africans can achieve things on a scale of what Americans are achieving, what Europeans have achieved and so on. And so Limitless is really finding a way to really promote and also challenge some of the people who we consider to be real important voices for the future of Africa. Whether they're entrepreneurs, whether they're activists, whether they're political leaders, these people have a really important role to play in helping to advance the continent and put us on a stage that we feel like we deserve to be on. And so in the way that we tackle some of these topics, we ask questions that are controversial, that are thought-provoking and informative. And the objective is to make sure that people really speak the truth, how they really feel without any fear that they might be misunderstood.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: And the kind of people you bring on your Limitless show, how do you tap into them? It's obviously be huge undertaking if you're doing programs in French, English, Portuguese, and in partnership with various broadcasting platforms across the continent, it's a vast undertaking, no? Just to select the people to come.
Claude Grunitzky: It's very difficult, it's very difficult. But we have meetings, we have a producer who focuses on English language. We have a producers who focuses on French language and another producer who focuses on Portuguese language. And when we bring together the Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone perspectives, you also have to balance those perspectives with Africans living in different parts of Africa and also the perspective of Africans living in the diaspora and also the perspective of non-Africans who happen to love Africa.
And so that's how we were able to curate a list that is really about some amazing guests that really showcase the plurality of African talent. I'll just give a few examples, Mvemba. We also have Nollywood as a big topic that we've been discussing since season one. We're on season two and we're about to record season three in a few months. We were able to interview the legendary Nollywood director, Kunle Afolayan, and he came on and he told us about his groundbreaking partnership with Netflix and gave some amazing advice for aspiring filmmakers. That's really a must listen for aspiring film directors out there.
And then in the subject of film, we'll bring in a different perspective, which is the perspective of the actor Denim Richards, he's an American actor living in Botswana, but he's known mostly in the media and in the film world for being the black cowboy in the TV series Yellowstone. Yellowstone is currently the most popular TV show in the whole world. And so we asked him about why he as an, as a Californian, as an African American decided to move to Botswana and how he actually happened to have been named the Director for Media Arts and Culture for the African Union. So that interview is really inspiring and full of ideas on how we can build an African film industry in the way that Nollywood was built in Nigeria as a really vibrant film industry and how we can build African industries to rival Hollywood.
And then we'll go even further. We'll interview head of state. So I did an interview with the President Neves of Cape Verde at MIT last year for a series I do for MIT where I'm a graduate of MIT. So I'm very involved with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president, President Neves, who's a sitting president of Cape Verde, he agreed to be interviewed, but this time it's not just by me, it's gonna be him answering tough questions from young people in Cape Verde. And these young people are under the age of 25. And this is where Africa's future lies.
And for us, it's a bit of a town hall conversation with the head of state where he needs to answer clearly when he's asked questions by the young people who have fears and hopes as to his presidency. So that's how we manage to balance these different perspectives, whether it's supermodels or champion boxers or chefs or venture capitalists, we want people to tune in and be surprised and entertained, given the diversity of the voices that we promote on Limitless Africa.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: The diversity of voices that you promote means that you're catering to a lot of types of people. You just mentioned the youth. How do you ensure that that audience, all those audiences are all getting their share in the messaging?
Claude Grunitzky: That's the most difficult part of the job because the audiences that listen to Limitless Africa on the podcast are people who are maybe a little bit more educated, who already have a habit of listening to podcasts who are digital savvy or some of them are digital natives. And these are people who mostly are living in the African diaspora, mostly in the United States, but also in the UK, France, Germany, we have listeners in Brazil and all the way in Japan and China. But the reality is the very large majority of people who listen to Limitless Africa, they get it on the radio. And as I said, we have radio partnerships with over 20 African countries and these are radio stations that are broadcasting in English, French, and Portuguese, as I said, whether it's Lagos or Maputo or Nairobi, Freetown, Niamey, Kinshasa, we have partnerships in all those cities and we wanna foster conversations across the continent.
But the reason I say this is a very difficult endeavor is when we pick these guests and these topics, we need to make sure that these conversations will be relevant to the very highly educated people who listen to the podcast, as well as people who listen on the radio on the African continent who may not have the same level of education. So we need to answer questions by not dumbing it down, but making sure we ask a lot of clarifying questions and explain things in a pretty simple way so that we're not just a podcast for the super-elite, highly educated Africans, but also for everyday Africans who want something that relates to things that are top of mind for them.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: This is an issue of access, right? Access, not just in terms of the technology and the physical part of access to the information, but also access to the substance that is being delivered, right? Having the knowledge, the preparation to grasp what the message is.
Claude Grunitzky: It's a knowledge and the preparation to grasp it. But also when you say access, that is something that I spent a lot of time thinking about because a lot of our young Africans and Africans in general, on the continent, do not have access to internet connectivity in order to get this information that is kind of flowing through the information industries that we operate in. And that makes me so upset when I think of how much these telcos charge everyday Africans for internet access and how much they have to pay out of their own pocket to be able to listen to my podcast. It makes me so upset. And I feel like they're robbing the citizens of access to information. And this is why the radio partnerships are so important to the work that we do.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: That's an important challenge you just fleshed out there. Are you working, you talked about your partnership with radio stations, do you also have any partnership with Telecom. Telecom, the Vodacoms of the world, the MTNs, the Zain wielding a lot of influence uh, across the continent? Have you managed to access them?
Claude Grunitzky: We have not yet managed to access them, but that might be the next frontier. And I'm gonna have to come very prepared for that battle. And I'm calling it a battle because they are so used to exploiting people and it's really capture, they capture all the value from this digital transformation that is changing lives all over the world. And specifically in the world that I look at, which is the African world. And they're so used to being the dominant voice in any negotiation and they're so used to having the upper hand in any negotiation that I wanna come to them with the growing success that we have with Limitless Africa and say, "We want you to promote our podcasts and help to distribute it but on our terms." Versus the very exploitative business practices, practices that have allowed you to become these huge companies just by basically profiting from the oligopolistic or in some cases monopolistic situations that you're in, in the countries in which you operate.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: The world is fully integrated now, at least for the most part. You talk about African voices, the African voices obviously are part of an ecosystem. It's a global ecosystem and it's a two-way sometime multi-way street. You also need to engage the Greater North. How do you greater North you... how do you engage the Greater North within your platform then?
Claude Grunitzky: I engaged the Greater North with the platform because I'll be honest, the Greater North has been the source of funding for my ventures since I started out in my early 20s as a media entrepreneur. So I've engaged in Greater North by knocking on these doors of these big corporations and institutions and asking for money to fund my media ventures. So I've been able to secure funding from very established institutions and corporations including Goldman Sachs, Facebook, Google, and the Greater North the US government via the US Department of State is the lead funder and sponsor of the Limitless Africa podcast. So that's how I engage them because they provide funding and uh, in some cases insights as to how to scale these media ventures that I've been kind of launching since again, I was in my early 20s, whether it was TRACE Magazine, TRACE TV, TRUE Africa, which is the producer of the Limitless Africa podcast or other ventures.
And so I look at them as financial partners and as start partners, but my focus has always been the global south. I spent, again, my entire life, adult life focused on how to elevate the global south by pushing through new narratives that were a little bit less stereotypical in most cases, a lot less stereotypical than the dominant narratives out there. And so I want to find a way to get funding from the global north in order to empower the global south because I haven't unfortunately had very much success in getting funding from the global south.
I've tried to get funding from African billionaires, I've tried to get funding from African institutions and corporations and I have failed. And that's on me. I'm gonna keep working at it. And maybe what you mentioned around press partnerships with some of these telcos might be the way to get funding for some of these projects that are really only about elevating African voices. You know, I've always said that my role is to champion young African voices all over the world and I'm gonna keep doing that until the day I die. But when I think about the global north, I really want them to understand that our perspective and approach to media and media dissemination is really important because that's the kind of partnership that can work going forward.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Beyond the tech, uh, beyond the support, the financial support and the funding, it strikes me that part of the endeavor that you're undertaking now is by providing the voices, the African voices a platform I think is not wrong to presume that what you're trying to create is a new set of conversations between the global south and the greater global north. If that is the case, it's gotta be a multi-way. It's not just the African voices taking hold of the space, but the African voices in conversation with the voices from the north. Will that be correct? If that's the case, how are you bringing in then the voices from the north to be part of the conversation with the global self?
Claude Grunitzky: Yeah, well, that's another fantastic question. And you've seen me operate, Mvemba, in different environments. Last time you saw me operate in Morocco at the Atlantic Dialogues Conference, and that was a way to really find ways to engage with both the North and the South around these issues that are important to us. But because of my success as a media entrepreneur and now an investor, I get invited to some of the biggest stages, right? Whether it's a World Economic Forum or all these other forums, because I get invited, I always make sure that I push our agenda around the importance of independent African media that is owned by African media entrepreneurs. And that is really about pushing the perspective of Africans. And so because I've been harping on about this for so long and because I do have the privilege of getting these invitations, I always tell the same story.
And that's why I always find ways for the north to engage with some of our issues in Africa. But from the African perspective once again, and which is why I always find ways in the Limitless Africa podcast to address issues that are about democracy in Africa, human rights in Africa, entrepreneurship in Africa, women's empowerment in Africa, health in Africa, and climate change in Africa and other topics. And I feel like the solutions will come not just from Africans brainstorming and ideating in their local corners, but also in conversation with some of the technologies that are being developed in the north. And because I'm a bit of a conduit to conversations between various continents, and I've been doing this for so long, I feel like in the future we might be successful in establishing new kinds of win-win partnerships that are sparked by some of these dialogues that we enable through the Limitless Africa podcast.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: You are a pioneer and many of you out there African voices are, you know, you, Chimamanda Adichie and others, how do you ensure or maybe you cannot ensure, but at least you can enable more voices. So you take, you take more of these African voices in the spaces where you, you are invited.
Claude Grunitzky: Well, the thing about those of us who've been successful as Africans is that unfortunately we all know each other because it's a pretty small circle and we meet at the same events, the same conferences, we get invited on the same panels and we speak. And I don't wanna be having the same conversations with people like Chimamanda and others. I want that circle to broaden and include more people because we are the go-to people for a lot of these initiatives that are about exploring new pathways to a more sustainable future for Africa. And so what I'm trying to do now is to expand the circle by including some of the people that I've been mentoring and some of the people that I've been watching from afar, given how much I admire the work that they do. You know, one woman that I always mention because she's so fearless and so amazing and so limitless and who we had in the first season of Limitless Africa and we've brought back for the second season of Africa and we probably bring back for the third season of Limitless Africa next year, is Maya Horgan Famodu.
She is an investor, a venture capitalist who was raised in Minnesota by a white American mother. She didn't really know her Nigerian father until she moved to Lagos and decided to start investing in African tech businesses from Lagos. And those kind of repat stories of people who are doers who are still very young. Maya is in her early 30s. And she's investing in wonderful companies and really pointing to her investments in unicorns like which is billion-dollar companies that are coming out of Africa that are creating jobs that are really training knowledge workers.
Those people inspire me so much and I wanna bring more of them into the various conversations that I'm either moderator in or participating in or keynote speaker in. And I think that the Limitless Africa podcast is a wonderful way to use the Hub that is a podcast to spark new dialogues around the issues that truly matter to Africa. So my goal is for our circle to expand so it's not just the same 2 or 300 people that are on the circuit. Now it becomes a few thousand people. You are already in the circuit, Mvemba, you are already a thought leader. But I want there to be a few thousand thought leaders that are really engaging with all kinds of media entities and corporations and institutions around these issues of African development.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: In every endeavor, there is always uh, an opportunity to learn. Lesson learned are very important for all of us in whatever we do. You study Limitless. You implemented this in 2022. We are in the year of our lord 2024. You're going on two years. What have you learned? How has the platform evolved? How... have you evolved in your own engagement with these voices?
Claude Grunitzky: I've learned to speak more slowly (laughs).
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: (laughs). Okay. Okay.
Claude Grunitzky: I used to speak so fast and I still speak a little bit too fast for somebody whose voice is now being heard on the radio.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: You mean figuratively and literally (laughs).
Claude Grunitzky: Figuratively and literally. So I've learned to slow down and that is a big lesson of mine. So I have two important lessons in the way that I live my life now. One of them is slow down and the other one is less is more. So in the way that we have three guests on the Monday episode, now we extract one of those guests and we have an extended conversation, as I said earlier, with one of those guests on a Thursday. And I feel like going more in depth with fewer people is a wonderful way to actually grow our audience and actually help people to engage more deeply with the Limitless Africa podcast. And that's why we encourage people to use the hashtag Limitless Africa and even leave a review on whichever podcast platform they use because this really helps us to get the word about Limitless Africa out there. As I speak more slowly and lead with this less is more approach, I feel like there's gonna be more value for our listeners as they kind of tune into the Limitless Africa Podcast.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: And less is more.
Claude Grunitzky: Less is more (laughs). Less is more. Definitely
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: One of the space where you've left your mark is the cultural space. How have your personal journey and multicultural experiences influence this professional development of yours? And how do you tie it to Limitless?
Claude Grunitzky: I tie it to Limitless in a very direct way. So because so much of my life in media has been about finding ways to expand the creative industries that are coming from black perspectives and that are coming from African perspectives, we've had quite a few episodes on the creative industries coming out of Africa. I spoke about Kunle Afolayan and his experience in Nollywood really creating Nigerian narratives that could be relevant all over the world. I often speak about Afrobeats and how that has become such a big musical art form that is being consumed and enjoyed all over the world. And what we do with Limitless Africa is find those people who have such an interesting point of view on the future of the creative industries. And in the less is more approach, we find ways to extract more from that conversation. I'll give you an example.
There is a visit of President Ruto, the President of Kenya, who's coming to the White House next week for a state visit on the 23rd of May. And so what we ended up doing is we identified, uh, famous Kenyan actress, her name is Kate Kamau, and she has 2.4 million followers on Instagram. So she's a big star. She has a very popular Netflix show right now. And we get her to give us her perspective on the creative industries in Kenya and specifically on the film industry in Kenya and how we can create more African films that are gonna be watched all over the world.
And she's gonna do that and tell us about her visit to the White House, so President Biden, President Ruto and how she's able to strike new partnerships given the success of her show, Shiko, on, on Netflix. So these are the ways that we are looking to champion young African voices because most people outside of Africa don't know Kate Kamau, but she's a very important voice for Africa and I feel like I need to give her a megaphone.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Speaking of influencers 'cause that's what she is, and speaking of the impact of culture, African culture, and the rest of the world, what trends have you noticed over the last two years hosting Limitless?
Claude Grunitzky: The biggest trend that I've noticed, Mvemba, is the rise of Afrobeats that I just mentioned. As somebody who travels the world all the time, I was in a taxi in Kyoto, Japan because I go there every year in April for a photography festival that I've been involved in. It's called Kyotographie. And this very Japanese taxi driver who doesn't speak English was listening to Burna Boy. And then when I start hearing Burna Boy and Wizkid and Davido and all those Afrobeat stars in different parts of the world, I realized that the soft power that came with Afrobeats and that very, very specific African sound is something that is really helping to change perceptions of Africa. So as much work as I could do with Limitless Africa to change perception, I feel like those Afrobeat stars are the ones who are really doing the heavy lifting with their songs. So that is something that I feel is very significant as to the way that Africa is perceived.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Changing the perception of Africa. Claude Grunitzky, founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa and host of Limitless Africa, thank you for joining us today on Into Africa.
Claude Grunitzky: Thank you, Mvemba. It's such a pleasure to be talking to you again.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Thank you for listening. We want to have more conversations about Africa. Tell your friends, subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcast. You can also read our analysis and report at csis.org/africa. So long.
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