AMAKA Studio (AMAKA) launched on 11 March. Founded by 25-year-old Nigerian-American CEO Adaora Oramah, the online platform will spotlight nuanced stories for women from Africa and across the diaspora.
Intentionally launching the week of International Women’s Day, AMAKA kicks off by celebrating its reason for existence – Pan-African womanhood – for the entire month of March. The celebrations have begun with several high-profile interviews, including conversations with Kenyan-American singer-songwriter and actress Victoria Kimani and Nigerian superstar Teni.
With a mission to produce inclusive and culturally relevant content that represents the perspective of Pan-African women, AMAKA’s Editorial team will create content that unites women across geographical and language boundaries. One mission is to bridge the gap between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as create editorial content and events for French-speaking Africa and the African diaspora.
AMAKA will host a free virtual summit between 2-4 May, with Vista Bank as the title sponsor. Immersive sessions will cover various topics from economic empowerment to mental health, including dedicated French-speaking programming.
AMAKA’s Editor-in-Chief, Ivie Ani explains her editorial mission over the next 12 months, ‘I just hope that AMAKA’s main mission comes to fruition in that we develop trust between our work, our content, our voice, our platform and an audience – a devoted audience who feels like what we’re doing accurately represents them, educates them, entertains them, enlightens them and helps them to think critically about what they’ve already been living, experiencing, thinking about working on and creating.’
AMAKA plans to launch its podcast Here and Now in April. The bi-weekly series will be hosted by Ivie Ani and popular figures will be invited to share their personal and professional stories and offer advice.
AMAKA wishes to cultivate a sense of unity and collaboration amongst women in Africa and across the diaspora. As CEO Adaora Oramah explains, ‘The whole idea is to really bring AMAKA to life across various different platforms in a way that can help forge and create a very unique and tight-knit community. It’s important to me that AMAKA is a fully-inclusive community for all African women from across the world, however they identify.”’
AMAKA can be discovered further at www.amaka.studio and all latest updates will be shared on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts.