NEWS BITES
From engineering innovation in Africa to climate, nature and culture-led communications.
A round up of some recent work across our group, shaping how organisations build trust, relevance and impact.
Tag Archives: Africa
Royal Academy of Engineering
The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Programmes are advancing engineering innovation and sustainable development across sub-Saharan Africa.
We were engaged to raise the profile of the Africa Grants and Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, positioning them through a lens of diversity, inclusion, and impact.
Working with Academy stakeholders, we developed a unifying communications framework and toolkit to help awardees and partners share their stories with confidence. This informed a series of thought leadership articles on the value of UK–Africa collaboration. Anchoring activity around World Engineering Day, we secured 387 pieces of coverage in outlets such as Forbes and CNBC Africa, reaching an estimated 350m people in less than two weeks. Ten in-depth case studies, based on interviews with partners and beneficiaries, brought to life the Programmes’ transformative impact on skills and capacity building.
Our partnership has extended to global moments of advocacy. Ahead of COP26, we media trained Academy spokespeople and led targeted outreach under embargo, securing top-tier coverage in Kenya, Ethiopia and across the continent. A coordinated press release delivered a further 1,000 media hits, elevating awareness of the Academy’s leadership in tackling urgent issues such as open waste burning.
Most recently, we are supporting the Academy with strategic communications for the Africa Prize. By profiling 16 exceptional finalists, coordinating photo and video storytelling across seven countries, and preparing innovators for media and public speaking, we are showcasing Africa’s engineering excellence on the world stage. Early results include 388 pieces of coverage, with high-profile features in The Telegraph and BBC News Africa, reinforcing the Prize’s reputation as a catalyst for innovation and impact.
AMEA power
Gong was engaged to build the profile of AMEA Power, an ambitious and fast-growing Independent Power Producer (IPP) operating across Africa and the Middle East. At a time when the company was scaling its portfolio and seeking to establish itself as a trusted industry leader, we developed and executed a communications strategy to amplify its voice across influential media channels.
Our media programme delivered measurable impact: securing over 700 pieces of high-quality coverage across pan-African and Middle Eastern outlets, reaching investors, policymakers, and industry stakeholders in key markets.
To strengthen AMEA Power’s thought leadership credentials, we drafted and placed a series of high-impact opinion pieces in tier-one business and financial media, including CNBC and Arabian Business, shaping the conversation around renewable energy investment and sustainable growth.
In parallel, we positioned AMEA Power’s senior spokespeople as authoritative voices in the energy sector, securing broadcast interviews with CNBC and BBC Focus on Africa. These platforms gave AMEA Power an opportunity to articulate its vision for powering Africa’s future, while reinforcing its credibility as a partner of choice in the region.
Landscape Institute
Highlighting the role of landscape architects in building landscapes that support health and wellbeing and promote green recovery.
Gong worked with the Landscape Institute, the chartered body for the landscape profession, to highlight the role of landscape architects in building landscapes that combat climate change, support health and wellbeing, and promote the green recovery.
Gong’s sustainability communications team focused on increasing awareness of the Landscape Institute in media by telling the incredible stories of the winners of the Landscape Institute Awards.
After initial discovery work which included reviewing company stakeholders, analysis of the media landscape and conducting interviews with the various winners, we achieved coverage in target titles such as BALI, Horticulture Week, The Landscaper, and Architect’s Datafile.
Gong was re-engaged by the Landscape Institute to support the Landscape Institute Awards 2022, achieving coverage in trade and regional publications such as Specification and London Daily News.
Our sustainability comms specialists also helped the Landscape Institute to launch its Skills for Greener Places research at the body’s annual Jellicoe lecture. After reviewing and identifying key themes that would attract media interest around the report, Gong secured press release coverage in regional and trade titles such as London Daily News and Pro Landscaper, and follow up interviews with Landscape Institute stakeholders in Horticulture Week.
Where are the changemakers?
Crises – like the current Covid-19 pandemic – take a significant social and economic toll, yet they contain the dynamics for disruption from which new business models emerge. In a June 2020 survey by McKinsey, more than 90 per cent of executives said they expect the fallout from COVID-19 to fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years.
But where are these game changers, the companies challenging convention with the ability to open up new avenues of social, economic and financial growth? Here are three of our favourite examples of companies which are challenging convention and transforming industries right now.
Dive In Festival – adapting to a virtual platform to broaden reach of D&I issues
Despite a visible year-on-year growth for the insurance industry’s festival on diversity and inclusion – which Gong has worked to deliver since inception in 2015 – the Dive In Festival team’s swift response to physical events disappearing during the pandemic resulted in record-breaking attendance in 2020. By taking the event online, and running it virtually, Dive In recorded 30,153 attendees (three times that of the previous year), at 144 events globally, in 33 countries. The event has already proved to be award-winning, at the 2021 Africa SABRE awards, and the format will be replicated for the event in September 2021, when it will once again inspire discussion around important discussions such as racial equality and gender diversity in the workplace.
Visionable – changing how we access healthcare
Visionable is the first video collaboration platform designed especially for healthcare teams’ specialist clinical needs. It’s reimagining health and social care as we become more and more digitally connected. This article in the Financial Times outlines its success in improving results for stroke victims by allowing treatment by consultants via video link before they reach hospital. Even more recent though, is its Visionable Connect video calling app, allowing Covid patients to remain in contact with loved ones whilst in lockdown and professionals to support patients without having to visit their bedside, while PPE was in short supply. You can read the case study on this here.
DPO – encouraging financial inclusion via ecommerce in Africa
DPO Group is a home-grown Kenyan technology champion headquartered in Nairobi. Established 14 years ago, it has built and scaled electronic payment solutions that are now used by 50,000 merchants across Africa. It has a history of successful innovation – notably (according to this Forbes article on the company) because of the way it “respects the cultural differences that exist across Africa markets and builds products and local teams suited to each market”. DPO responded to an accelerated structural shift away from cash to online payments during the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak by offering many of its small firm customers the opportunity to process electronic payments in order to expand. One example is Artcaffe – a coffee and bakery chain with no previous online presence – which was able to become a much larger food ordering marketplace, using a DPO-powered website. Artcaffe now sells products on behalf of its suppliers and supports the livelihoods of many offline businesses during the crisis.
Africa Day: Celebrating luminaries in the creative sector
By Janet Ndugire, Senior Account Manager
Africa Day is an annual celebration of African unity, to commemorate the founding of the African Union. This year’s theme, “Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building the Africa we Want”, presents a unique opportunity for the continent to celebrate great individuals who have played a key role in promoting the creative industries.
To celebrate this day, we are shining a light on the work of some outstanding creatives in East Africa. The work that they do within the creative economy acts as a major contributor to Africa’s growth transformation and stands as testament to the outstanding talent within the creative sector in Africa today.
Eugene Kavuma, Co-Founder Kampala Design Week
Through Kampala Design Week, Eugene Kavuma has provided a platform that inspires, equips and engages individuals and institutions to design sustainable solutions for East Africa’s challenges. He is an alumnus of the British Council’s Creative Hubs Academy and has been supporting young entrepreneurs in the arts and culture sectors in East Africa. In this Invest in Africa podcast, he commended organisations supporting the creative industries: “The British Council, for example, are doing a great job for the sector. The idea that you can bring people together and help them structure businesses in a much more profitable manner is a great contribution to the creative sector.”
Chao Tayiana, Founder, Africa Digital Heritage
Chao Tayiana is a Kenyan digital heritage specialist and digital humanities scholar. With a life-long passion for history, her work primarily focuses on the application of technology in the preservation, engagement and dissemination of African heritage and culture.
Her organisation, African Digital Heritage, is a non-profit organisation that seeks to encourage a more holistic approach to the design and implementation of digital solutions within African cultural heritage.
Faith Aweko, Founder Reform Africa
In 2019, Faith Aweko emerged as the winner of the Social Impact Award. Unafraid to get her hands dirty (literally), Faith (who was also an alumnus of the British Council’s Creative Hubs Academy) started Reform Africa, an organisation that transforms plastic polythene waste into durable, sustainable and water-proof bag packs and artistic accessories. According to Faith, waste is not waste until you waste it.
Arnold Mugaga, Founder Zetu Africa
Arnold Mugaga is the founder of Zetu Africa, a social enterprise based in Uganda. His design-led company creates innovative bags that pupils can use to carry books and convert into seats during class sessions – inspired by a 2016 report stating that 95 million children in Africa study without classroom furniture. Innovating throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Arnold and his team now use locally sourced bamboo to create a lightweight, affordable chair and bag (with a mobile writing board) that is also waterproof.
George Gachara, Managing Partner HEVA Fund
Under George’s leadership, HEVA, Africa’s first dedicated finance, business support and knowledge facility for creative industries, has been at the forefront of supporting young businesses and entrepreneurs in the creative sector to build high-value profitable businesses to increase their potential and also create more jobs for the sector.
HEVA has invested in more than 40 creative businesses and directly supported over 8,000 creative practitioners in the fashion, digital content and television, live music and gaming value-chains.
As he opined in African Business, “Africa’s cultural and creative industries present an excellent opportunity for long-term growth, but they need to be nurtured and protected, especially in the wake of shocks from Covid-19.”
Labdi Ommes, Musician
Labdi is a visionary and a revolutionary Kenyan singer-songwriter and African single-stringed fiddle (Orutu) instrumentalist. She is a vocal powerhouse whose vision is to popularise African music culture, sounds and instruments and to re-introduce them to the world. Labdi represents the growing population of young African artists taking up indigenous instruments and re-introducing them into the current music scene. She is currently the only female Orutu player in East Africa which was taboo for women to play. The Orutu is a single-stringed fiddle which originates from Western Kenya, among the Luo Community.
For a taste of her sound, click on this link as she performs with Extra Soul Perception who were grantees of the British Council’s new Art new Audiences (nAnA).
Gong named among winners of 2021 Africa SABRE Awards
Gong was delighted to be named among the winners of the 2021 Africa SABRE Awards, which recognise superior achievement in branding, reputation, and engagement, during a virtual award ceremony.
Since 2015, Gong has helped to deliver the Dive In Festival, the insurance industry’s festival for diversity and inclusion, which was celebrated in a record-breaking 35 countries last year.
As the effects of the festival continue to be felt around the world, Gong was named the winner of two categories (Research and Planning and Public Education) and also received a certificate of excellence (in the Financial and Professional Services category) in the awards ceremony (which is run by PRovoke Media) for its work in delivering this iconic festival in Nigeria, alongside its African partners Phyllion & Partners Limited, Aon and Lloyd’s.
To learn more about the Dive In Festival – which will run this year from 21 – 23 September – please see www.diveinfestival.com.
DPO Group
Corporate profiling leading to an acquisition in a landmark deal and one of the largest exits in Africa’s tech sector.
DPO Group has developed the technology to allow businesses across Africa to process payments, on and offline. Headquartered in Kenya, with presence in 19 African countries, DPO works with businesses of all sizes, supporting the growth of small local businesses, as well as working with large corporations, such as Uber, Booking.com and DHL.
Gong was tasked with supporting DPO in developing its corporate profile and raising awareness of its suite of products to businesses locally, regionally and internationally, with coverage secured in Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, the UK, the US, China and France, amongst others.
In August 2020, Gong supported DPO Group in the announcement of its planned acquisition by Network International, in what is a landmark deal for the African payments landscape and one of the largest exits in Africa’s tech sector.
With a modest investment we are delivering outsized results, securing 50 pieces of coverage of DPO’s acquisition alone, including in top tier international titles such as Forbes and Quartz. The estimated reach of this single announcement was over 1.5bn readers.
African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM)
Positioning African Infrastructure Investment Managers as the leading sustainable infrastructure investors on the continent.
African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), one of Africa’s leading private equity investment managers dedicated to African infrastructure, has been a retained client of Gong’s since 2016.
Our corporate comms brief with AIIM focuses on talking about its extensive infrastructure experience in targeted press, concentrating on positioning AIIM as one of the leading renewable energy investors on the continent.
Activities also included announcing deal news, drafting LinkedIn content and carefully targeted op-ed writing on issues such as: the outlook for renewable energy in Africa, reform priorities in Nigeria’s power sector, the role of the private sector in plugging the infrastructure spending gap, and the importance of renewables in a greener recovery post-Covid.
Coverage has been achieved in international titles such as the Financial Times and Bloomberg, energy trade publications such as Energy Voice, Renewable Energy Magazine and Power magazine, as well as several target investment publications. Potential readership of Gong’s media coverage reaches an average of 55 million people each month.
Our work with AIIM resulted in Gong winning the global corporate communications brief for AIIM’s holding company, Old Mutual Alternative Investments.
Building a fairer, healthier world
With the current average global population increase estimated at 81 million people per year, enabling access to healthcare continues to be a priority. One of the key strategies is obviously to train more doctors and nurses, but a surprisingly overlooked – yet crucial – factor lies in technology businesses that are enabling healthcare providers to reach people more effectively by increasing efficiency. The onslaught of Covid-19 has brought the necessity for a robust health tech industry into sharp relief – it has been vital as the world has had to rethink how it enables access to, and delivery of, an efficient healthcare system during a pandemic.
As a result, capital for African health tech startups has increased by 257.5 per cent from 2019 to 2020, according to a report by Disrupt Africa. One company that had already been making headway before the pandemic is African digital health company Helium Health, which initially set out in 2016 to transform hospitals on the continent by improving how records are kept and operations managed. Backed by international investors including Y Combinator and Zenith, the company has developed cutting-edge technology specifically designed for healthcare providers in Africa to accelerate efficiencies in health systems. By providing a robust electronic health record and hospital management system (as an alternative to typical paper-based systems), Helium Health enables African healthcare facilities to reduce waste, improve their accounting and record keeping, build medical intelligence and become more efficient caregiving operations.
In the UK, Visionable has been transforming healthcare by significantly improving patient outcomes using technology. Visionable’s Connected Ambulances allow paramedics to link up digitally with specialists so that they can deliver rapid stroke diagnoses before patients reach A&E. These vitally swift judgements mean that patients spend less time in hospital and have faster recovery times, with fewer long-lasting health effects. Using Visionable, the duration of hospital stays is cut from 17 days to two days. You can read more in this article from the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, Boston-USA based telehealth start up Patient Discovery was in a prime position to virtually support cancer patients as Covid accelerated the adoption of telehealth. Already a trusted resource for 30 of the country’s leading hospitals, it has used its engagement platform to create the best remote appointment and care experience for cancer patients during the pandemic.
Today is World Health Day with a focus for 2021 on building a fairer, healthier world. As health tech companies continue to source ways to drive efficiencies to improve healthcare systems, we are reminded that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on the fight against many preventable diseases. Simon Bland, CEO of the Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) – which works with partners to accelerate progress towards disease elimination – reminds us in this article on Global Health Newswire that “despite its challenges, COVID-19 offers us the opportunity to think more synergistically… As past outbreaks have shown, deaths from preventable diseases increase dramatically when healthcare systems are overwhelmed and fragmented.”
How important then that – now even more so than ever – we use technology to do this and make efficient improvements within our global healthcare systems to find time and cost savings and build a healthier, fairer world for all.
