Starting from scratch is daunting. And exhilarating. Your heart pounds, you can taste adrenaline, the sense of urgency and anticipation makes you high. I can recall each of these sensations 10 years after the thrilling moment when The Conversation Africa went live, and our first newsletter was sent out. Thanks to some nifty software, we were able to watch readers open their emails in real time in cities and towns in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Malawi, Zimbabwe as well as beyond in the US, the UK, India, France, Japan and Australia.
We’d gone live. People were reading us. We’d launched and there was no going back.
It was a tiny team that celebrated the moment: nine of us in an office in Johannesburg plus two colleagues from TC Australia who’d flown over to show us the ropes.
Our promise when we launched was
that we would “work with academics across Africa and internationally to bring informed expertise to a global audience”.
We have upheld this commitment. Starting with a modest group working out of an office in Johannesburg, we expanded to establish branches in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal. To date, we have released 11,775 articles focused on African research, penned by 7,540 scholars, which has garnered more than 180 million views, supported by 935 redistributors.
It’s a model that works because of the generosity of donors, universities, academics and readers. And because we offer evidence-based insight you can trust.
In retrospect the whole idea might have seemed mad. The impact of the 2008 financial crisis was still being felt. Nobody was in an expansive mood: governments were cutting budgets, economic growth was slow. At the time the media landscape was in bad shape as more titles hit the wall and those that elected to keep going were shrinking their operations.
The deciding factor to pursue this was that The Conversation provided an avenue to create—at a large scale—a collaboration between scholars and reporters based on the straightforward idea that academics would serve as authors, with journalists acting as editors.
The second aspect was that the prototype had been constructed and functioned remarkably well. Approximately four years before our launch, The Conversation Australia (the parent site) had commenced operations. Subsequently, versions were launched in the UK, succeeded by those in the US.
Each one achieved remarkable success. I realized that leveraging the extensive body of academic research as the main content for articles, combined with skilled journalists acting as editors, was an effective approach. Scholars were enthusiastic about writing without compensation, experienced journalists were ready to use their editorial expertise, and various media platforms were interested in publishing pieces released under a Creative Commons license.
It all made sense why. However, figuring out how turned out to be more challenging.
Financial resources were lacking. In previous versions, major contributors came from university departments across various regions. However, institutions on the mainland faced severe budget constraints and could not financially underwrite our initiative. We needed a dual approach: first, seek out benefactors who backed higher education with the aim that they might recognize the value of this endeavor; secondly, solicit assistance directly from universities—whether through monetary contributions or by providing free rental space.
Both approaches were successful. We managed to gather sufficient funds to cover the expenses of our small team working in office space provided free of charge by the University of the Witwatersrand.
The second tricky bit was fulfilling the promise of being The Conversation Africa. An office in Johannesburg wasn’t going to cut it. We set about finding more money so that we could expand our footprint. By 2017 our team could boast a colleague in Kenya working from an office gifted by the African Population and Health Research Centre. It took another two years to fulfil the promise with colleagues in Lagos (in an office at the Nigerian Academy of Sciences) and a colleague in Accra. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place with the launch of TC Afrique in 2023 with a team of two in Dakar.
I put The Conversation Africa’s success down to generosity. The generosity of spirit of my colleagues. The generosity of donors. The generosity of universities. The generosity of academics who have volunteered to share their knowledge and approached the rigours of our editing with grace and forbearance. And finally the generosity of you, our readers, who express your appreciation in a host of different ways, not least by sharing articles you come across far and wide. Thank you.
It’s been an extraordinary and immensely satisfying decade. The Conversation Africa has become the go-to place for reliable articles. This is particularly valuable in today’s challenging environment. Kindly keep supporting us. We count on your backing.
Candice Bailey
, Strategic Initiatives Editor
Caroline Southey
, Founding Editor
Jabulani Sikhakhane
Editor at The Conversation Africa
Lyrr Thurston
, Copy Editor
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