ADDIS ABABA
Sixty-one African content creators from 30 countries convened this week at the Adwa Victory Memorial in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the inaugural African Social Media Influencers Summit, bringing a combined digital audience of nearly 321 million followers to a conversation about who tells Africa’s story and how.
The Summit, held May 7 – 8 under the theme “Influencers for a Better Africa,” brought together the continent’s most-followed digital voices to build a coordinated strategy for narrative control across the global media landscape.
Organizers Pulse of Africa Media and AGA Tech Enterprise framed the event as infrastructure, not ceremony, positioning content creation as a lever for economic development and continental reputation.
African creators collectively lose significant revenue and influence to platforms, algorithms and distribution systems designed outside the continent, stakes that extend well beyond social media metrics.
Sessions at the summit addressed content monetization, ethical journalism, and the construction of sustainable digital brands, questions that sit at the intersection of culture and commerce.
“This summit is not merely about gaining followers or creating viral content, but about influence, impact, and shaping Africa’s future through purposeful digital engagement,” said Gemeda Olana, CEO of AGA Tech Enterprise, at the opening.
Seife Deribe, CEO of the Ethiopian News Agency and Pulse of Africa, said the gathering was designed to empower the storytellers and innovators actively reshaping how the world sees Africa.
The choice of venue sharpened the argument. The Adwa Victory Memorial commemorates Ethiopia’s 1896 defeat of Italian colonial forces, the first major military victory by an African nation against a European power.
Organizers drew a direct line from that assertion of sovereignty to the summit’s central purpose, shifting the contest from the battlefield to the digital public sphere.
Wode Maya, the Ghanaian creator whose continent-wide documentary content has built a global following, said the summit offered a vital space for cross-border exchange among creators navigating similar pressures.
“We are the real voices of the continent,” he said. “If you start believing in us, we will become more powerful than CNN or BBC that you pay money to showcase your stories.”
The internal dimension of the challenge received its sharpest articulation from Hasset Dereje, Miss World Africa 2025. “We need to work on our pan-African mindset first. As Africans, we need to know that Africa comes first,” she said.
“In order to change the narrative, we must first change our own perception of the continent, because even we don’t really believe in ourselves,” Hasset added.
Participants identified a shared editorial instinct across delegations. Local languages, humor and culturally specific references are emerging as the connective tissue of content that crosses national boundaries while remaining grounded in African contexts.
The Kenyan delegation described the summit as a leadership platform where the continent’s youth can claim a seat in the global media conversation.
Organizers announced that the summit will be held annually, with a new Social Media Awards program to recognize outstanding digital creators across the continent.
