Audiofrica Celebrates 5 Years of Excellence
As part of their strides to give voice to African music, Audiofrica has on 29th July 2022, celebrated five (5) years of excellence service delivery in the entertainment industry. The celebration was held at #9 love lane off Wilberforce Tengbeh Town ,corporate office.
Popular Tv host , Ellen Keister, sound engineer Nashito Kulala and traditional folk singer singer Fantacee Wiz were guest speakers of the event.
Related story: Audiofrica: The Future of Sierra Leone Entertainment Industry
In his statement, the president, Abdul Aziz Koroma of said “I want to officially welcome everyone in Techfrica fifth anniversary and audiofrica’s fourth anniversary. It is actually an honor to actually talk to you all, especially in the presence of Mrs. Ellen Keister, Mr. Nashito Kulala and Miss Fantacee Wiz.
Five years ago, I was an invitee to the official launch of audiofrica by Mrs. Ellen Keister by then Mr. Nashito Kulala was the very first brand ambassador and today, it happens to be I am the very person that is heading the this very company. I see it as a grace which is why I decided for us to do a workshop to enlighten our fellow Sierra Leoneans in the entertainment industry.
Basically, the workshop will be like an engaging one because we are here to talk about Techfrica and audiofrica. Techfrica is a startup tech company and we develop apps and websites for ourselves and also for other people. We are also developing an added value into the entertainment industry where we built a mobile streaming app that is called the audiofrica.
We are operating a record studio, we also do graphic designs, printing service, marketing, social media services and also provide a collaborative space for event management and other services. Our main goal is to develop advance applications that will help to solve various of problems in Africa. We have over twenty four platforms one of them, supfrica has helped us to go viral when we had about twenty seven interviews from all over the world including BBC.
We also sell and manage technological advance equipment that will enhance the lives of Africans and Africans in the diaspora. With our dream, we hope to make Sierra Leone to be recognized as the best tech hub.
We as a company is also promoting freedom of speech by creating apps that give the leeway to people to express their minds. Our key terms are “develop by Africans, for Africans used by all”.
The manager of audiofrica Jospeh Tarawalie encourages all artists to use audiofrica as it’s profitable to them “I am here today to give you a brief background about audiofrica. Audiofrica was launched on the 29th of July, 2019. Nashito Kulala was the first person to launch audiofrica. Since there was no main streaming platform in Africa the CEO and Founder of audiofrica Mr. Hafiz Kanu decided to create a platform (app and website) where African entertainers can earn from their God-given talent by streaming their songs. Audiofrica also gives you access to all online radio stations across the world including our very owned African Radio online.
The audiofrica+ is responsible to take the artists songs to various platforms , we have partnered with over 25 music distributing platforms like amazon music, iTunes, audio mack, YouTube, Tiktok tilder and many more.
In our four years of operation, we have worked with many artists as our brand ambassadors like Fantacee Wiz, Markmuday and a host of others”.
Ellen Keister who is the CEO of Reems entertainment affirm about the importance of streaming and encourages everyone to start streaming through audiofrica “I was introduced by one of my long term friend Abu, he brought me closer to Techfrica and I am happy that the company is owned by a Sierra Leonean. Today I am going to talk about the important of streaming. Before now we were using CDs and cassettes and they were vulnerable to piracy. For now the internet has make it easier for entertainers to start earning from their talents. We have been in the industry for so long but I can’t be boastful of making a huge sum of money we are still striving.
I for one I am happy for the emergence of the internet though it have it bad side but when it comes to music streaming the benefit is huge. We are extremely happy for audiofrica because it is owned by an African the only problem is that Africans are finding it difficult to support other Africans. They only take westerners platforms seriously. It’s been four years since this platform was founded we are still advocating and explaining to people about the platform. I hope this will be a wakeup call for us all. We should all be ambassadors to pass on the message to friends, family members and business partners.
There is a whole lot of money to be made from this streaming platform though it is not instantaneous but it a process. Do well to share your link as much as possible. I love the fact that audiofrica has now connected into so many platforms ranging from sportify, audomack, youtube, TikTok etc. No sooner you upload your song the rest of the world will get access to it”.
Nashito Kulala who is a sound engineer talked about the how streaming started “Thank you very much to everyone for your attendance. I am going to talk about the importance of streaming. Streaming is the technology that responsible to transmit video and audio through the internet.
Over the years, we were mainly depend on cassettes and CDs thus they cost more and occupy more space and they can be easily pirated. The engineers introduced the mp3 formats and later introduced the p to p file sharing.
In 1999, there was an outbreak in the United States that forced people to stay indoors as you know music selling back then a physical process. During the process, three people came together whose names are John Fanney, Shan Parker, created the first streaming platform called Napster.
I wanted to highlight this so you will know how far streaming has come. Streaming is cheap and easy to access, it also serve as medium to store your songs forever. I feel so happy that audiofrica+ has come to reality because inasmuch as we want to use our own, but we also see how trending the world is going so now with just a single upload in your audiofrica+ account your music would be present in all other streaming platform making it easier for all other artists to have access to other platform. For me, before using any other streaming platform I prefer audiofrica+ to help me go viral in other streaming platforms.
The other advantage of audiofrica is they have free space for artist to upload and monitor the progress of their music”.
Fantacee Wiz, a traditional folk singer cautioned the artist to leave a footprint on their social media space by engaging their followers as much as possible “I am happy to be here to start with. What I will advise to all entertainers is to leave a digital footprint. Make use of your social media even if you don’t have many likes but I want to tell you that people are reading whatever you post. Share you link and make sure you share it viral. You don’t share your songs on WhatsApp except you want someone to review it for you. Share only the links to your songs.
Social media is a powerful tool. Five years ago, I made a promise that I will make use of my social media space every day and so far it has been working for me. For now as long as you are using Facebook in Sierra Leone, Facebook will suggest my page to you. There are only few artist that are recognized by google in Sierra Leone and I am one of them. This is because most of the artists neglect their social media space.
I am only appealing to Techfrica to organize a training for artists to be educated about how to use social media”.
