The media has long been criticised for the portrayal of women using the lens of stereotypes of society. With a reputation for portraying women in limiting ways, the media reports women at a disproportionate rate compared to men.
Women don’t often make it into headlines, and when they do, most headlines portray them as objects, victims, inferior or disadvantaged. Fewer headlines that highlight their achievements tend to tilt towards their physical appearance and marital status or juxtapose their success with matrimonial issues. This phenomenon is more amplified in Africa, which is highly patriarchal and has a male-dominated media landscape.
Peace Oladipo, a Nigerian female journalist, articulates this issue succinctly: “African women are usually seen as disadvantaged, poor, and abused women. And yes, this is true about some women,[but] not all!”
Prime Progress, a solutions and social impact-focused media organisation, is filling this obvious gap with its Prime Woman Series. The Prime Woman Series is a community and audience-focused media products that tell stories highlighting women who are breaking social, cultural, and professional barriers and other stereotypes. The series provides alternative content to help women find self-expression and happiness while also offering solutions to visibility and revenue generation for the platform.
Oladipo, one of the early writers of the series, describes her mission, when interviewing sources and writing for the series, as creating role models for young African girls where it is lacking.
“Check the Internet. An average girl doesn’t have so many options, [with the series] there is an opportunity to see women not so far from them doing wonders and remarkable things in their field.” She said.
Exploring alternative narrative storytelling and business model
Oladipo’s goals align properly with the organisation’s reason for having the special series. As the Managing Director of Prime Progress, Innocent Eteng also noted in an interview with MCDN that the series, which was launched during International Women’s Month (March) in 2023, aims to amplify women’s voices and their stories.
“Prime Progress is solutions-focused, and profiling people seeking to make their society and communities happier, healthier, and better is part of our mission. The series allows us to profile young women, many of whom are ignored by legacy media—amplifying their voices as part of our effort to provide alternative content that heals, inspires, and provides hope,” he said.
Neya Kalu: The mogul at the nexus of commerce, media and philanthropy;
Sarah Oluwaseun: Car audio maven, breaking barriers;
Rukayat Akodu: The female barber shaving off stereotypes, one haircut at a time;
Kemi Fajana: A woman’s journey to building Nigeria’s leading business frontier; and
Zainab Idris: One woman’s mission to localise tech in the Hausa language.
These are the kind of stories the series tells about African women, focusing more on their giant strides, successful ventures and impact on society rather than the limiting ideas of struggles and disadvantages.
Beyond telling alternative stories and changing narratives, Prime Woman is at the core of the organisation’s strategy of exploring community and audience-focused media products as a business model.
Prime Progress has used the series to create the Prime Woman Community, a community for featured Prime Women and readers, the Prime Woman Hangout, a physical event for community members, and most importantly, reach a new and larger audience.
Gains and lessons from the exploration
The gains of exploring such community and audience-focused editorial and business models for the organisation are not minute.
The organisation’s decision to diversify its audience by adding verticals like the Prime Woman series has led to an extra level of visibility among women’s communities, which is now helping them see the revenue potential.
According to Eteng, the series is the most read content of the platform, and it has helped them build more trust among women audiences who are continuously becoming loyal readers on their website and social media.
The Prime Women Community is constantly growing, with over 50 members already, allowing them to tap into the benefit of such a rich network of women. Facilitating collaborations with community members and access to even more audiences by leveraging the network of community members. This has boosted their visibility on social media platforms, especially Instagram.
The Prime Woman Hangout extension has helped the organisation experiment with eventing, which is a fast-growing source of revenue for media organisations. With the first edition in October 2024, Prime Progress has learnt from the first experiment and is building from the knowledge gained to improve subsequent editions.
Some notable challenges faced range from logistics, audience inability to pay for premium events despite having interest, and restrictions of location as the audience in other areas outside Abuja, the current location, are also asking for it. However, they have learnt from the experiments that such a venture is highly welcomed by their audience and, if worked out well, is a viable product.
“With dwindling media revenue, media organisations are seeking ways to diversify revenue, and eventing is one revenue model. Being a ticketed event, we see it as something that could generate revenue for the brand through tickets and sponsorships. But let me add that it is still an experiment—we are testing and measuring. The brighter the prospects of us realising our revenue objective with the Hangout, the more we would invest and scale,” Eteng said.
As a media innovator, he argued that media leaders need to be strategic about their business activities and diversify their revenue streams.
“Any media organisation that desires to exist long term must find ways to diversify revenue. So, the era of just focusing on journalism as a writing or story production passion is over for anyone seeking sustainability. Journalists must learn the business side of things.
Oladipo also noted that she got feedback from young women who were triggered by the stories to expand their possibility mentality and decided to build capacity.
Working on the series has been transformative for her, too. “These are not trending stories, right? So when I find such women, I am usually amazed and encouraged. From CEOs to Innovators to Founders, I enjoyed learning from their lives without the mention of their spouses or children. Just who they are and what they have done.” She said.
Although the profile still tells their stories beautifully, Oladipo would have loved to let all the information and personal tone they released in their conversation be in the piece. Something she could have done very well by exploring the interview format and producing video content. This is something the managing director also hinted at doing as plans for the initiative going forward include exploring video podcasts.
Prime Progress’ Prime Woman Initiative is setting a new standard for storytelling and business in Africa’s media landscape. With its strategic approach to audience engagement and business sustainability, the series is proving that media can be both impactful and financially viable, especially as traditional media revenue sources keep dwindling.