Digital media provide the tools for Africans to tell their own sporting stories, says AthleticsAfrica.com’s Yomi Omogbeja

AthleticsAfrica.com is an innovative website that provides up-to-date news and information about African athletes, administrators and officials nationally and internationally.

ReConnect Africa spoke to Yomi Omogbeja, a former journalist and the publisher of AthleticsAfrica about his career in web development and digital media and how he is using ICT to create business opportunities in Africa.

ReConnect Africa: Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Yomi Omogbeja: I'm a digital media strategist, journalist and information architect with a background in sports psychology. I have a driving passion for sports and education and I founded the Athletics Africa Foundation (ATAF) and AthleticsAfrica.com, which is Africa's premier athletics news website, in 2004 after completing my Masters degree in Web Journalism at the University of Sheffield.

After editorial stints at the HoldtheFrontPage.Com, the Daily Telegraph and the BBC in London,  I returned to Nigeria in 2008 as the pioneer Online Editor for Timbuktu Media and helped launched 234NEXT.com, which was founded by 2005 Pulitzer award winner Dele Olojede. I led the design of the editorial process across web to print, changed the mentality of the core old hands to think 'digital first' and brought the recruits up to speed with the workings of a 21st century converged newsroom. After the premature closure of 234NEXT, I began developing digital strategies for other news publishers in Nigeria. I redesigned the mobile site of the Leadership Newspaper in Abuja and migrated their news platform to an open source content management system.

ReConnect Africa: What drove your choice of your career and how did you get started?

Yomi Omogbeja: My passion for sports led to my first foray into journalism. In my third year of studying Guidance and Counselling at the University of Ibadan, south-west Nigeria, we had a six-month lecturers strike. Two months into the strike, out of curiosity, I went to see the producers of a youth programme on Radio Lagos to find out why there was no sports content on the show. That day I was asked to produce a script for a five minute sports feature for their weekly show.

Eventually the strike was called off and 15 episodes later I returned to the university consumed by my new found passion. I became very critical of everything on radio and television. I approached the producer of the weekend sports show on NTA Ibadan for an unpaid internship so that I could observe and help out in the studio. This exposed me to backstage production work with the camera crew, access to mixed zones at top league matches at the stadium and the opportunity to meet my sports heroes.

In early 1997, during my final year at the university, I landed my first paid journalism work in quite an unusual way. After reading a newspaper interview by a government official who threatened to sanction cable stations that failed to meet the local content quota in their programming, I developed a series of sports talk shows and contacted a local cable station (West-Midlands Cable TV) to buy them. I walked into their CEO's office with a proposal to fulfil their 40% local content and walked out with a contract as a part-time sports producer - without any formal training in journalism. All I had then was an idea! That's how I got started and I have never looked back since then.

ReConnect Africa: What inspired you to set up AthleticsAfrica?

Yomi Omogbeja: The idea to set up AthleticsAfrica arose whilst I was studying for my MA in Web Journalism as a Chevening scholar in Sheffield. It was just one of those brainwave moments when I conceptualised marrying all my passions – sports, media and counselling. I was a top athlete at university in Nigeria and had competed to elite level and also completed a master's degree in sports psychology with a special interest in elite performance enhancement and development.

The Athletics Africa Foundation was my way of giving back to future African athletes. It was founded to promote, guide and give a voice to African athletes.

The selection of AthleticsAfrica.com as winner in the journalism innovation category at the 2011 Highway-Africa New Media awards in Cape Town, South Africa, remains the proudest moment of my career as a web journalist so far. I am motivated by a passion to see Africans tell our own stories and to see more news organisations in Africa embrace the digital media tools to achieve this.

ReConnect Africa: What other online ventures have you developed?

Yomi Omogbeja: I have developed Nigeria A-Z, which is an online portal providing news and insights into the lives of Nigerians online. It's a directory for everything Nigerian; from the latest information on top end restaurants, hotels and tourist destinations, down to where to shop for your everyday basic needs and find the nearest Mama Cass or Tantalizers joint.

During the time that I spent abroad, I discovered a fascination with "all things Nigerian", whether it was a love or hate relationship, amongst people from different races and countries that I interacted with at all levels - professional and social. I was constantly being asked whether Nigeria really is the way that it is painted in the media; what life is like in Nigeria and whether it is a safe place to travel to on holiday. 

I came up with this portal as a way of showcasing Nigeria in a positive light and showcasing Nigeria as a great tourist destination. At the same time, although the portal is aimed at the foreign market, it is also aimed at the Nigerian market as Nigerians become more consumer conscious and want to know where to get the best value for their money.

ReConnect Africa: You have worked in Nigeria and undertaken research into the use of ICT in Africa. What were your key findings?

Yomi Omogbeja: It was an ongoing study about the use of ICTs in Nigerian newsrooms in the context of journalism work-flow and production, its impact and implications for working practices, presentation of content and business practice.

In 2008, I helped set up the first web to print newspaper in Lagos at Timbuktu Media. The first set of Nigerian newspapers to get their products online in early 2000s basically shovelled their print content to the web with little regard to its appearance or usability. In fact, it was in the late 1990s that the first set of Macs surfaced in the newsrooms. But at 234Next we finally had a converged newsroom with digital and print journalists working in tandem, and where the story breaks first on the web and concludes in print.

ReConnect Africa: What have been some of the challenges you’ve found in setting up a business in Nigeria?

Yomi Omogbeja: Infrastructural problems are one of the main challenges in setting up business in Nigeria. This lack of infrastructure directly or indirectly increases start-up overhead costs and has to be properly factored in the business plan, as one has to invest a significant amount of one's own finance and capital to provide your own infrastructure.

The lack of access to funding itself and the banks’ unwillingness to support entrepreneurship and small business is another barrier to massive entrepreneurship growth in Nigeria. Inconsistent power supply is the next challenge working against the successful growth of small business start-ups in Nigeria, especially in the IT sector where one is dependent on good and constant energy supply

It can be quite challenging to claim that we are providing breaking news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when we have to deliver under such erratic energy conditions. Other challenges include lack of governmental support and inconsistent government policies. Governance is something entrepreneurs have no control over; the most we can do as entrepreneurs is try to influence government’s policy with respect to enacting favourable business laws. And of course, the famous Nigerian factor- trying to set up a business with first world standards against the backdrop of operating within the Nigerian mindset itself is challenging enough

ReConnect Africa: Among other things, you have consulted on digital media and web strategy. What advice would you offer businesses on integrating digital media into their marketing and advertising?

Yomi Omogbeja: The first piece of advice I would offer to African businesses is to improve their quality to world class standards. They have to up their game and be competitive on the world stage. The world has moved on and my advice for those without a clear strategy for digital marketing is to be clear about their objectives before they jump on the technology band wagon

New businesses need to be on the cutting edge by re-branding through the opportunities and challenges of effective digital marketing which cut right across national boundaries. They should focus on maximising the social media platforms to engage and communicate with their potential and present customers to build brand awareness and effectively deliver their services