Afia Bobia Amanfo: Entrepreneurship as a vehicle for social change
Afia Bobia Amanfo is the co-founder of Studentshubgh, a non-profit organisation committed to the mentoring and grooming of young people in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though she comes from an administrative background, Afia finds fulfillment addressing the challenges of disadvantaged young people and connecting them with opportunities. She has been involved with volunteer outreaches to villages and schools in Ghana for several years, before starting Studentshubgh with her co-founder, Nana Ofosu Boakye. Afia is a graduate of the University of Ghana, Legon and the University of Lille in France. She is currently registered for the Master’s degree in International Trade at the Universite de Paris Est Creteil, France. Her career goals are to become a social entrepreneur as well as an international business analyst. Afia has a strong relationship with God, which she sees as the foundation for everything she does. [bctt tweet=”Young people are really starved for content that addresses their issues, directs and guides them and this is the gap we seek to fill – Afia Bobia Amanfo” username=”SheLeadsAfrica”] What made you take the leap into entrepreneurship? I have always had entrepreneurial dreams and a desire to use entrepreneurship as a vehicle for social change. But, for many years I held myself back because of a fear of failing. I finally decided to take the leap not because I had gathered enough courage, but because I was frustrated by the lack of access to quality content for young students in sub-Saharan Africa. I interact with a lot of young people and I was distressed. By the fact that many of them were making poor decisions concerning their career, academics, relationships and life in general because they didn’t have easy access to information or a qualified mentor. A quick check on most youth focused sites will show a bias towards entertainment. Definitely, the youth are interested in entertaining news and it is good business to give your customers what they want. However, young people on our continent are really starved for content that addresses their issues, and gives them direction and guidance. This is the gap we seek to fill. In addition, I was motivated by the desire to lend my voice to instilling a sense of patriotism and pride in African youth. I believe there will be a change in the future of Africa only to the extent that the youth are intentionally taught to believe in themselves as Africans; and learn to exploit their abilities to their fullest potential so they can become successful future leaders. So yes, I took the leap after lots of prayers and I have not regretted it. You built your website from scratch and you had no background experience to support this. From your experience what are the key resources and things to consider when creating a website? Thanks to the internet, no skill is too difficult to learn today. From graphic design to website or app development, the tools are all there on Youtube or a blog out there. So I will say: Start with research. You can research based on the type of website you want to build e.g. a magazine, blog, e-commerce etc. Determine the best domain name registration sites Find a hosting site Find templates and learn about plugins. You can find something whatever your budget is! Here are a few resources you need: Reliable internet connection. This is a must since you will spend several hours on your site. Domain name registration & hosting. You need to check for the availability of your domain name and register it as well. Most hosting services offer free domain name registration and free email address as part of the package. You can do a little research on the types of domain names and decide whether to register as a .com, .org, .gh etc. I have been using ehost.com as my hosting service which is quite affordable and also offer great customer service. Other hosting services include bluehost, godaddy etc. A website creation tool/ publishing platform. If you are a beginner like me, I will definitely recommend WordPress. WordPress has several templates ( both free and paid) and plugins. You can play around with various templates to find out what you want. I think if you have an online business, it is good to try your hand at designing your site, because experimenting with various templates will give you ideas and your site will end up better. You can always get an expert to add the touch-up’s, but do some experimenting on your own. Besides WordPress, you can also check other tools such as drupal, joomla or wix. You are going to need some great pictures for your site. There is definitely a lack of quality African stock photos online but there are a few options both free and paid. Check out pixabay.com, shutterstock.com and stockfreeimages.com Ok, so let’s just say that was manageable. Let’s talk about building a social media following of over 7000 and developing an e-magazine in just 6 months! What’s the secret Afia? I will say, there is actually no secret. The key to building a social media following has been widely discussed on many blogs and Youtube videos. I have watched She Leads Africa videos which spell out the strategy I used. A clear strategy: We decided to invest in creating a community on social media first before launching our website. Our strategy is 2 fold: Focused content and target advertising. To be honest, we have experimented a lot with content. We know our target audience and what we want to give them. Experimentation and iteration: However, we continue to experiment with the presentation of the content in order to achieve maximum impact. We have learned to consider that our target audience (students between 15 to 25) usually have very little to spend on data so we don’t do a lot of videos, we try shorter posts and also images with quotes, in order to get the message across. A well