Oluwaseyi Adegoke Adeyemo is the C.E.O of Kristomedia Limited, a multimedia and general communication outfit. He is the publisher of Inside Watch Africa (IWA), a quarterly Afro- centric publication. IWA, in the past seven years have continued to document the rich African culture and traditions as well as covering indigenous and international trading activities within and across Africa.
IWA also pay attention to technological and entrepreneurship skill development. Before venturing into private practice, Oluwaseyi had worked with the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) for eighteen years during which amongst several other landmark achievements, he had the unique opportunity of being part of the team that streamlined and modernized the data gathering and processing of the Customs Intelligence Unit for which he was aptly rewarded with the Comptroller General’s Merit Award.
Editorial Board of InfoTrust paid him a courtesy call in his office and had a chat with him on his reason for leaving Nigeria Customs Service after 18yrs. Why he opted for print journalism in this era when it is almost going into extinct due to heavy social media presence.
Excerpts:
InfoTrust: How old are you?
Oluwaseyi: I am forty-seven years old.
InfoTrust: You are quite young, so what informed your early retirement from the Nigeria Customs Service?
Oluwaseyi: Although I retired from the Nigeria Customs Service voluntarily, having served the nation meritoriously for eighteen years out of the mandatory thirty-five years I could serve as a custom officer, the truth is that my retirement was somehow under compulsion. I must confess that I enjoyed my time and service in Customs. I was given ample opportunity to express myself. However, as much all I wanted then was to stay back in the service and continue to do what I was doing and enjoying, after sometime it dawn on me and became crystal clear to me that my actual life assignment is to market “Brand Africa”, so I had to leave customs to start this assignment.
InfoTrust: What exactly do mean by marketing “Brand Africa”?
Oluwaseyi: I honestly don’t know how we got to this point where everything African is considered inferior to that of the West. Right from our native languages that we refer to as vernaculars, to what we consider the formal way of dressing, we all have been brainwashed and erroneously made to believe that being African is inferior to being Western which has continued to drastically and negatively impact on all the facets of lives. The simple truth is that whatever lofty ideas we continue to conceive for the development of Africa, they wouldn’t amount to anything if we don’t first deal with our mindset about ourselves, in fact we should declare an emergency for the need to entrench self-worth in the life of the average African. It is sequel to this need that I decided to publish Inside Watch Africa (IWA) seven years ago to market Africa, first to Africans and then to the rest of the world.
InfoTrust: Lofty Ideas – sounds Interesting, according to you, you have published IWA for seven years, so in your opinion what are the ways that the publication has helped to impress or entrench self-worth in the life of the average African?
Oluwaseyi: Honestly, we are nowhere near where we thought we would be now when we started off seven years ago. We started off with the building of a dedicated media communications backbone in the form of web-based tools, print media facilities and various electronic media tools after which we dovetailed into the facilitation of tours and vacation engagements to various African destinations. The publication, Inside Watch Africa (IWA), which itself is an Afrocentric, socio-economic and socio-cultural documentary publication, has remain in the frontline of our strategy and campaign simply because funding has remained a major impediment to our plans of bringing electronic media such as television also into it to strengthen our operation.
We are however proud to say that even with our limited resources, we have continued to aggressively x-ray the economic potentials across Africa in the areas of trade, mineral deposits, cottage industries, local wares and artifacts, goods and services, tourism potentials, historical sights and monuments, culture and tradition including traditional institutions of political authority and administration. We have created a platform to recognize as well as celebrate both corporate organizations and individuals who have continued to impact positively on the lives of Africans. In our own little way, we have sort of continued to reinforce the connection between Government and the people at all levels.
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InfoTrust: What is your strategy for the future and how do you intend to ensure that you fulfill your mission of marketing “Brand Africa”?
Oluwaseyi: My philosophy in life is ‘no retreat no surrender’, ‘forward ever back never’. I don’t kid myself, I know that there is no way in the world that I will get all the resources I need to optimally pursue this mission but I have made-up my mind to do my best, I am going to spend the rest of my life pursuing the actualization of a situation where the average African starts to believe in the very essence of Africa and possess a sense of self-worth, this will go a long way in cumulatively enhancing the brand worth of Africa and whatever is African to both Africans and non-Africans. Therefore, I will continue to find ways and means to do what I am doing now much better than I am doing it now while I will keep on shopping for funds to extend the horizon of the campaign.
The logical next step for us is that IWA will go on television next year; I will also want to kick-start our symposiums and seminars series in the tertiary institutions across Africa. I don’t know when this we fully takeoff but my team and I have established what we refer to as IWANet which is simply a business and social enterprise special purpose vehicle (SPV) for innovative social cultural and entrepreneurial collaboration, geared towards facilitating local, national and regional economic growth in Africa. We also intend to become a business resource incubation centre and project deployment network dedicated to business development and innovation, and offering a range of integrated, strategic guidance (professional consultancy) services to be institutionalized alongside a peer review scheme.
InfoTrust: Changing the main subject from Africa to our dear own country Nigeria and in a lighter mood, you are fast becoming the MC/facilitator of events in the tourism and travel industry, how did you become an MC or you trained to become one?
Oluwaseyi: I guess I have always had the ability to speak publicly but didn’t really take it seriously, but in recent past, I have had to facilitate at some events, particularly in the West African sub-region. The truth is, apart from being Afrocentric to the core I am also essentially a tourism and travel person. My life revolves around the industry and I will give everything to see that the industry blossom in Africa. So it’s safe to say that my latest offering to the industry is my ability to facilitate events as MC/facilitator.
InfoTrust: Talking about tourism in Africa which is a core area for IWA, will you say Nigeria is ready to reap from tourism?
Oluwaseyi: No, unfortunately Nigeria, my dear country is obviously not ready to start reaping the enormous benefits that are innate in tourism, not minding the fact that the country has got everything it needs to have. Nigeria is replete with great and interesting history (or histories), wonderful sites, exquisite art and craft, fabulous fashion and sumptuous cuisines that lots of travellers the world over will kill to come experience. Now in order to stop denying the world the Nigerian experience, it’s time for Nigeria to put a tourism framework in place so that it can start reaping the bountiful harvest in tourism.
InfoTrust: Tourism is fast becoming the game changer for other countries diversifying from oil, why is it so?
Oluwaseyi: Firstly, oil is a tangible and an exhaustible product while tourism is not, which is why oil will naturally continue to reduce in value more than tourism over time. Secondly the global competition in and around the production of oil is becoming more feisty. The world is beginning to device alternative sources of energy to oil which is why its global rating and price has been on a continuous down turn in recent times. Tourism on the other hand has a stronger domesticated value; people are always interested in seeing how things are on the other side of the world. Therefore, the more investment a society makes in tourism, the more it increases in value and appreciation, so it’s only natural that tourism is becoming the world’s game changer for countries diversifying from oil.
InfoTrust: Is our tourism and travel sector poised to help the country harness these potentials?
Oluwaseyi: As I said above Nigeria needs to work on a proper frame work for tourism in order for the industry to thrive in the country and for the country itself to optimally benefit from these innate potentials.
InfoTrust: What are the challenges you have had to face as a publisher of an international magazine operating in this part of the world?
Oluwaseyi: In my opinion, the primary and most critical challenge that any entrepreneur has to deal with in this part of the world is the lack of start-up funds. There are no real provisions for start-ups in Africa, no structures, absolutely nothing is in place for anyone starting up a business, the reality is that even on-going businesses have virtually no support of any sort so everyone has to find a way of surviving. For instance, my plans for Inside Watch Africa, IWA, was to continue to go to the furthest nooks and crannies of the continent exhuming the true African story and sharing it with the world but it has been almost impossible funding this venture which is why I have had to continue to make do with what I can afford.
InfoTrust: As a practitioner in the industry who has interacted with a good part of Africa, how can we foster a joint tourism agency to ease travel and Leisure within the country?
Oluwaseyi: It is actually a delightful idea to think about fostering a joint tourism agency in Africa so as to ease travel and leisure in Nigeria. I must confess that I have never really thought of travel and leisure within Nigeria this way but I agree that it will definitely ease travel and leisure in Nigeria. However, as you said as a practitioner in the industry my interactions with a good part of Africa has unfortunately exposed me to the very hard divisions amongst Africans and consequently within Africa itself as a continent.
In my opinion the sad part of all this is that these divisions are actually being fueled from within and outside Africa, which makes surmounting them a little bit difficult. It is also my firm belief that if we can all see the fact that being united as Africans will make us stand and that we will keep falling as long as we remain divided, then we can all start to reap from the bountiful harvest inherent in our coming and sticking together as Africans- one big happy family.
