A Tale of Two Founders: Why The Stories They Tell Matters
This article should be read whilst listening to the song "Above the Clouds of Pompeii" by Bear's Den - https://open.spotify.com/track/23CGl8LfaUfOOxP4b4mGas?si=b4a3d221c9cf4603
What if Cinderella didn’t lose one of her shoes, instead discovered her passion for fashion and became a mogul? What if Sleeping Beauty woke up of her own volition with a cure for insomnia that the world could use?
Indeed, none of these sounds like the plots of the famous fairytale children's stories we’ve learned. However, these sorts of ideas —some variation, at least— are what pushed a young man, Dominic Onyekachi, to build a web-based digital platform that boasts of a collection of socially conscious stories for children, replete with enough African representation to rival the famous stories like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty.
Introducing: Akiddie
As a platform, Akiddie was envisioned by CEO Dominic Onyekachi as a library resource for children's stories that highlighted African representation at its core. But the more Kachi and his collaborators built and told these unconventional stories, the more they realized that theirs were not the only voices capable of telling —or retelling— captivating children stories that captured the essence of what it’s like to be an African child and the endless possibilities that lay ahead.
As such, it was an easy transition for the company to open its doors to allow creators access to the platform to tell their unique stories for the African child. With such a shift came the possibility of creating incredible stories and incorporating art, African folklore, and music into the mix. Akiddie boasts of a robust library of aspirational children's stories infused with African cultures and value systems that will continue to inspire generations. And to think all of these started with Kachi’s attempt to tell his niece a good story.
Let’s Meet Funcle Dominic Onyekachi
The life of Dominic Onyekachi, often referred to as just Kachi, is a story worth telling. As a student of Covenant University studying toward a degree in Information and communication engineering, he won the 2018 edition of the All Nigerian Universities Debate Championship. Although he claimed to have stumbled into debating, he would attribute his approach to storytelling and the ideas he explored to his debating background.
He explained in an interview featured on blankpaperz.com that debating taught him to interrogate all the assumed truths in his life. It was the lens through which he was able to understand and empathize with the struggle that women face. With his debating skills, he better understood socially conscious issues and found his voice in being able to talk about them knowledgeably.
But at age 23, all Kachi wanted to be besides being a debate champion was to be a fun uncle to his 6-year-old niece. In a spotlight piece featured on CNN.com, he tells the story of how the idea for his company had been birthed when he was asked by his sister to read his niece a story. Perusing her mini library he was struck with how foreign and void of true African representation the stories she had access to were.
This discovery would lead him to write stories for his niece that he felt were more attuned to the aspirational goals he wanted her to have. Although he would be the first to admit that none of his stories are literary juggernauts, one thing that he would say makes them stand out is the ample representation of the African culture they possess and the progressive ideas they taut like the value of education, gender equality, innovation, etc.
The Power of the African Narrative
At the start of this journey, Kachi was especially troubled that most of the children's literature his niece was exposed to seemed to emphasise the value of marriage as the ultimate achievement for women. However, he wanted his niece to aspire to be more. By extension, he wanted African kids to aspire to more than just the traditional ideals even whilst learning about the beauty of their cultures.
In Kachi’s world, kids like his niece didn’t need to read about Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty especially since they do not necessarily speak to any true aspect of our African reality. While such stories also emphasized lofty values, they still lacked the uniqueness of most of our African folklore. Kachi wanted his niece to have access to stories with children who looked and spoke like her. He wanted children to take fantastic journeys with characters they could look up to, thus, emphasising the power of the African narrative in shaping the continent's future leaders.
This mentality of giving power to the African narrative, when skewed toward a different tech-based industry is something another Founder, Jideofor Okoro, Co-Founder of JosPlay Inc. a Music Intelligence company would agree with. The African Music Library is an offshoot of Josplay Inc., a company poised to be at the forefront of documenting African music.
Introducing: The African Music Library
The African Music Library at its core is a storytelling platform. On a more technical level, the African Music Library is a unified database with unprecedented value. Jideofor believes in the power of storytelling. Thus, with this database, he opts to share stories that bring an accurate and comprehensive focus to the rich tapestry of African music like never before.
Where Kachi hopes to use storytelling to inform the children of our African values, Jideofor aims to use this tool combined with ample data to celebrate the richness of the African music culture; a culture that is as expansive as it is invigorating. A glimpse at the African Music Library website and you’d be amazed at the number of African music genres that you never knew existed.
While the world is hooked on the Afrobeat and Amapiano waves, the African Music Library draws you in by helping you explore and understand the vastness of the incredible sounds and genres that exist in the African continent. It gives you an accurate account of their origins and influences. From the Kwassa Kwassa in Congo to the Mbalax in Senegal, this immersive platform allows you to explore the diversity of African sounds.
Let’s Meet Jideofor Okoro
Jideofor Okoro might not have won any debating awards but rest assured he is always prepared to debate anyone on the need for a centralized database for African music. With a degree in Engineering from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Jideofor never thought of himself as anything remotely music-inclined. But as it tends to happen to most African youths and creatives, a career pivot inevitably comes.
Like most people, Jideofor would consider himself a fan of good music. However, unlike most people, he soon found himself a bit concerned about how on the global music stage like the Grammys, African music was pigeonholed into a category of “Global Music” that felt limited. He understood there was more to African sound than just the global exports of Amapiano and Afrobeats.
He also realised that, unlike the surface-level global exposure and documentation that sounds like Amapiano and Afrobeats were getting, there would be no better people to document African music than Africans ourselves. In 2020, his company, Josplay Inc was born out of a desire to leverage Artificial Intelligence to create a database that tells a more expansive and accurate story of African music origins to the global audience.
Choosing the Unconventional Approach
Like Kachi, Jideofor understands more than anyone the power of exploring a different narrative when it comes to storytelling. The dangers of a single story as highlighted by renowned author Chimamanda Adichie are front and center of what has spurred Founders like Kachi and Jideofor to seek an alternative to what’s seemingly available.
Telling children stories feels almost too small of a task until you realize that these little stories help shape the minds that will tomorrow shape the continent. For Kachi that’s a huge responsibility he isn’t afraid to take on, with, of course, the help of his collaborators. But he’d be the first to hint at how tough the road has been. Finding funding for Akiddie has been tough and as of present, the company is temporarily on hiatus.
Thankfully, this is not the case for Jideofor. The African Music Library continues to expand. The number of countries in the continent hints at this being a lifetime project. With continued inputs from musical experts, musicians, writers, data analysts and more, this repository continues to grow doubling as an open-source platform. Jideofor understands that the true depth of any story is defined by the characters —us.
How Does Their Story End?
One more thing that Dominic Onyekachi and Jideofor Okoro have in common besides being Founders and their unconventional approach to storytelling is their desire to create generational value for Africans. While Kachi aims to change the minds of kids like his niece using captivating children's stories that celebrate the African culture, Jideofor aims to help the global music industry better understand the immeasurable value of African music.
And like most stories, the central characters are never smooth sailing until the denouement. The road is often laced with speed bumps and potholes, typical of the average Nigerian, nay, African society. But what these Founders teach us, inevitably, as we watch their journeys is that our drive for excellence as Africans is something to be proud of. Just like the stories we choose to tell, we too can choose to be inspired to bring a brand new awareness to the idea of what it is to be African and more importantly, what it means to be human.
Cheers.