“Amazon started with selling books, Afropolitan started with throwing parties.”
We created Afropolitan in 2016 as an organization that catered to the African Diaspora through events. We threw the best Afrobeats parties, concerts, and festivals. Although we started with events, we did not want to be limited to that; we wanted to go through life with our community. Our goal was to provide access to opportunities through a Network of Abundance: Abundance of Tools, Abundance of Opportunity, Abundance of Joy.
To fully understand the Afropolitan journey, it's essential to view the Afropolitan story through different phases.
Phase One - Afropolitan Events (Parties, Concerts, Festivals)
In phase one of Afropolitan, we threw the best parties and concerts featuring Afrobeats artists such as Davido, Burna Boy, Mr. Eazi, Tiwa Savage, Olamide, etc. Afropolitan events attracted people from diverse backgrounds - African Americans, Afro-Latinos, and 33+ African countries. We witnessed what it was like for the Black diaspora to experience unbridled joy, to move from scarcity to abundance.
The highlight of phase one was the 2019 Year of Return in Ghana. Afropolitan organized travel groups and events for 10,000 members of the diaspora. The initiative saw an influx of 1 million people visiting Ghana and generated about $2 billion in economic activity. This showed us what was possible when the diaspora united.
Phase Two - Afropolitan Media (2020 - 2021)
Phase two of Afropolitan began in 2020. After the execution of Year of Return, we prepared for increased demand for the second year titled "Beyond the Return." Since the Year of Return had attracted 1 million people and its impact was felt across continents, we hoped to double the figures in the second installment. However, at the onset of the Covid- 19 pandemic in March 2020, all our plans crashed. The lockdowns decimated the events industry. To give you a sense of the impact, Live Nation, the top event promoter in the United States, lost 95% of its revenue in 2020. Faced with the pandemic, we considered what a pivot would look like for Afropolitan in a world where real-life events were banned.
We decided a pivot into media was the better alternative because media could be scaled without live events. Through the Afropolitan lounge on Clubhouse, a social audio app adopted during the lockdowns by millions of people worldwide, we built a community of about 50,000 Afropolitans. We shared laughter and joy and made meaningful connections within the community. People found jobs, founders received investments, and more importantly, people found their life partners through Afropolitan. We also contributed to worthy causes such as the End SARS movement in Nigeria and the refugee crisis in the Ethiopian conflict. We saw firsthand what it looked like for the diaspora to organize offline and online. Clubhouse enabled us to organize around shared values at scales that were unthinkable in the last century. Our clubhouse community provided the proof of concept for launching the Afropolitan Podcast.
The Afropolitan Podcast
Historically, in several African countries, oral tradition passed knowledge down. That oral tradition continues today, but we call podcasting. We seek to preserve our history, achievements, and knowledge for today's audience and future generations. On the Afropolitan podcast, we extract the blueprints of fearlessness, innovation, and progress from Afropolitans who are building the future of a bold and progressive nation. Our guests share their working formulas and the hard facts about leaving familiar terrain, embracing the unknown, and staying relevant afterward.
Phase Three: The Afropolitan Digital Nation
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, there were periods of upheaval across the diaspora and on the continent. George Floyd lost his life in 2020 to police brutality, dozens of protesters were killed in the End SARS protests in Nigeria, and everywhere we looked, it seemed like Black people worldwide were continuously brutalized, suffering from poverty and scarcity.
Being based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Afropolitan events gave us a glimpse of the best Africa offers. Still, anytime we traveled across the continent, we would see some of Africa's worst. Scarcity. Weakness. Poverty. Wherever we look and wherever we are, Africans worldwide are subjects, not citizens. Access to opportunity is scarce. Security is not guaranteed. For the most part, life is just about surviving, not thriving.
We asked ourselves how it was possible that the best of our people were not at the forefront, yet we create so much value. Our people have created trillions of dollars worth of value in sports, music, tech, and finance. We started traveling across the U.S. and different African cities. The question at the forefront of our minds was: Why are Black people great at creating value but not as great at capturing it?
These travels - across 20+ cities - sobered us to the reality of Black people on the continent and in the diaspora. In Africa, lingering poverty (9 of the 10 countries with the highest poverty rates are African), coups (Guinea, Mali), civil war (Ethiopia), and an incompetent political class stifle Africa's youth from viable socio-economic opportunities. In the U.S, where the African American diaspora resides, this issue manifests itself in rising inflation, economic stagnation, increasing inequality, racial inequality, and police brutality.
In April 2021, Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, released an article titled 'How to Start a Country.' In the article, Balaji proposes the idea of the Network State, a digital nation launched first as an online community before materializing physically on land after reaching critical mass. This was a light bulb moment for us.
We asked ourselves if it was possible to build the new version of the Underground Railroad, which helped enslaved people escape. This time an "Overground railroad" would take Black people to freedom beyond the physical. We drew some inspiration from the Federalist papers (American Founding Fathers)
“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.”[4] (Federalist 1 - 27 October 1787)
African countries were put together by accident and force. We have suffered the consequences of that decision with no light at the End of the tunnel. We believe that by working with the best minds and leveraging current technology, we can build a country by reflection and choice. A nation people opt into launched first as an online community before materializing physically on land after reaching critical mass.
Thus: We'd like to introduce you to Afropolitan, the digital nation founded by the best minds of the African continent and the diaspora that people can opt into.
Our goal is to create a digital nation to enable all Africans to live abundant lives. If the diaspora were a country, it would be the 10th largest globally with a population of 140 million people; Instead of the Land of Opportunity, we propose the Network of Abundance: abundance of tools, abundance of opportunity, abundance of joy.
Today, we are building a network comprising the best African and diaspora offers across art, finance, tech, sports, health, and media. Specifically, the Afropolitan Network is a Curator of Black and African talent, culture, capital, information, and experiences. However, we believe "our reach should exceed our grasp." While it may be a humble Network today, Afropolitan will be the first-ever internet country in the future. We believe that a digital nation created by reflection and choice, leveraging technology, and the best human capital in our communities can build a better digital country than the status quo.
"Because the brand new is unthinkable,” Balaji writes in his article, “we fight over the old." We are tired of fighting over the old; it's time for the new. Join us in building the network of abundance.
Wow, I didn't realize you all were based in the SFBA. I was living in Oakland up until 2021 when I moved to Tulum Mexico. I will reach out next time I visit the Bay.
I was happy to see that Africans are literally at the top of the list of aspiring network states.
Vitalik Buterin even gave a shoutout to Afropolitan in his critique of #thenetworkstate. https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html. Congrats.
Also happy to see that you all are starting with a DAO. I agree with Vitalik that the notion of a single founder with all the say does not make sense. I applied yesterday.
I and some others have been thinking about a black digital nation for awhile - starting right after George Floyd. In fact, it lead to us forming Presence Browser https:presencebrowser.com.
The digital nation framework provided by the Presence Browser enables purpose-aligned groups to have their own dedicated layer over the webpage. With a dedicated layer, citizens can meet and interact, and begin to think, learn, and build knowledge together.
Some of the outcomes for a successful digital nation are:
1) People meeting the right people at the right time to launch high-value collaborations
2) A public high signal-to-noise information ecology
3) Significant rewards for valued contributions