•How he built a multi million dollar media company on trust

In 2013, MURPHY CHIDI ANANWANA, took a leap of faith to found AFOREVO, an entertainment media tech company that has since grown to become unarguably the biggest exporter of African entertainment content including Nollywood beyond borders.

That giant leap spurred by the need to correct erroneous impressions about Africa has multiplied into AFOREVO TV and its many subsidiaries including AFOREVO DUBBING, VYBES FM RADIO and a host of others.

Today, AFOREVO a member of the Murphy Ben International Group is Youtube’s certified African biggest partner responsible for more than 70 % of African entertainment content online.

It also owns fast language dubbing studios across Africa and Europe putting films into many indigenous languages including mandarin, Korean, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, etc.  

In this exclusive encounter, Ananwana tells FRED IWENJORA the secrets of the success of the company he founded with sheer grit and determination.

He also hints on the impact of AFOREVO on Africa and the world adding that Africa has ceased being known as a continent of mud houses and flies.

And more…

 ”As you may have known, AFOREVO stands for Africa Online Revolution, a revolutionary online outfit set up to correct misconceptions about Africa. I mean we all grew up noticing a lot of misrepresentations of Africa especially by the western media. The truth is that the media is a very powerful tool of colonisation because the big and powerful countries use it to sway foreign agendas and policies. Before now, Africa had been known as a continent of mud houses and flies. This is the anomaly we went out to correct at AFOREVO.

We asked ourselves how are we going to lend our voice into the conversation. That is what gave birth to AFOREVO in a nut shell. It is a subsidiary of Murphy Ben International. We reasoned that since the world was going online where everyone and anyone have a say as different from when the big media moguls held sway and decided what mattered in the world. We jumped into the online bus and the rest is history. In summary, the mission and vision of AFOREVO is to redress, correct the wrong African history as presented by foreign media using entertainment content as films, music and comedy and I can stamp my chest that we have achieved that objective.

ROUGH BEGINNINGS, BIG CHALLENGES, HURDLES

The first challenges that hit us when we set out were multi-faceted. We started without funds, made first funds and lost all like many believe that first monies that accrue to a businessman always fizzles out to test his resolve. I decided to swim or sink and dabble into it full time. It was at the time one needed to have lots of money to pay for the rights to the content. We had rich competition from rich and bigger outfits who could muster funds and investments and here was little us without a dime and no investors.

That is why I believe that the best thing to have in life is purpose for anything rather than money. Money would come later if you apply your purpose to full throttle. If money is the main purpose for anything, you may not succeed as expected because you may give up sooner than later as long as you are not value and purpose driven. What drove us was the main vision. It was very hard because you couldn’t build on anything when everyone wanted to be paid for everything and you had no funds.

Secondly the know-how in the kind of media tech we were offering was also limited. Few people knew what we were about and we trained ourselves and later trained and retrained others. However our first partners who keyed into our vibes and vision were also passionate and ready to take down every obstacles and drive the vision. It was so difficult to find those who did not expect upfront payment. No one believed in revenue sharing. I told my people to continue the push. I believed that one day someone would see reason. Not long after, one movie content creator reluctantly agreed to give us a try. He did not have faith as to authorise more than one movie. With that one content, benefits of two years landed in a few months. He started telling his friends and not long, news went across that AFOREVO is a goal. We started growing. I also strongly believe that when there is a higher calling, things go well.

ANY SECRETS OF SUCCESS

Aside the God factor, I believe staff motivation was and is still key and major secret of our success. I started alone and later brought in many other young Nigerians who earned about 30k or less at the beginning. I told them that in a few years’ time they would all be bigger than me. I motivated the staff about being positive and many started pushing. 

Some saw my motivation as unrealistic. They told me later that I sounded like an idiot building castles in the air, telling them what seemed impossible. Our slogan here at AFOREVO is; Be your own boss. It means working for us is working for yourself and there is no limit to what you can achieve. I told my staff that I wanted AFOREVO to be an ecosystem in which no one would limit any one’s progress.

In 2015 just a year after, we held our end of year party and I gave out two cars to two deserving staff. I wanted them to know that AFOREVO was a place of possibilities. Mind you I didn’t have a car of my own at the time while two of my staff owned cars that we gave out to them. Every one buckled up. The next end of year party we gave out five cars and I stopped. From then, they were able to start buying their own cars by themselves. And all the SUVs you see around this compound are owned by staff and I feel so good about this. Some are building their houses. One staff came around to thank me and report that he has completed his house. I told him that he owed me three more houses because he deserves more. When you create an ecosystem where everyone is boss and thriving because they know they are working for themselves, then sky is limit. There may not be any need for competition and rivalry. I have several CEOs on board with me in a happy environment. But in all, I don’t rule out the God factor.

DID UPBRINGING PREPARE YOU FOR WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING TODAY?

Every one’s upbringing has a way of moulding them. My dad was a professor in the academia while my mum was a serial business woman. My maternal grand mum came from a family of traders and importers from Nnewi who were among the first to start.the importation of spare parts. So I may say I am a bridge between academia and trading.

I studied Insurance and Risk management at ESUT, Enugu. But I have always been a fan of entertainment. I was already producing music for churches until I met Tony Ngon, a Cameroonian music producer who taught me much more about digital music recording, production and engineering. During those years, we discussed African problems which seemed the same across countries. We found out that we were toys in the hands of the world powers. This understanding propelled me.

I later moved to Lagos and did a few other things before getting involved in media and tech.

There is also a part of me that is of discipline toughened by my training as a music producer and engineer

IMPACT OF AFOREVO

One of the biggest impacts AFOREVO has had on the world is that everyone now knows that Africa is not a continent of flies and mud houses. Even CNN now shows more African shows portraying the sunny sides of Africa unlike before when it was all about  stories of famine and desolation. AFOREVO was one of those that helped change this narrative. One Jamaican lady wrote us a letter of commendation like many others. That letter and many others made me glad.

The Jamaican asked if the photos and videos on our channels are truly Africa and I said yes . She said she saw modern day cars and buildings driven in the US and wondered if those scenes were really Africa. Her letter was so passionate. She said our content made her very proud of her African origins. I felt so good on that day and I feel it is one of the happiest days of my life for people to note that what we do makes them feel good.  Today there are many Africa films online and AFOREVO handles over 70% of the films from Nollywood and Nigeria including Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, English. It tells you that the world knows about Nollywood globally out there online