Mame Dorine Gueye is a Senegalese media professional. She has been working in broadcasting for over 15 years, starting her career as an editing assistant before quickly rising to the position of audiovisual production manager at 2STV and then program manager at TFM. In 2014, she joined the CANAL+ group for the launch of the A+ channel. She worked within the group as program manager for the A+ channels, then joined the E-media Invest group, founded by former members of Groupe Futurs Médias in 2018. After three years as content director, she decided to launch her own digital media outlet, Etoile Africaine.
How did the online media outlet Etoile Africaine come about?
This media outlet is part of a larger project to create a pan-African television channel focused on culture, bringing together cultural leaders and audiovisual professionals. Given the scale of the project, I decided to lay the foundation by launching a digital media outlet.
Can you tell us about this media outlet?
Etoile Africaine is a web magazine created to promote the cultural and creative industries and entrepreneurship among talented individuals in Africa and the diaspora. Once this first stage is complete, my ambition is to expand these activities into print by creating and publishing a paper magazine designed as an extension of the digital version. The magazine will be published every two months and the aim will be to distribute it to local airlines and African airports.
How do you feed your platform?
The purpose of Etoile Africaine is to be a pan-African web magazine. We identify African personalities and pan-African topics to highlight on our site. Our content is fed and enriched by a network of partners located in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, and Côte d'Ivoire. In particular, we work with a producer in Cameroon and a director in Benin. This network enables us to identify relevant topics. We also work hand in hand with the diaspora, for example with an entrepreneur in Colorado in the United States who relies on a network of African personalities living in that part of the world. The profiles identified become information relays.
These contacts enable us to attract internet users and readers from all countries and increase our visibility.
We recently entered into a partnership with a Malian television channel, Mandé TV, to take our video content and broadcast it. This will enable us to reach a new audience and start producing video content, ahead of our final project, which is to create a television channel. Today, it is still difficult. Television channels do not have much budget for content acquisition. We therefore have to find ways to create synergies and exchange skills.
What is your business model?
For the moment, our business model is based solely on sponsorship. We are offering free access to develop our image and our community. This will give us enough strength and legitimacy to approach and convince advertisers. The business model is therefore bound to evolve. At the same time, we organize events to generate revenue. We are currently working on creating a series of conferences on the theme of transmission. The first will be held in Senegal as part of the Dakar Biennale.
Do you plan to include content in local languages?
To successfully penetrate the local African market, it is essential to include local languages. We then add subtitles as needed, but as our mission is resolutely pan-African, we will of course include local languages in addition to the shared language, which is French.
What's next? In the short term, we are working on a print magazine project, as well as a series produced in Wolof. We are still in the writing phase.
It's not always easy to start a business. What motivated you?
It's true that it's not always easy to start a business, and even less so in the audiovisual sector. It's a field that is little known to banks and financial institutions. We are starting with our own funds and our enthusiasm, and we hope to grow.