Séné Ossebi Douniam is the founder of the media outlet and Mansour Loum is the editor-in-chief of Sport News Africa. What measures are you putting in place to cover the upcoming Africa
Cup of Nations? M.L:
Our goal is to cover this major sporting event on three levels:
We will be broadcasting hard news before, during, and after the competition.
For the past few weeks, we have been broadcasting information on the latest preparations, the latest news about the selected teams, and the various rumors circulating about the organization of the AFCON in Cameroon. The goal is to keep our soccer fans informed in advance.
During the CAN, we will broadcast information about the various matches in progress, including match reports. From the opening match to the final, there will be a presentation, the team line-ups, and a match report.
We want to accompany soccer fans, hour by hour, to ensure they have the best possible sporting experience.
At the end, we will also provide an overall review.
We will be conducting many interviews throughout the competition, including interviews with players and coaches, so that you can fully experience these three weeks at the rhythm of the CAN.
How can we access this information? M.L:
We will officially launch a mini website entirely dedicated to the CAN. Internet users will have access to all our articles, all our news briefs, and also a lot of data. We have partnered with OPTA, a company specializing in sports statistics and live scores, to obtain and promote data on the highlights of the competition, the teams, the players, the matches, and statistics related to all of this.
Do you plan to develop other formats? M.L:
We also want to cover this upcoming CAN in video format. To do this, we will send special correspondents to the field to follow the competition. In line with the smartphone trend, we will produce short, instantaneous content that is perfectly suited to digital use. These special correspondents will also feed our social networks and editorial team. Internet users will thus have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the matches and stadiums and meet the players.
This video feature, deployed with our influencers, will allow us to cover sports news in a fun and light-hearted way, notably with Observateur Ebène, with the aim of creating buzz. We can also count on Cynthia Nzetia to provide us with a daily summary of the best moments of the CAN.
More generally, Sport News Africa was launched in 2020. Where are you today in terms of your development? S.O:
We are still structured in the same way: an editorial team based in Dakar with six journalists on site, managed from Paris by Mansour, our new editor-in-chief. Our editorial team in Dakar produces articles, news briefs, and interviews, and we have a network of 16 correspondents across the continent, spread across several French-speaking and English-speaking African countries: Cameroon, including English-speaking Cameroon, with a manager for that part, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. We also have a manager in France for the entire diaspora.
In addition to the editorial side of things, we will be featuring video columns with local influencers such as Abdoul Kaba for Central Africa and Observateur Ebène for West Africa. We are currently setting up a new column with Prudence Leroy called "Prudence déconne" (Prudence messes around). and we also have a new recruit named Cynthia Nzetia who will be in charge of producing videos on the monthly highs and lows in soccer and sports news.
We are trying to strengthen our teams to have content that is sufficiently diverse, varied, and appealing, and these influencers are key because they allow us to build bridges with several regions of the continent.
What does Sport News Africa represent today? Which countries consume your content the most? S.O:
Here are our top five today: France with the diaspora, Ivory Coast, DRC, increasingly Senegal, Gabon, Congo, the US…