Dr. Goodluck Jonathan (2nd r), former president of Nigeria; Osita Oparaugo (2nd l), founder of Ogelle, and others, during a visit to the former president.
Since it was launched in Lagos in April 2019, Ogelle, Africa’s first user generated content platform with 100 percent focus on African content, has continued to recording impressive acceptance not just from users in Nigeria but all over Africa and globally. It has also received endorsement from prominent figures across Nigeria and beyond.
Osita Oparaugo, CEO of Reddot Television Network and founder of Ogelle, says the team at Ogelle is excited at the acceptability of the platform across Africa.
“Nearly 500,000 users, over 15,000 videos and a bounce rate less than 4 percent, according to Google analytics, show how much Ogelle is valued within and outside Africa as an only-African-content platform,” he says.
Oparaugo says from inception, Ogelle’s message has been consistent – “that we must use the creative industry and our creativity to change the negative narrative about us as a people and that African voice, image and data should be on an African platform”.
“That is why we built a platform that is user-generated, meaning any African no matter where he or she is in the world, can create content, create channel on Ogelle and share with family and friends and even make money from views from such videos,” he says.
Recounting some notable achievement since it launched, Oparaugo notes that Ogelle has produced exclusive content for the platform to support the user-generated content because the quality control is high and many videos are deleted unfortunately.
Apart from that, he says Ogelle has partnered with 13 film directors from Nigeria, Ghana and Rwanda and released 30 films for the month of August and 15 films for September, October and November before which most of the commissioned projects will be ready.
“We have opened a studio in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in partnership with a production company there and talks have progressed to set up another in Kenya,” the Ogelle founder says.
Between March and June 2020 alone, Ogelle had more than 37,000 app downloads on Google Play Store alone and an increase in traffic by over 1,000 percent, he says.
Last year, as part of its commitment to deliver exclusive content, Ogelle started production of Aluko’s Residence Season 1, finished early February 2020 and premiered in March 2020. It was well received by Ogelle audience and plans are on to start showing Season 2 by November 2020.
“Currently, we are scripting a movie about former president of Nigeria, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR. The storyline is amazing and surprisingly has less than 15 percent of politics in it. We are looking at other aspects of this great man’s life that are worthy of emulation and, most especially, his resolve and decision to put the lives of millions of people into consideration for the choice he made. We will wait and see,” he says.
Beyond the above, Oparaugo informs that currently, Ogelle has over 20 content creation partnerships across Africa and five notable ones in Nigeria.
“She’s A Boss with Anto Lecky, a 13-episode show showcasing female bosses from that akara seller in Ajegunle to the bank CEO in Ikoyi; Blame Josh, a 16-episode drama series with Josh2Funny and team; A Thousand Miles, a migration film project with Izu Ojukwu which our New York partners are scouting for a Hollywood actor suitable for one of the roles; a music video collaboration with Don Sylvester Records, and working with McLively and Broda Shaggi for promotional drama series. We have several others in Tanzania, Kenya and Ghana,” he says.
The above laudable achievements notwithstanding, promoters of Ogelle platform are not resting their oars as Oparaugo says the dream is to become the highest aggregator of African content.
“In 2020 and in the next 100 years, our goal and message is the same: to become the highest aggregator of African content, thereby providing a one-stop platform for resource and entertainment content about Africa. A platform that speaks to culture where Africans in Africa, Africans in the diaspora, black people all over the world and lovers of African content globally will find peace; a platform every African will be proud to call his or her own. Ogelle is African,” he says.
A passionate believer in Africa, Oparaugo wrote an article during the Black Lives matter which trended on LinkedIn. It was about the march by black people – and he called on black people all over the world to use the advantage of the present age that has made everyone almost a publisher to start creating content to change the negative narrative about Africa, to embrace technology by taking their businesses online and to support one another.
“Imagine if black NBA players in America invested 70 percent of their takings into building academies and clubs of their own and coming to Africa to recruit talents! Imagine if the ones in music did the same! Imagine if we Africans in Africa use our mineral resources to develop our countries by building infrastructures and business hubs here and there!” Oparaugo says.
“Africa’s problem is Africa. We complain about the West ripping us off but we collaborated with them. Ok, listen to this: we built Ogelle, first user-generated content platform in Africa for Africans in Africa and Africans in the diaspora and we still see people calling us names instead of embracing what we have built. They rather support foreign platforms because they have been brainwashed to believe that their own is not good enough. That was my article,” he says.
