Moroccan startup Creative Africa has launched a platform that features the best of African creatives in different domains such as photography, web design and painting.
Currently, Creative Africa features two creatives each week, with the founder Ahmed El Azzabi planning to develop the site into a full platform where creatives can find information to better perform their job, and obtain work.
“It all started when I wanted to take freelance jobs online. I started posting for software engineering positions, but got rejected many times, not due to my lack of competence, but because I was charging a lot for an African,” El Azzabi told Disrupt Africa.
“I didn’t like the idea of “you need to charge less because you’re from Africa”, so I started thinking about ways to show to the world that we have what it takes to charge what we charge.
After searching for some creatives in Africa, I was blown away by the quality and execution of African creatives and how their work matches worldwide standards. This is where I got the idea of building a website to feature all this amazing work in one place.”
The bootstrapped startup has received good feedback from the African creatives it has spoken to, and will be featuring individuals from Morocco, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Cape Verde, Angola and others.
“We are planning to operate in every African country to variate the offering and styles,” El Azzabi said.
Creative Africa is studying different income streams, but two are most likely to be introduced in the coming months. It will charge creatives for promoted featuring, which El Azzabi says is different from the normal advertising model as promoting the work of African creatives is at the core of the startup’s mission.
“All promoted featuring is reviewed before publishing, and because they are part of the mission, they will live forever – advertisers pay once, and their work will be always on the platform,” he said.
The startup is also planning to launch a jobs board and “creative matcher”. The jobs board will allow companies to post work, which can then be applied for by users.
