BROADCASTS.com

b"You might recall that in September 2017 the Cameroonian former Founder & CEO of Afrostream and current Chief Brand Officer of African Leadership Academy's Anzisha Prize, Tonj\\xe9 Bakang, published a heavily-publicised Medium post in French announcing that his VOD streaming service was shutting down. Here is Tonj\\xe9's letter in English\\u2014 translated by Audrey Lang: http://bit.ly/tonj\\xe9okayafrica. Our very own Andile Masuku even wrote a syndicated op-ed for Business Report South Africa (http://bit.ly/tonjeoped) celebrating Tonj\\xe9's decision to chronicle how and why his company failed.\\n\\nBy founding Afrostream, Tonj\\xe9 set out to capture the loyalty of an underserved customer segment that lay within the confines of a super-competitive streaming market. We\\u2019re talking a well-defended industry dominated by international rivals like Netflix, and by increasingly confident African startups like IROKO\\u2014 the former reportedly spending something like \\u20ac33 million on marketing alone in the first year they launched in France (Afrostream\\u2019s most important foreign geographic market). That tidbit should put into proper perspective, how very little the $4 million Afrostream managed to raise to fund its mission over four years actually is. \\n\\nIn this conversation with Andile Masuku and Tayo Akinyemi - taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2018 - Tonj\\xe9 details the ordeal of watching his entrepreneurial dream die and shares profound lessons about staying true to oneself, failing forward and engineering personal reinvention.\\n\\nApply for the Anzisha Prize: http://www.anzishaprize.org/apply/"