Every month, I try to give an update on the business side of Gambakwe Media. This is because in Zimbabwe, there is often confusion between the media business and political activism. There is a lot of pressure on Gambakwe Media from many different parties for us to pursue their agenda and as the founder I have to keep reminding myself and our audience of the reasons why we started this business.
Revenues Under Lockdown
I am very happy to say that Gambakwe Media has managed to operate profitably under the lockdown. We have been able to grow our revenues 5 times during lockdown, in spite of the difficult operating conditions.
Traffic
Unfortunately, due to the high price of data in Zimbabwe, We have seen our Zimbabwe traffic plunge by over 95%. However, this has been made up by our strategy to focus on other markets. We have therefore managed to grown our traffic from other countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA.
Gambakwe Media continues to reach approximately 4 Million people a month on our various delivery channels each month.
The Zimbabwe market if very important for Gambakwe Media, because I would like to have our head office in Zimbabwe once the situation normalises.
Delivery Channels
We have also managed to restructure our delivery channels. As I announced two months ago, we managed to close down Maputoupdates.com and Harareupdates.com which contributed to the decline in our Zimbabwe traffic.
Staff
By August 2019, Gambakwe Media was employing over 20 people made up of full time employees, interns, attachment students and contractors. We also had artists who would come on the platform and get paid for interviews and other short productions.
I can report that we have significantly reduced the number of people working at Gambakwe Media and I believe that we have reached an optimal level where we have just under 10 employees working at Gambakwe Media.
Strategy going forward
As I mentioned in early 2019, I plan to move to a different country soon. My initial plan was to study in Canada, but given the coronavirus pandemic, I will have to reconsider my plans.
In terms of content, I believe we have now grown our own brand identity and we have our own following that loves our balanced and non-partisan approach. We are not trying to be anyone, or to support anyone, an approach that I think in the long term, will allow us to build a reputable content organisation.
I am also happy to continue to cover events as they occur and to feature people that would otherwise not have access to media.
Other ventures
Going forward, I would like to see Gambakwe Media diversifying into other areas, as technology is allowing us to innovate in different ways.
The platforms we have will also allow us to go into other areas such as e-commerce and there are various other partnership opportunities that we will be actively exploring.
