If you stacked every fintech advert in Lagos, three out of five would probably show a smiling person, a rocket emoji and a promise to “change lives.” The other two would be arguing about fees.
That noise is exactly why Damilola Fowowe’s work is indispensable, not because he can shout louder, but because he chooses to tell the stories that actually move policy, change people’s choices and widen what success looks like in Africa.
The scale of the continent’s storytelling gap is appalling. According to Reframing African Media (2025), less than 30% of the content Africans consume is locally originated, and only 12% of African youth say they see themselves accurately represented in mainstream narratives.
Yet this is the youngest continent in the world, with an average age under 20. Nigeria alone saw over 1.2 million young people enter the job market in 2024, while youth unemployment remains a stubborn challenge, in part because networks, mentorship and visibility are still lacking.
Against this backdrop, Damilola’s mission, to build replicable, dignified stories of success, feels less like a passion project and more like a continental necessity.
“I want to build something from a nascent stage and be proud that through media, through communications, through strategy, we’re able to make it happen in Africa.”
His words may sound simple, but they’re laced with intent. He doesn’t see media as decoration but as a lever that can shift culture, open doors, and change the conditions for millions of young people navigating an unforgiving labour market.
That conviction is backed by statistics. Today, 65% of Africans across 39 countries rely on radio or digital media at least a few times a week to access news. But access to digital storytelling is still uneven along gender, education, and income lines.
The corporate world has begun to respond. MTN’s Pan-African Media Innovation Programme, launched in 2025, is training journalists across 16 countries with digital storytelling, data journalism and entrepreneurial skills.
Damilola Fowowe stands at the same crossroads, arguing that African narrative must not only expand but also prioritise dignity; “One principle of storytelling is, write for the heart. Always write for the heart.”
The heart of his work is dignity, and nowhere is this clearer than in Hopes and Threads, the community initiative he helped found. In Lagos, over 60% of school-age children in low-income communities lack access to basics such as school uniforms. Damilola recalls watching a child’s whole posture shift after receiving a new one.
However, he and his team refused to turn that moment into online content. “We’re not going to post the children because we didn’t want to turn them into content. We don’t want them growing up, Googling themselves, and finding their faces from when they were young being used as content.”
That choice aligns directly with a 2025 Afrobarometer finding: 72% of Africans now believe media should prioritise dignity and truth over sensationalism.
This same approach has created ripple effects inside boardrooms. At Interswitch, Damilola pushed for a campaign to include the story of an adoptive mother. The result was not just clicks, but policy. “And because of that action, the company decided to place the adopted child on HMO, even though it went against existing policy. They later rolled out new guidelines ensuring adopted children could also enjoy health benefits.”
This is the kind of change that statistics can’t fully capture: a single story transforming how a corporation treats families.
For Damilola, versatility is not vanity. “Wear as many hats as possible,” he says. “…you can be a Jack of all trades and master of all.” He believes ideas can flex to any space, whether constrained by a shoestring budget or powered by millions. “Ideas can thrive no matter what space, no matter what limitations exist…they can fit into any box you put them in.”
His sights are also set on sectors that rarely get dignified airtime, especially agriculture which employs nearly 50% of Africa’s workforce but contributes only about one-fifth of the continent’s GDP.
In Nigeria, cocoa exports brought in over $780 million in Q4 2024, but less than 10% of raw cocoa is processed locally, meaning most of the value slips away abroad. For Damilola Fowowe, the problem is storytelling. “There are a whole lot of stories we can tell from our agricultural sector that are not premised on the old ‘I’m a farmer from one poor village…’”
In reframing agriculture as a chain of innovation and opportunity, storytelling can help capture value downstream, create jobs, and redefine how Africans see themselves.
Underlying all of this is his vision for success: “Success for me is that we can democratise movement, we can democratise motion for every single person in Africa. Whoever you are, you should have the tools, the resources, and the expanded horizons to say, Ah, okay, this is something I can be.”
This reiterated the demographic urgency of the continent. With Africa’s median age under 20, and millions of young people entering work each year with limited options, replicable stories of dignity and agency may be the only real blueprint for resilience.
Five years from now, through storytelling and many more, Damilola Fowowe wants his impact measured not in personal accolades but in multipliers: “I want you to be told that I inspired as many people as possible, thousands of people who are successful in their own right, defining success in their own way, and not pressured to conform to a specific path just because they feel they have to in the bid to be successful.”
One hour with him leaves you less dazzled by buzzwords and more convinced by evidence; one story changed corporate policy, one uniform changed a child’s sense of self, and one sector’s reframed story could add billions to GDP.
Damilola doesn’t build castles in the air, he builds ladders. And if Africa’s sustainability and resilience depends on anything, it is on more people climbing those ladders, and more storytellers confident enough to build them.
