#FRONTROW: ‘Ghafla’s’ short-lived dalliance with Ringier cause for concern

When I first met Samuel Majani just over four years ago, he was in the early stages of setting up what would become the infamous gossip blog, Ghafla! He had just received €25,000 (just over Sh2.6m) from 88mph, a fund run by my friend, Kristen Buch, a Danish technology entrepreneur-turned-investor. Majani and his fledgling team were in the process of moving out of Nailab, the incubation hub run by another friend, Sam Gichuru. They were travelling just 15 minutes up the road to the 88mph space on Ngong Road above the trendy Brew Bistro restaurant. A replica DeLorean Back To The Future Car welcomed you to the open floor, which featured desks in clusters for the various startups Kresten saw potential in.

An entertainment news site was not his first idea. After getting kicked out of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (a story for another day) in 2009, he started KenyanLyrics.com because he often struggled to find the right words online for his favourite local songs. That is not exactly a billion-shilling idea and it soon failed. When he started Ghafla, he was still soft and didn’t want to offend anyone. “We call everyone we write about to confirm a story and we’re not interested in scandal,” he told me proudly. I encouraged him to mix it up a little, throw in a dash of scandal and controversy to see what would happen. At the time, the site was boringly tame and the numbers mostly stagnated. Then he started posting more risqué stories, embraced misleading stories or unabashed clickbait, became obsessed with socialites and the hits steadily rose. In short order, I was genuinely upset with him and his band of gleeful writers with a seemingly endless capacity to turn any innocuous social media post into a full-blown spectacle.

UNSUCCESFULLY TRIED TO BUY HIM OUT

So popular was the blog that several mainstream and digital outlets unsuccessfully tried to buy him out. When Radio Africa failed, it poached just almost everyone who worked there and started a sleazier competitor. “A new dawn as Ghafla relaunches into a fully fledged media news website,” proclaimed a post on October 18, 2016.

I had long given up on even reading the site and only saw it because I received a press invite to an official launch. Majani followed it up with a personal call, which amused me greatly because he had published hundreds of nasty posts about me. My boss often joked that there was a “Larry Madowo Desk” at Ghafla, whose full-time brief was to churn posts about me. Somewhere along the way, they must have discovered that adding my name to any post, however far removed I was from the actual story, guaranteed a certain amount of hits. I told him I wouldn’t attend but I was happy for him and what his success meant for the technology ecosystem.

Though Majani couldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, I gathered that the Swiss firm, Ringier Africa Digital Publishing, had acquired Ghafla for Sh60 million. The Swiss also own or have major stakes in piagiame.co.ke and rupu.co.ke in Kenya, Pulse Ghana and Nigeria as well as magazines and digital properties around the world. The team moved into Ringier’s fancy corporate offices, hired new staff and pivoted “from disseminating just entertainment and celebrity news to covering broader topics that include politics, sports, science, technology, and lifestyle”. It was a dud. In a word, the new direction “sucked”.

On December 9, the Business Today blog had a screaming headline that quickly made the rounds: “Ringier dumps Ghafla for cooking numbers.” They changed it to something less sensational hours after but the central claim was that Majani had used bots to magnify his numbers by a factor of four.

“Remember there are three sides to every story: this side, that side, and the truth,” Majani wrote on a blog post on whiteafrican.com last November. He refused to comment on this saga when I reached out, citing confidentiality restrictions.

“Partnership to strengthen African digital media & publishing concludes today,” his own blog said. Several people familiar with the short-lived marriage wondered how Ringier had acquired Ghafla, hired new staff and relaunched it without ever paying Majani a cent. If the numbers are inflated as that blog post claimed, how come the Swiss didn’t discover this during due diligence, if they did any at all? There is a strong possibility that a deep-pocketed multinational could have taken advantage of a young Kenyan startup founder and basically ripped him off. This whole story stinks to high heaven and it is a shame that he might be bound by a non-disclosure agreement from speaking publicly about it. There are some major issues in this Silicon Savannah.

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WHY I BLOCKED A MISBEHAVING MP

On Wednesday afternoon, I was driving into the city from Uhuru Highway with five friends in the car. As we joined Parliament Road, I saw a Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon KBW 491H speeding towards us on the wrong side of the road.

“I’m going to block this guy,” I told my friends casually and maintained my lane. We stopped just moments of a collision and levelled with the elderly driver. The man on the passenger seat, Mwingi West MP Bernard Kitungi, remained on phone and actively ignored the building commotion. By that time, my friends Boniface Mwangi, Elijah Kanyi, Sam Soko and Anthony Ndung’u, had jumped out and were either recording the scene or dressing down the duo. We forced him to reverse and join the back of the right lane. As soon as we drove off, thinking that our civic duty was done, he went back and drove on the wrong side.

The picture and video from the incident quickly went viral, with mostly strong support for our actions. If more deliberate citizens stood up against bad behaviour like this, it wouldn’t be so newsworthy. We aren’t heroes like some have claimed and we certainly didn’t do it for the attention. We’re just conscious citizens.

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INCUMBENTS IN AFRICA RISK DEFEAT NOW

Nana Akufo-Addo will be the next president of Ghana after decisively felling incumbent John Mahama. This is just a week after The Gambia threw out a 22-year president Yaya Jahmeh, even through he’s trying to remain in power through the back door.

“The natives are restless,” a friend always says on Twitter.

It is starting to look like Africans are starting to demand more of their leaders and are not afraid to show those who don’t impress them the door. If I were an incumbent African president who was less than satisfactory, I would be very afraid.

There is likely to be a domino effect across the continent because voters will see that even strongmen can be toppled. Nothing is more dangerous than a people who are awake to their potential and are ready to use their vote to effect real change. Finally, Africa is truly rising.

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FEEDBACK: ON KENYANS WHO SHAMELESSLY ABET CORRUPTION

I agree with you completely. Kenyans are good at getting away with traffic offences. The police insult you when you refuse to bribe them and wonder how far  your “Christian convictions” will take you. I was once locked up since I didn’t offer to bribe them and I didn’t have the money anyway. Luckily, their boss listened to my case and allowed me to leave but warned me to observe traffic rules. I am not saying I am perfect, but change has to start with us, ordinary citizens. We can’t go on pointing fingers at the big thieves when the other three fingers are pointing at us.

Kate Danson

Thanks for a well-written article. I’m a dual citizen living in California, US. It’s often frustrating when I visit to witness citizens abetting corruption.

However, there are occasional bright spots, like in July this year when customs officials at the  airport were so professional that I couldn’t stop thanking them. I asked for their supervisors’ name to express our gratitude but they were shocked to be thanked and refused to give their supervisor’s name. It shows the entrenched culture where people are interested only when they stand to benefit. I don’t mean that  systems are perfect in California, but there you are assured that you can seek help and justice for anything, regardless of whether you have money or not.

Ben Odipo

Thanks for a brilliant, insightful and thought-provoking article. Corruption has become a way of like in Kenya, which can only mean that it has become part of our value system. We see nothing wrong with it as long as we believe we can benefit from it. It only becomes a problem when someone else benefits – and presumably at our expense. Kenya’s religious community is itself not immune from this societal plague.  Yet perhaps it is they who must now help all of us regain our moral compass. Otherwise, we shall have to invest a disproportionate amount of resources in our criminal justice system.

Charles K