Last year, South African travel blogger Popi Sibiya found herself cruising the canals of Ganvié, a village on stilts in the middle of a lake in Benin. As she sat on the back of a wooden canoe, she pulled out her smartphone and began broadcasting the experience to 40,000 Instagram followers.
Ms Sibiya is a former kindergarten teacher who has spent much of the past two years traversing the African continent on public transport. She is part of an emerging group of young African travel bloggers who are using social media platforms to redefine what adventure travel in Africa looks like – and who can experience it. They reject the stereotype that travel to the continent is the preserve of khaki-clad Westerners on safari – and invite their predominantly African audience to do the same.
Why we wrote this
A story with a focus
With few exceptions, African countries rarely appear on global “where to visit” lists. Now, female travel bloggers from the continent are making history themselves.
“We don’t need to rely on traditional media [anymore]says Rosalind Cummings-Yeates, an African-American travel journalist who often works in Africa. Instead, would-be travelers can scroll through the feeds of influencers like Ebaide Joy, the Instagram moniker @go_ebaidea Nigerian adventure traveler riding her motorcycle from Nigeria to Kenya.
This generation of influencers is “call[ing] out of ignorant stereotypes’ and ‘enlargement[ing] the image of Africa,” says Ms Cummings-Yeates.
Last year, South African travel blogger Popi Sibiya found herself cruising the canals of Ganvié, a village on stilts in the middle of a lake in Benin. As she sat on the back of a wooden canoe, she pulled out her smartphone and began broadcasting the experience to 40,000 Instagram followers.
“My lover is rowing me as we speak,” she joked, laughing as a man moved toward her in a water taxi.
Ms Sibiya is a former kindergarten teacher who has spent much of the past two years traversing the African continent on public transport – and now has over 100,000 followers. They are part of an emerging group of young African travel bloggers who are using their social media platforms to redefine what adventure travel in Africa looks like – and who can experience it. They reject the stereotype that travel to the continent is the preserve of khaki-clad Europeans on safari or sun-kissed Americans sipping cocktails on the beaches of Zanzibar – and invite their predominantly African audience to do the same.
Why we wrote this
A story with a focus
With few exceptions, African countries rarely appear on global “where to visit” lists. Now, female travel bloggers from the continent are making history themselves.
African travelers have “started prioritizing fun and adventure” on their own continent, says Ms Sibiya, whose following is mainly affluent South Africans who travel to Europe, the Middle East and Asia for their holidays. On her behalf, “they see that we also have beautiful beaches. we don’t need to go to Thailand,” he says.
Documenting a different Africa
Each year, African countries have more than 80 million visitors and the industry creates about 25 million jobs, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, an industry advocacy group.
However, African countries rarely appear on global “where to visit” lists – at least outside of international favorites such as Morocco, Mauritius, South Africa and Egypt.
Casual travelers with large social media followings are filling that gap, says American travel journalist Rosalind Cummings-Yeates, who has traveled extensively in the region and often uses travel influencers to help plan her trip.
“We don’t need to rely on traditional media [anymore],” she says. Instead, would-be travelers can scroll through the feeds of influencers like Ebaide Joy, whose Instagram handle @go_ebaide, a Nigerian adventure traveler who rides her motorcycle from Nigeria to Kenya. Or like Ess Opiyo (@ess_opiyo), a Kenyan travel guide with a passion for unusual destinations. This generation of influencers is “call[ing] out of ignorant stereotypes’ and ‘enlargement[ing] the image of Africa,” says Ms Cummings-Yeates.
Margot Mendes has seen first-hand the power of social media to transform the way people travel in the region. He lives in Dakar, Segenal, where he works in marketing. She uses the same skills on her Instagram account, @thedakardreamwhere she shares her life and travels with her 33,000 followers.
Her grid includes scenes of bustling outdoor markets, peach-colored sunsets overlooking cerulean hotel pools, and snapshots of local cuisine like baguette sandwiches and seasoned rice dishes.
Ms Mendes started the account five years ago when she returned to Dakar from Paris, where her family from Senegal and Guinea-Bissau had immigrated when she was a child. At first, the page was just to show her worried friends and family in Europe how much Dakar had transformed in the decades since they immigrated.
“I was just curious about my culture and going to places to discover my own culture,” she says.
But soon her page began to gain an audience beyond people she knew. She says her new followers – most of them African – told her they loved seeing their own continent featured as a glamorous travel destination for the first time.
Complicating the story
Ms Mendes’ account has the feel of a glossy travel magazine, but for many young African women who chronicle their travels, it’s important not to shy away from the continent’s struggles – or the challenges that make traveling there difficult to navigate.
Recently, for example, Nigerian-British travel blogger Pelumi Nubi completed a 10-week road trip from London to Lagos in a purple four-door Peugeot 107 that she named Oluwa-Lumi – Lumi for short. It means “God lights the path” in her native Yoruba language.
Ms Nubi documented the journey for more than a quarter of a million people on her Instagram account, @pelumi.nubi. Her posts bounced between they travel high – like when the wheels of Peugeot’s Lumi touched African soil for the first time in Morocco – and low – a video Lumi’s crumpled hood after crashing into a parked car on a dark road in Ivory Coast.
“You have people trying to paint [Africa] as a war-torn place, a dangerous place, and then you have people trying very hard to sell it as this paradise,” says Ms Sibiya, whose page gleefully chronicles her travels in rickety buses she describes as “aqueducts”. and she doesn’t shy away from her brushes with poverty, bad roads and chaotic border crossings. “I document Africa in a balanced way,” he says.
Ms Sibiya says her audience is mainly other South Africans, many of whom tell her they are experiencing the continent’s beaches, safaris, fancy hotels and restaurants for the first time through her account. For many, the issue is partly cost. Conversely, flights between African countries are often more expensive than flights from the continent to international travel hubs such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates or New York. And instead of high-speed trains or rental cars, overland travelers often have to choose between substandard public transportation or paying for a private car and driver.
Ms Sibiya funds her travels through paid subscriptions to her Instagram account, which cost 140 rand (about $7) a month and give access to more detailed and frequent travel updates from her public page. Currently, it has about 1,200 subscribers.
She believes social media influencers like herself have become a trusted source of travel information because of their commitment to showing an authentic side of Africa.
For her, this authenticity is embodied by a recent experience she had in Zanzibar, where she got lost on a cobblestone street in Stone Town. It was clear she had no idea, she says, but no one tried to tease her. Instead, a group of children led her back to a central square and told her:Hakuna Matata– Swahili for “don’t worry.”
“They are very aware of the beauty of community, the beauty of kindness,” he says.