By Beatrice Chabaya
Roland Byagaba, a 36-year-old Ugandan entrepreneur, writer, and IT specialist, is on a mission to empower Africans to tell their own stories. Roland has also had an interest in marketing career and tried different things such as agriculture, acting, and others.
Born into a family of five, Roland says his passion for stories is what led him to create Muwado, a platform where Africans get to tell their stories.
Being an IT specialist who graduated from the Uganda Martyrs University – Nkozi, Roland started Muwado in 2013 as a blog to bridge the gap between stories told by non-Africans and the reality on the ground. Roland observed that most stories that were told by non-Africans were not as accurate. “It’s different being told a story about Africa from a non-African telling you about your place when you can tell those stories yourself,” he said.
“Muwado started out as a personal blog where I wanted to tell Ugandan stories and my different experiences around the world. I had just come from another project, a physical lifestyle magazine called Elyt, so I thought of putting my writings on the internet – which has lower operational costs – and bringing other African storytellers on board to help tell African stories,” he explained in an interview during his recent visit to Lusaka on a trip through the SADC countries to build capacity in African storytellers and quantity of stories on the platform.
Initially, sustaining Muwado was difficult due to financial constraints, Roland recalls. “We maintained the platform, but there was no financial gain to pay our contributors. Media viability was and remains a challenge,” he said.
That’s when he pivoted Muwado into an open Africa-centric social network forming community around diverse African stories.
Roland’s travels across Africa, including the 2018 Cape to Cairo expedition with The Great African Caravan, broadened his perspective on African stories. As an arts journalist and a traveller, Roland says, “Through my travels, I am able to document African stories and publish them so that Africans can see the importance of travel and the similarities we all have as Africans.”
In 2019, after the Caravan, Roland revisited content monetization on Muwado. “We would leverage existing technology, customize it for the African market, and provide tools on the platform that enabled existing and new storytellers to earn from their content,” he says. A 2022 grant from UNDP helped with upgrading the platform with features to enable storytellers to earn through audience appreciation gifts, monthly subscriptions, and advertisements.
He explained that all stories are welcome on Muwado, of course those adhering to the safety standards on the internet. “Creative writers, journalists, poets, podcasters, photographers, comic artists, and any African with a story can write news updates, opinion pieces, fictional and personal experience stories that could attract readers from all over the world,” he says.
“Currently, most of the content on Muwado is Ugandan but through more African travels, I intend to build networks so that the platform can house a range of stories from all over Africa, showcasing the richness and diversity of African experiences,” he says.
Covering over 10 countries and counting, Muwado continues to empower African storytellers, providing a sustainable platform for content creation and monetization, in any language. Roland’s vision has created a community where Africans can share and celebrate their stories and eventually live off story-telling.
Roland, however, highlighted one of the challenges being faced economically, which is people not valuing art and creativity. “We noticed that most people do not value art and creativity, and that is still a challenge to earn money on the platform. African advertisers are also not supportive of local digital platforms,”’he said.
“However, as we build this culture and bring about mindset shift around the issues of supporting our own, we encourage all African storytellers to join Muwado and share enthusiastically so that their stories can gain attraction from audiences who will eventually give whatever amount they have to support furthur creation of the stories,” Roland conlcuded our interview on an optimistic determined note.