immedia Invests R10 Million to Facilitate Digital Evolution in African Media

South African full-service technology company, immedia, has invested R10-million ($684, 230) with the aim of helping African media entrepreneurs to build sustainable community radio. This will be accomplished through the use of Fabrik, a set of cloud-enabled digital tools that empower media entities to live-stream shows, grow and engage with audiences around the world whilst benefitting financially through the monetisation of their audiences.

The company, which was founded 25 years ago and has the backing of Microsoft and the Industrial Development Corporation, has been developing their Fabrik technology since 2017.

Business Elites Africa understands that Fabrik allows media entrepreneurs to upend the traditional notion of “we broadcast and you receive”, by creating a feedback loop that directly helps the stations and listeners that use it to leapfrog old technology, to become citizen journalists, and find their strategic space in a digitally transformed world. It is already being used by 15 commercial clients, including radio stations Gagasi FM, Smile 90.4FM and YFM.

As part of its Digital Leap programme, immedia will be giving its platform to qualifying media entrepreneurs across Africa for free for a year. This includes consultation, training and support to help monetize the technology, cumulatively valued at R10 million.

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Phil Molefe, a veteran radio broadcaster in South Africa and Fabrik’s Head of Business Development & Strategy, said the programme was key to the company’s vision to spearhead media transformation. He also noted that the uptake of Fabrik by energetic entrepreneurs at community radio stations showed how empowering the suite of digital tools is.

“It enables them to deepen their relationship with their audience and monetise it sustainably because the quality of their engagement with listeners is meaningful,” he said.

Molefe went further to point out that while community media is often under-resourced and struggles to retain skills, the company’s case studies have shown that it is more than possible for them to thrive – and that the Digital Leap programme is the kind of opportunity they need, and can succeed on. Fabrik helps media entrepreneurs by solving key challenges for them, including:

• Providing them with a mobile application that allows community and campus radio stations to live-stream shows, as well host podcasts, allowing them to reach audiences well beyond the geographic constraints of their traditional radio broadcast signal.
• By shifting to a cloud-based tool, radio stations get access to archival and backup that is compliant with BCCSA and ICASA regulations. This helps them to significantly cut down on time and resources required to manually back up radio content to on-site servers or even tape.
• Messaging functionality, including push notifications, so that stations can better engage with their communities, publish written or multimedia content, and even promote active conversation between listeners. Push notifications help drive engagement by bringing attention to active competitions, surveys and polls, recently published content, and more.
• By encouraging listeners to register as a member and provide some of their personal information, such as geographics and demographics, stations are able to build audience profiles for their listeners, and gain a better understanding of their needs and preferences.
• These detailed analytics provided by Fabrik gives stations the data they need to convince advertisers and marketers of the value of promoting their products and services through the station’s app, helping bring in much needed revenue.

Note that Fabrik has a range of users, and about 60% of their listeners have an opt-in relationship with their broadcasters. By building and growing owned communities, stations then stand to benefit financially by serving highly relevant ads to their digital listeners. In addition, where sales conversions on social media are around 2%, Fabrik users enjoy 8%.