Since winning The Gavel in 2025, how has your business evolved?

Winning The Gavel gave me the seed funding and institutional validation to move from concept to reality. The site is live, and we are now finalizing some exciting partnerships.

More than the capital, The Gavel gave me permission to think bigger and helped me evolve as an individual. The challenges I hit along the road allowed me to evolve as a person, expand my skills and expertise, and flex my growth mindset.

The business has moved from thesis to practice. That transition has been both exhilarating and humbling.

You’ve recently rebranded to Akuraa—how does the new identity expand on your original vision?

The rebrand to Akuraa—the Akan word for “village”—is about linguistic reclamation. In some contexts, being “from the village” implies being unsophisticated.

We reclaim it as a site where ancestral wisdom and authentic ways of being are preserved. Toni Morrison said: “I stood at the edge and claimed it as central.” That’s Akuraa.

We operate from the periphery. The overlooked, the threshold between visible and hidden, and refuse to move toward the center. Instead, we redefine where the center is.

We’re not a “platform.” We’re a village: collective, rooted, knowledge-centered. This isn’t about images. It’s about who sets the frame.

How has working directly with clients and contributors shaped or refined your approach since launch?

I’ve learned that curation is the value, not technology.

Initially, I thought the main barrier was technical—build the platform, photographers will come, institutions will license. But conversations with both sides revealed something deeper: institutions need trust, and photographers need dignity.

Institutions aren’t just buying images, they’re buying cultural credibility.

They need to know the imagery won’t expose them to accusations of appropriation or misrepresentation. They need context: Who is this person? What does this ceremony mean? Is this photographer Ghanaian or a Western tourist?

This taught me that Akuraa’s competitive advantage isn’t scale (we’ll never have Getty’s 300 million images). It’s curatorial intelligence. We’re trained eyes, vetting every image for quality, context, and cultural integrity.

Akuraa was built to challenge outdated visual narratives. Have there been moments where you’ve seen that shift happening in real time, particularly in how African photographers are perceived online versus the barriers they face behind the scenes?

Yes, the gap between visibility and infrastructure is stark.

African photographers are landing major opportunities: Jude Lartey represented by De La Revolución, Christian Saint winning global awards, Ekow Barnes’ WB Groups, and Ebony Tagoe’s We Are Studio Dream, bringing clients to the continent.

But what about photographers outside these hubs?

Zainab Abubakar, one of our founding photographers, lives in a part of Nigeria with limited access to these networks. I found her through Camera for Girls. She’s incredibly skilled, but without proximity to Lagos or Accra, how does her archive reach institutions?

Akuraa builds that infrastructure. Geography shouldn’t determine access. Visibility is growing but only infrastructure ensures it reaches everyone.

Is there a particular project, collaboration, or milestone within Akuraa that has felt defining for the platform so far?

The platform build itself has been defining not just technically, but philosophically.

I spent months prototyping, building wireframes, and workflows to articulate my vision. But I knew I couldn’t execute the full technical build alone. That’s when I brought in Eloka Agu (developer) and Norkor Nortey (designer/collaborator).

What makes this collaboration defining is how it mirrors Akuraa’s ethos: I set the curatorial vision, then trusted incredibly talented people to execute it.

Eloka deployed my prototype, ensuring we had an effective backend—Stripe and Paystack integration, admin panel, and e-commerce infrastructure, translating my curatorial requirements into functional code. Norkor shaped the visual identity and user experience, ensuring the platform feels like a village.

This isn’t a founder micromanaging developers. It’s a curator working with technologists. Each bringing expertise, each trusted to do what they do best.

The teamwork is indicative of the project itself: collective, trust-based, rooted in the understanding that infrastructure requires multiple hands.

Building Akuraa has taught me that vision without execution is just theory, and execution without vision is just code. The magic is in the handoff: knowing when to lead, when to step back, and when to trust the village you’re building with.

What is one area of the business you are particularly focused on strengthening right now, and why?

Customer acquisition. Specifically, converting institutional interest into paying subscriptions.

My focus is proving the value proposition to 5–10 pilot customers before full launch. I’m offering founding subscriber rates (50% off) to early institutions willing to test with us during beta. Part of this work is finding the language that bridges movement values (visual sovereignty, economic justice) with institutional needs.

I’m also building case studies: once one institution licenses 30+ images, I can show others, “Here’s how [Institution X] used Akuraa.” Social proof is everything in institutional sales.

This is the valley between vision and viability. I’m focused on crossing it.

How do you hope the landscape for African image-makers will evolve, and what role will your platform play in that?

I hope we move from inclusion to infrastructure.

Right now, the conversation is: “How do we get more African photographers into Getty? How do we diversify stock imagery?” That’s inclusion logic—trying to fix extractive systems by adding us to them.

I want infrastructure logic: “What if Africans built our own platforms, set our own terms, and institutions came to us because we’re the trusted source?”

Concretely, I hope to see:

  1. African photographers earning sustainable income from their work.
  2. Institutions defaulting to African-owned platforms for African content.
  3. Photographer collectives across the continent.

Akuraa is Pan-African, but I hope to see more regional collectives emerge. There are already some great ones: Lensational, Africa Unpublished, Cameras for Girls, No Wahala Magazine. These female-led organizations are doing amazing things for, and with, photographers and image-makers across the continent.

I’d love to see us federate, cross-license, and build a network of African visual sovereignty.

Akuraa’s role is to prove the model works. If we can show that 60% payouts, curator-led quality, and institutional sales are viable, others will replicate it.

That’s success. Not monopoly, but replication.

Looking ahead, what does the next phase of growth look like for you and the platform?

  • Phase 1 (May–August 2026): Beta validation

Test the platform, gather feedback, and prove institutions and organizations will pay. Goal: break even on operating costs.

  • Phase 2 (September 2026–2027): Scale to sustainability

Expand the number of photographers, images, and long-term subscription customers. Formalize partnerships that are currently in conversation. Raise funding to hire part-time operations support.

  • Phase 3 (2028+): Agency

Launch an agency connecting Akuraa photographers to clients for custom shoots.

Personally, I’m moving from founder-operator to builder-curator. Right now, I’m doing everything from recruitment, curation, and sales, to operations. The next phase means delegating operations so I can focus on what I’m best at: curatorial vision, institutional partnerships, and strategic direction.

The goal isn’t to build Akuraa into a unicorn startup. It’s to build durable infrastructure that outlasts me. A village that sustains itself, grows collectively, and shifts power structurally.

That’s the horizon.