Bio

The Story Book Africa (SBA) is a creative enterprise with a social purpose - to inspire, ‎educate, mentor, entertain and influence the youth (18-35) in Africa to ‎make informed decisions on their healing, growth, and ‎‎development. Its mandate is achieved by providing a platform for storytelling and entrepreneurship by and for youth in Africa. Established in 2018, SBA utilises several avenues including its podcast, paid writing program, e-shop, entrepreneurship grants, and advocacy campaigns to advance its mission. Ultimately, SBA contributes to the attainment of healthy and prosperous youth as envisioned in the key continental socioeconomic policies in Africa: The African Union (AU) Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want (Pillar 1 and 3) and the Africa Health Strategy (AHS 2016-2030). Globally, SBA contributes to the fulfilment of Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Specifically, SBA contributes to the achievement of SDGs 3 and 8 as follows: • SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages o Target 3.4: By 2030, reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one-third through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being. • SDG 8: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable, economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. o Target 8.6: By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training Working in ‎this way, SBA envisions empowering Africa’s youth to be productive leaders in their ‎communities who can tackle emerging societal issues. Under the leadership of its Founder, Ms Whitney Mwangi, SBA runs (outreach programs) youth empowerment and mobilisation projects conducted throughout Africa in line with the mission of the enterprise- both digital and onsite. Thousands of young Africans across Africa the globe have been impacted by SBA’s outreach programs as follows: #PackingItAway – On April 01 2020, we launched #PackingItAway Campaign featuring stories from/about youth in Africa who identified a habit, pattern, ‎person, environment, etc., during the COVID-19 lockdown and their journey through #packingitaway to create space for personal ‎growth and development.‎ We partnered with Naivas supermarket in Kenya to award shopping vouchers worth US$50 to five families in different parts of the country. During Phase 2 of the same Campaign in 2021, we partnered with Kamandora Designs - a youth-led, Kenyan, bag manufacturing enterprise – and awarded two Kenyans with travelling bags. This Campaign took on different angles between 2022 and 2023 featuring students in various programs at the Strathmore University in Nairobi and Kenya Model United Nations (KMUN) featuring twenty-five students’ inspirational perspectives on what they had to pack away to achieve their goals and improve their quality of life. #WorkOfMyHands - On International Youth Day 2021 (August 12), we launched the #WorkOfMyHands Campaign to ‎recognise and celebrate the exceptional entrepreneurial work of youth in Africa. The goal is to identify and ‎profile young people, their hustle, and their impact across different sectors. The Eastern Africa edition is complete, and the founders of two small businesses in Kenya (Her Rinda Designs) and Ethiopia (Curl Love) received a grant of US$100 each to boost selected elements of their business. We anticipate launching the Southern Africa edition in July 2024, upon mobilisation of necessary funding. #ThisIsMyStory – In April 2023, The Story Book Africa, held the “This Is My Story” event, Ghana edition. The event featured 30 guests from different countries who through a guided “Paint and Sip” event used colour to share stories of hope about a recent defining moment of their life. The event ran by the theme, ‎“How Our Stories Colour the World” was sponsored by SBA and implemented in partnership with Colour Your Space and Stanbic Incubator Ghana. The vision behind the event is to provide a space for young people to ideate, empower and promote effective and ‎sustainable interventions to advance change in their communities ‎through storytelling. When it comes to online engagement via social media pages (X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and website), SBA averages a reach of at least 1362 accounts a month. The most significant reach is through the SBA podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, TuneIn, Anghana and more, of about 3861 listeners across the globe and 71% impactful listens (over half of the podcast episodes played). For the moment, we are continuing to host episodes about #WhatReallyMatters through 2024 to empower youth/our listeners to strengthen the foundational principles of building lasting, meaningful connections, businesses, careers, spirituality and more. The Story Book Shop – ‎ The store sells digital products that support healing, growth and development designed by African youth between 18-35 years old. We are officially open for product submission. The Story Book retains 10% of the purchase price and the rest goes to the vendor. The vendors benefit from the marketing conducted by the Story Book. The Story Book Blog - We have a paid opportunity for writers and actively accepting articles under three categories: #DearDiary #YoungAndOnFire and #NoteToYoungerSelf. We hope to continue to expand exponentially and have a strong presence and impact in all countries in Africa.