While sourcing stock photos of Africa for work, Dicky Hokie struggled to find anything other than stereotypical scenes.
Images of “poverty, wildlife and tribal people” were the most common results the Kenya-based graphic designer came across. The “massive focus” on these themes was a misrepresentation of the continent, the 31-year-old said.
Finding images of the lives of normal people was almost impossible. “I looked for imagery of African people getting married, and there were none at all on the major stock photo platforms,” he added.
An amateur photographer, Hokie saw a business opportunity to build a dedicated African stock photography platform that better represented life on the continent.
With high school friend Sitati Kiyuti, a 31-year-old software designer, he launched AfricanStockPhoto in late 2016. The tagline? “Tell an authentically African visual story.”
The founders put just under $14,000 into the company, which launched in 2016 and made its first sale in November 2017.
Passion project
Initially, AfricanStockPhoto was created a side project. It took Kiyuti almost a year to build the website. Friends and family then tested it before it launched.
Photographers sign up to the website and sell their images there. They receive 50% of each sale, or 70% if the photo was sold as part of a subscription.
Buyers can either make one-off purchases, or sign up for a subscription, which starts at $120 and includes 10 images.
Images are reviewed and approved by AfricanStockPhoto before they go on sale.
“The first user to sign up was a very talented photographer from Algeria,” Hokie said. Having contributors from beyond Kenya was “really exciting,” he added.
AfricanStockPhoto currently works with 371 photographers, who upload directly to the platform. It also sells images it buys from an undisclosed partner.
While the majority of their customers are African, around 40% of sales are made outside the continent. Currently the US and South Africa are their biggest countries for sales.
They are “looking either specifically for African imagery, or just more diversity,” added Hokie.
Today, Hokie works full-time at AfricanStockPhoto while Kiyuti works part-time. They remain the only two employees there.
‘Shifting perception of Africa’
The company declined to disclose sales figures. There are currently no investors involved.
It has sold over 100 photo licenses to date. The most bought images are of a call center operator, a street vendor, a group of coworkers huddled around a laptop, and of the Nairobi skyline.
Kituyi said AfricanStockPhoto is used extensively by nonprofits that operate on the continent “for more authentic visuals in reports.” Meanwhile, a New York-based publisher is also using its images in an upcoming book that “teaches US-based kids of African descent about their home continent.”
While the project has achieved its goal in providing more authentic imagery of Africa, Hokie and Kiyuti have an appetite for more.
“The big picture goal is to contribute to shifting external perception of Africa, while creating a sustainable revenue source for the talented photographers that exist across the continent,” Kituyi said.
“It is a very ambitious big picture goal, but we’re also really enjoying the journey.”
