AfricaOracle is a marketing and media organisation aims to recapture the African narrative and amplify the image of Africa.
Africans have a great oral and storytelling tradition. Our lives, our relationships, our cultures are built by many stories yet society often over generalises Africa, its people and cultures with stories of what’s not working. Thus, figuratively speaking, African narratives glorify the hunter and not the lion. African achievements, innovations, creativity, entrepreneurship (i.e. lions) are often not heard.
“Until lions have their own storytellers, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter” ~African proverb
Until these lions start to write or are written about, we may be left with the impression that only the hunter is succeeding.
That’s why we created the medium.com publication. The publication is a community of writers who share and amplify stories about Africa. We publish articles that focus on giving our audience an insightful and accurate (holistic) picture of what’s going on by stories of people and their work, community, city or country facing real challenges with perseverance, ingenuity, compassion and grace. We will challenge our writers to produce interesting, uplighting, impactful and solutions-based, stories about what is working in Africa.
We prefer unpublished drafts:
The reason being that this ensures that stories are published to gain the most exposure possible. When drafts are published, they appear at the top of the timeline in the “Latest” section of our home page.
Whilst we do accept previously published pieces, they can only be featured on the home page through trending since they are added to the publication based on their original publishing date. For example, a story originally published on September 18, 2016 will show up in the timeline based on that date, not the date it is accepted into the publication.
Submission Requirements:
By submitting a story for publication by AfricaOracle, you are agreeing to comply with all of the following requirements:
- Submissions must fit within our mission statement: To reshape the African narrative.
- Submissions must be made through Medium using the process described below. Please do not send us emails with links or attachments. They will be ignored.
- Submissions must be non-fiction. We do not publish fiction or poetry.
- Titles should be written in title case or sentence format. Titles written in all capital letters will be changed or rejected.
- All submissions must be of a family friendly nature. AfricaOracle editors have the right to review and edit all contributions prior to publishing. The editors also reserve the right to reject content we deem offensive or inappropriate for our wide audience.
- All submissions must include a featured image right above or right below the title. This image, and any other images included, must be something you have the right to use and must include a cited source as the image caption. We reserve the right to remove questionable images from submissions. For more information about Featured Image options, please read Medium’s help article. This list of resources may be helpful for finding stock photos.
- We reserve the right to add a byline, blurb, ad, or sponsor logo into your story. If any of this content is removed or changed once a story is published, your story will be removed and future stories will not be accepted.
- Once a story has been accepted and published by AfricaOracle on Medium we ask that it remain in our publication. We will cease to accept articles from people who habitually remove stories from our publication.
- We will publish a maximum of 1 story per day per writer.
- You may have no more than 5 articles in our submission queue at any given time. Please do not spam us with submissions.
- We typically publish stories daily, but turnaround time may be up to 5 days from submission. If you submit a story that you’d like published on a specific date, please highlight the title and leave a private note with the date you’d like it published (i.e. November 15) at the top of your draft and send us an email. We’ll do our best to accommodate your request.
- Submissions may be edited for grammar and formatting. Significant suggested formatting or content edits will be discussed via private notes to the author before any changes are made or the piece is published.
- By submitting a story for publication to AfricaOracle (which is part of the Medium Partner Program) you are agreeing to comply with the previous requirements and the following additional requirements:
- Submissions must follow all of AfricaOracle’s requirements and Medium’s content guidelines. Failure to comply with these guidelines will forfeit any potential earnings and void future submissions to AfricaOracle. Per Medium’s guidelines, any story that discusses Medium or it’s related programs cannot be submitted for consideration.
- Writers must provide their Paypal Email to be used for receiving payment. Articles from writers without a Paypal Email will not be published until one is provided.
- Any money earned on a story is set by Medium and is not controlled by AfricaOracle.
- Medium disburses payment to AfricaOracle on the final Wednesday of each month. Payments to writers, minus a 30% commission, will be paid via PayPal within ten (10) business days. Payments are only made when an author earns more than $1.00 in a single month.Writers who do not respond to payment requests or do not accept payment within 90-days of the request will forfeit pending payments.
Engaging Africa contributors are responsible for their own content. Any views or opinions represented in the Engaging Africa publication are personal and belong solely to the contributor, and does not necessarily reflect the views of AfricaOracle.
Writer Request Form:
Writers who have not been previously published by AfricaOracle will need to request to be a contributor using the embedded form below. By requesting to become a contributor, you agree to AfricaOracle’s Submission Requirements. New writers are added manually on Mondays. Notification will come from Medium confirming addition to AfricaOracle’s publication.
Due to a limitation on the number of writer slots available, writers who do not produce content within 90-days may be removed to provide space for new writers. Incorrectly typed usernames are ignored.
Request to write for us and contribute to our publication by clicking here.
Submit a Draft:
Once accepted as a writer for AfricaOracle, please follow Medium’s process for adding a draft to a publication.
AfricaOracle is a community of people reshaping the African narrative.