OceanSpring Social Enterprise is expanding its coverage footprints across Africa. In this interview with SENS Crew Joshua Luthanga, Mariah Posner and Dauda Kareem, Editor-in-Chief Samuel Odebowale addressed some business and operational issues last week in Abuja. Here is an excerpt as edited by Melinda Scott…
SENS: OceanSpring implements a corporate philosophy. What is it about?
The experience has been fulfilling because it helps us to understand the opportunities and threats better, and refocuses our energy in the direction of strengths and weaknesses. We came up with ORGANISE as a corporate philosophy to drive our enterprise-wide customer service experience and business development. That has been useful in addressing bleeding capital, restructuring business units, streamlining our technology operations and improving compliances.
SENS: How is that for news operations?
OceanSpring News Publishing Operations became our flagship in 2022, so we continued to invest on private newswire, media services and technology capabilities. Our newsroom operations became more professional, feed productions became standardized, advertising and public relations services became differentiated, and our content strategy has been adjudged infallible by users and stakeholders.
In 2023, we focused on bringing the benefits of these improvements to bear on business and governance sectors, and we amplified our coverage and footprint across the African Continent. We learnt our domain space management lesson and the need for enforcing our business rules in a hard way with regards to Africa Signal News Magazine online operations, but we’re good anyway.
SENS: What should we in the near future?
Our plan for 2024 is to scale up OceanSpring Corporate and Analytical Services (OCAS), differentiated for professional regulations by financial, technology and capital markets institutions. This will include Corporate Secretaryship, Taxation and Family Office Divisions. OCAS presently provide valuable intel for editorial supplements, project concept notes, intervention special reports and other works published or utilized within and outside OceanSpring Information Services and Business Development ecosystem.
The Social Enterprise Consortium™ and News Service® is taking a leading role in this regard. We have been able to implement their online differentiated platform delivery using an Oasis strategy on a common NG top-level https://socialenterprise.com.ng domain name. The design and engineering is specifically crafted for users best experience across all indicators, all touchpoints, all connectivity conditions. OceanSpring’s tradition of excellence in content development will be brought to bear on our editorial policies and newsroom operations under this dispensation.
SENS: Do you still intend to cover Africa?
We had some setbacks last year after we activated our “Deeper Africa” programme. You would recall that in other to achieve desired level of penetration for transnational publishing services, we adopted our Common Icons and Symbols (CIS) based on Swahili. We will revisit that programme in another year or two. Our objective right now is to focus on immediate socio-economic and political environment as a Nigerian Corporation. That means we have to operate with ECOWAS and AFCFTA mentality.
SENS: What makes the Social Enterprise operations distinct?
OceanSpring is a communications, publishing and technology company. Those are generic terms, and that is why we differentiated our service offerings through trademark patents and ISSN registrations, so our commitment to excellence is not in doubt. Meanwhile, the private media business is essentially about sustainable interests’ promotion in an ethical, perception-sensitive manner.
The Social Enterprise Consortium™ is one of our boutique public relations services, specifically providing an engagement marketing and strategic communications reinforcement opportunities for development projects. That sort of information resource is usually of extreme interest to governments, businesses, civil societies and social sectors. In this age of social media prevalence, if you are doing anything in West Africa and you don’t get featured by our platform, you are likely to get misrepresented.
Social Enterprise News Service is our legacy news publishing operation. It is scaling out to provide private Newswire Agency services for corporate and high value sectors. We have the right tools to fix any strategic and crisis communication problem, as well as recreate and rebalance any social order, coalition networks and relationships.
With our proprietary social enterprise brand identity, you don’t need to be a genius to understand our infinite capabilities and brand positioning; and you are already on the losing side if you are not thinking about how to secure our commitment for your current and future needs.
We have an unflinching commitment to the African people. With the increasing convergence of Africa’s trade, financial services, technology and governance, we are moving forward as the choice Media Convergence Group for accelerating growth, showcasing excellence and giving the people a strong and sustained platform for expression.
SENS: Is it true Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chief Mike Adenuga and His Excellency Senator Gbenga Daniel are your financiers?
Our publications and operations are fully disclosed. It will be nice to have them on Board. What we have as Social Enterprise News Service today is actually a consolidation of Osnet Policy Journal (now rested) which was under the Editorial Board Chairmanship of Most Distinguished Senator Olabode Olajumoke. That Journal was launched in 2009 and published by OceanSpring International Limited. We organized the first-ever headline media event for Millennium Development Goals reporting in 2010 and our format changed reporting practice across all broadcast and print media. We sacrificed a lot as a media and social sector entity, and personally to deepen accountability across development sectors in Nigeria.