Beyond the Press Release: How Strategic Communications Shapes the Trajectory of African Startups

Most founders treat PR like a fire extinguisher, something you grab only when things are burning. By then, the damage is already done.

Jessica Hope has spent a decade watching this play out across Africa's tech ecosystem. As Founder and CEO of Wimbart, the London and Lagos-based PR consultancy behind the communications strategy of over 230 organisations, from seed-stage startups to institutional investors, she has seen firsthand how the stories founders tell (and fail to tell) can make or break their trajectory long before a term sheet lands on the table.

In this conversation, Jessica cuts through the noise on what strategic communications actually means for African startups, why narrative is an investor signal, and what founders building for the global stage consistently get wrong. If you are raising, scaling, or simply trying to make your company impossible to ignore, this one is worth reading carefully.

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1. Many founders treat PR as something that happens after a funding round or product launch. In your experience working with African startups, why should founders start thinking about communications much earlier in their journey?

By the time you think you need communications, people have almost always already formed an opinion of you and/or your brand, putting you on the back foot in taking control and shaping perceptions, which is what PR is at its core.

The smartest founders understand that communications starts the moment you begin building; not necessarily external communications, but you should start planning and thinking about positioning, tone, what the wider market is saying. Founders should consider questions such as:  How are you describing the problem? How are you framing your market? How are you talking about why your business matters? What have you learned? How has the market affected you? Has it caused you to pivot? 

The question that underpins all of this that most founders often struggle with in a succinct way is: What does your company do? This one is more often than not the biggest stumbling block for a founder - they haven’t practiced their elevator pitch. 

2. You’ve worked with many startups raising capital across Africa. How much does narrative and positioning influence investor perception, and what distinguishes founders who communicate their vision effectively from those who struggle to do so?

Narrative matters enormously. Not because investors are looking for poetry, but because they are looking for focus as well as passion and experience. A lot of founders assume the product will speak for itself but it rarely does, especially in crowded markets. Investors need to understand the market opportunity, the urgency of the problem, the founder’s insight, and why this team is positioned to win. That does not happen by accident. It happens through strong positioning.

The founders who do this well are usually very clear, very disciplined and very grounded. They do not drown people in jargon. They do not confuse complexity with intelligence. They know what lane they are in, and they know how to make people care.

The founders who struggle often either oversell or under-explain. They are either too vague, too inflated, or too dependent on buzzwords they think investors want to hear. A strong founder narrative should make an investor lean in, not work harder. I love it at Wimbart when a third party [be it a known client or indeed a stranger who I haven’t met in person before] can explain to someone what Wimbart does. They get extra points for name dropping some of our previous clients or campaigns. For me, that means that our value proposition is not only clear, but it’s been communicated to the public, well. When someone misrepresents us, I don’t get upset, but it does make me think we need to continue to work hard to better communicate what we actually do. 

3. African startups are increasingly building global products but still face perception challenges in international media. What strategies can founders use to position their companies credibly on the global stage?

My advice to founders would be, if you are building a global business, communicate like a serious global business. Be clear on your value proposition. Be specific about your market insight and take the media on the journey; educate them about the challenge you’re solving for. Show commercial traction. Show why your solution works. Do not rely on or reinforce vague language about “changing Africa” and expect international audiences to be impressed.

What works globally is credibility. Real numbers. Real customers. Real insight. Real leadership. Real storytelling. At the same time, founders should not erase their context in order to sound international. The local insight is often the moat. The mistake is not being African [and even distilling that further into Nigerian / Kenyan/ Ghanaian / Egyptian and so forth]. The mistake is being imprecise and generic.

The goal is not to sound global for the sake of it. The goal is to sound investable, credible and impossible to ignore.

4. Startups hit many milestones - product launches, partnerships, expansion, funding rounds. Yet only a few manage to turn those moments into lasting visibility. What separates companies that successfully leverage these moments from those that don’t?

This one comes down to momentum and consistency. One article alone is unlikely to sustain a company in the public’s mind for an extended period. Most companies announce things. Very few know how to build momentum and that is a big difference between communications tactics versus strategy. A funding round, a partnership or a launch is not automatically a story. It becomes a story when you know what it proves. Does it show market demand? Category leadership? Regional ambition for expansion? Product maturity? These are thematic and additive angles to a wider story beyond just generating noise [although let me be clear, generating noise isn’t necessarily a bad thing]. 

The companies that do this well think beyond the immediate headline and use milestones and/or deep rooted unique subject matter expertise and insights to reinforce a bigger narrative about where they are going and why they matter so that their visibility is cumulative.

The companies we love working with are the ones that do not usually treat every announcement like a one-night stand with the media. Big splash, no follow-through, no strategic consistency. Our approach is personality, consistency, relationship management, and building visibility that lasts comes from repetition, discipline and knowing exactly what you want to be known for. PR isn’t the side chick; it’s the big madame. 

5. Having worked closely with founders, investors, and media for over a decade, how do you think the narrative around African innovation is evolving - and what role should founders play in shaping the next chapter of that story?

The narrative is evolving, thankfully, beyond lazy optimism, ‘Africa Rising’ one-liners and bombastic founders whose assertions are largely baseless, and into something significantly more serious and nuanced. We’re seeing a maturing of the narrative. 

African innovation has historically been packaged in simplistic terms: youthful population, mobile-first, huge opportunity, endless potential, all of which are true, but don’t fully express the nuances and complexities of African markets. The conversation now is becoming more sophisticated. People are asking harder questions about business models, profitability, C-Suite, infrastructure, governance & regulation, execution and scale. Good. They should. What I want founders to do now is tell more honest and more precise stories. Africa is not one market. It is not one homogenous user behaviour. It is not one growth story. Founders need to communicate with that level of maturity and take responsibility for educating the wider world on diverse African markets. So for founders, they have to literally speak it into existence and be able to talk not only about themselves, but their wider market too; they are both gatekeepers of knowledge and advocates for their sector.  

6. From your experience advising startups and working closely with investors, what communication signals make investors pay closer attention to a startup?

I do think that investors generally pay attention to clarity, consistency and the ability to solve challenges - ideally at scale. 

Can the founder explain the business simply? Can they talk about traction without sounding theatrical or indeed robotic? Does the company seem like it knows itself? Is the founder able to hold themselves properly in conversation? Those things matter. Investors also notice when the communications match the quality of the business. If the messaging is confused, inconsistent or full of inflated claims, that creates friction. If the founder sounds sharp, credible and in control, that builds confidence. Investors also need to be able to hear the numbers trip off a founders’ tongue, as soon as they’re asked. Opaqueness around or unawareness of key metrics are a total turn off for investors. 

And yes, details matter. How a founder speaks publicly. How the company presents milestones. Whether the narrative is coherent across the deck, website, interviews and stakeholder conversations. That is not superficial, it is a signal. Good communication does not make a bad business good. But poor communication can absolutely make a good business easier to overlook.

About Jessica Hope

Jessica Hope is the Founder and CEO of Wimbart, an award-winning London-based PR consultancy specialising in African and emerging market communications across technology and business. Since launching in 2016, she has grown Wimbart into a 15-strong team across London and Lagos, delivering media strategies for over 230 organisations, from high-growth startups to institutional investors and public sector bodies.

Wimbart operates in both directions, helping international companies enter African markets with credibility, while taking the continent’s most ambitious tech companies onto the global stage.

With more than 15 years’ experience, Jessica is known for turning complex, high-growth market stories into narratives that actually land and cutting through noise; she is vocal about challenging outdated perceptions and ensuring African businesses are represented with the depth and accuracy they deserve.

Jessica is an international speaker and host of The Wimbart Way podcast, and mentors emerging talent across the PR and African tech ecosystem. She has been named in PRWeek’s UK Powerbook from 2019 to 2026 and was recognised as Founder of the Year at the 2023 BME PR Pros Awards.

Wimbart marks its 10th anniversary this year, celebrating a decade of delivering strategic communications for African tech companies and ecosystem players on the continental and global stage. Watch the trailer for a short film featuring some of the people who have helped build, and been part of, the story over the past decade.