Welcome to African Visual Storyteller! Your weekly guide to African photographers, exhibitions, and creative opportunities.

This space exists to support visibility, connection, and real pathways for African creatives. Thank you for being part of our growing ecosystem.

African Visual Storytellers of the Week #69

This week’s storyteller of the week is Caleb Ishaya Oseshi 🇳🇬

We invite you to lead an Unpublished Africa Photo Walk in your city

We have recently received numerous requests for programming in new locations, and we are officially opening this up to our wider network. Should there be a host, you can also volunteer as a co-host.

Photo walks have proven to have an impact of photography communities growth and serve as a portfolio building tool for new and experienced photographers.

Sign up here:

https://airtable.com/appA7NAnNNFXjEpf7/pagzcVfxfIIiwQFSb/form

For those who have already applied, please look out for an email from us this week.

Upcoming Events and Photo Walks

Thank you for coming to the Lusaka Photo Walk 🇿🇲!

We had our largest Lusaka Photo Walk attendance yet! Thank you again to Open Window University for partnering with us and hosting the Photo Book Session of the walk, and thank you to all who came.

Thank you for coming to the Nairobi Photo Walk 🇰🇪!

Thank you to all who joined us for the Nairobi photo walk. See you in the next one!

Register for our Kampala Photo Walk

🇺🇬Join our upcoming Kampala photo walk:

• 🗓️ 6 September 2026

• ⏰ 10:30 AM

• Register: https://airtable.com/app6YmuLQIV96rgc2/shrhulGa6A0tlOLf1?

Have you heard of Creative Business Studio?

Creative Business Studio began as a six-week programme for emerging African visual storytellers. Four cohorts later, it has become one of Unpublished Africa’s key pathways for helping creatives move from practice into more sustainable participation in the creative economy.

Across the four cohorts, Creative Business Studio has supported photographers and visual storytellers from 18 African countries, including Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

We focus on photographers, but we have always used photography as a lens into the wider African creative community. Through photography, we are able to speak about many of the realities that shape creative work on the continent: access, visibility, pricing, publishing, ownership, community, professional systems, and the gap between talent and opportunity.

Creative Business Studio was created in response to that gap.

Many creatives have talent, ideas, and strong bodies of work, but they do not always have access to the business knowledge, networks, publishing opportunities, and support systems needed to keep going. This is especially true in African creative economies, where many creatives work as freelancers or within informal systems, and where access to affordable business support, markets, and professional networks can be limited.

The programme responds to this in a practical way. Over six weeks, participants are introduced to areas such as digital entrepreneurship, pricing, contracts, intellectual property, finance, monetisation, and emerging tools such as AI. These are not always the most visible parts of a creative career, but they are often the parts that determine whether creative work can become sustainable.

For many photographers, knowing how to make strong images is one part of the journey. Knowing how to price the work, invoice for it, protect it, publish it, position it, and build a business around it is another.

One of the strongest parts of Creative Business Studio is what happens after the six weeks when they join the alumni network. Alumni have gone on to lead Photo Walks, facilitate conversations, support other creatives, organise exhibitions, build local photography communities, establish creative initiatives, and take up new opportunities across the continent and beyond.

This has become an important part of the programme’s impact. Creative Business Studio does not only support individual careers. It also helps create people who can become resources in their own communities.

Many of Unpublished Africa’s Photo Walks and community activations have been hosted by Creative Business Studio alumni or in collaboration with creative organisations connected to our wider network.

To date, Unpublished Africa has held in-person events across cities in Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. These activations have shown us that once creatives are given structure, confidence, and a platform, they often begin creating access points for others too.

Participants are also invited to submit work to a publication that is exclusive to them, Africa Published. Through four volumes of Africa Published, Creative Business Studio participants have been able to see their work presented in a professional publication which matters because visibility is not only about posting online. Publication can strengthen a portfolio, build credibility, and create new pathways into exhibitions, collaborations, awards, and other professional opportunities.

We have also seen alumni move into exhibition opportunities connected to the wider Unpublished Africa ecosystem. The Tiyende / Twende exhibition 2026) with Bakashimika Photography Festival in Zambia, for example, exclusively featured photography by Creative Business Studio alumni and reflected what becomes possible when programme participants continue to grow through publishing, exhibiting, community-building, and collaboration. Bakashimika Photography Festival is co-founded by Cohort 3 Alumni Edith Chiliboy.

There have been many important wins.

Some of our Alumni and their progress post the program:

• Maingaila Muvundika 🇿🇲 has gone on to become a gallery manager also developing a strong international profile has been featured on a number of international platforms and residencies including Through the Lens Collective.

• Sosina Mengistu 🇪🇹 has received regional recognition through the East African Photography Award and continues to build her documentary practice through exhibitions and mentorships.

• Simphiwe Moyo 🇿🇼 has held solo exhibitions and won National Arts Merit Awards, in addition to his work through Pamoyo Gallery.

• Paballo Makatla 🇱🇸 has gone on to become a Mandela Washington Fellow and she continues to lead in commercial and events photography in her home country.

• Ericke Tjiueza 🇳🇦 has been featured by several publications and platforms including The Guardian, Vogue, PhotoVogue, Nataal, and Africa Foto Fair.

These are only a few examples. They do not even include the alumni who are now helping to lead communities, host Photo Walks, build local initiatives, support other photographers, or create new spaces for visual storytelling in their own cities.

That is the kind of growth we are interested in which is growth that creates confidence, leadership, community, visibility, and local creative infrastructure.

Creative Business Studio continues to sit at the centre of Unpublished Africa’s wider work as the programme connects learning, publishing, visibility, community, and opportunity. It gives participants tools for their own careers, while also helping them understand their role in a wider African creative ecosystem.

We are pleased to share that after this fifth cohort, Creative Business Studio will take a new form. This next cohort marks an important moment for the programme as we prepare to rethink how it can continue to serve creatives more sustainably, more intentionally, and at a larger scale.

For now, we are inviting photographers to apply for the fifth cohort of Creative Business Studio and join one of Unpublished Africa’s highest-level touchpoints.

Creative Business Studio is more than a training programme. It is a pathway into a wider pan-African network of visual storytellers, publications, exhibitions, community activations, and future opportunities.

As we prepare to launch the next cohort, we are thinking carefully about what it means to support creatives beyond a single workshop or moment of visibility. The next stage of Africa’s creative economy will not only depend on discovering talented photographers. It will depend on building the systems that allow them to stay, grow, earn, collaborate, publish, lead, and create opportunities for others.

Creative Business Studio is one way we are building that system.

Does this sound like a movement you would like to be a part of? Apply Here:

https://airtable.com/apppRNM0ijTxxXaGG/pagJSQY8Mr0fkEypo/form

Creative Business Studio in the Press

We are grateful to have had our journey with Creative Business Studio featured by Art Africa Magazine. View the full article here:

Photo Walk Archive

Were you part of an Unpublished Africa Photo Walk? We’d love to see what you captured! Upload your photos to the Photo Walk Archive and help us document the journey.

Upload here: https://photowalk.unpublished.africa/

Other Opportunities:

• ARD South Residency Artists - (ARD Art Institution) - deadline: 01 September 2026

• International Photography Awards ( Xposure ) - deadline: 05 September

• FESPACO 2027 – Call for Films ( FESPACO ) - deadline: 20 September

• MENA Panorama: A Regional Open Call by PhotoVogue ( Vogue ) - deadline: 24 September

• Sony World Photography Awards ( World Photography Organisation ) - deadline: 05 January 2027

• Kekere Storytellers Fund (Africa No Filter) - rolling deadline

• Call for Applications ( International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) ) - rolling deadline

• Minority Africa Call for Storytellers ( Minority Africa ) - rolling deadline

• Pulitzer Center Grant ( Pulitzer Center ) - rolling deadline

Help Us Improve What We’re Building

If you’ve joined an Unpublished Africa photo walk, exhibition, programme, or conversation, we’d really appreciate a quick Google rating and review.

It takes a few minutes, and it goes a long way in helping us build better infrastructure for African creatives.

👉 Leave a review here: https://g.page/r/CYo40kkDN_4UEBM/review

Thank you for being part of the journey and for helping shape what comes next.

➡️ Share this newsletter with a friend or colleague interested in the African creative economy!

Thank you for continuing to build with us.

More conversations, walks, and opportunities ahead.

— Unpublished Africa