West Africa Weekly 2025 Operations

Hi, my name is David Hundeyin and I am the Editor-in-Chief of West Africa Weekly, a Pan-African digital publication focusing on West Africa and the Sahel region.

Nearly 4 years ago, I started West Africa Weekly as a Substack newsletter with the goal of revolutionising the stale West African journalism space, which is held captive by the corporate and civil society funding model, which does not permit scrutiny of those who deserve it the most.

Over the past 4 years, it has more than lived up to that remit. We have taken on groundbreaking stories highlighting government corruption, organised crime, terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, foreign state interference, and corruption in journalism and civil society spaces.

We have taken on the invincibles and said the unsayables in West African public spaces, up to and including exposure of Nigeria's current president as a known and indicted heroin trafficker and foreign state asset. For this we have paid an obvious price, as even though we have a strong and growing readership base, we are unable to raise revenue through conventional means such as advert placement, because it remains too risky for most West African businesses to be associated with us.

Nevertheless, from a skeletal team of just myself and an editor who doubled as a graphic designer in 2021, WAW has since grown into an independent platform with its own backend and website, and 7 full-time employees including reporters, editors, and a social media specialist. This was largely accomplished on the back of limited Substack subscription revenue and a 2023 cash injection from a small group of sympathetic Nigerian investors living in the diaspora.

As 2025 looms, West Africa Weekly needs your support to not just keep the lights on and continue presenting full-contact journalism for the region that needs it the most, but also to expand our coverage of the AES and wider Sahelian region, where a lot of West Africa's 21st century destiny will be determined over the coming months and years.

We do not believe in receiving funding from civil society or corporate interests that are inevitably linked to either foreign state actors or their local economic and political proxies - we cannot demand accountability from West African governments or advocate for African sovereignty if our cheques are ultimately signed by a shadowy, unelected bureaucrat in Washington DC!

Consequently, we believe that as a newsroom that operates with the mantra, "Telling stories to the West African commoner in the interests of the West African commoner," we are best served appealing directly to our audience for the funding we need to keep West Africa Weekly running at this most crucial time in the history of our region.

Kindly donate however much or little you can spare this festive period, knowing full well that your money is being used to positively and deliberately shape and influence the destiny of West Africa's 400 million+ inhabitants.