Creating a digital experience to bring stories to life

Africa Policy Research Institute (APRI) is an independent and nonpartisan African think tank which provides insights on key policy issues affecting African countries. 

In partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, APRI was keen to shed light on how younger generations across the African continent practice resilience in their daily lives. The priority was to spotlight African youth voices in the fight against climate change and examine young people’s various displays of resilience.

As part of this mission, APRI conducted research over the course of many months, including interviews and podcast recordings, to create the project: Youth Resilience On a Planet in Crisis.

The team at Soapbox were delighted to work alongside our client, APRI, on this project to create a report, digital experience and podcast series. Following detailed workshops, the team developed a unique look and feel, to establish a strong visual direction for the project, making it recognisable. The project is centred around African youth, and young people are one of the key audiences. This is why the style and language needed to be fresh and authentic as well as exploratory.

The colour palette includes colours from both the Mastercard Foundation and the APRI brands. The earthy colours are balanced by brighter shades, to create a flexible array of combinations. These combinations are used throughout the project, for illustrations, visuals and charts.

For this report, APRI researchers implemented a mixed-method approach to produce a collaborative output. The team conducted interviews with 17 people (between 18 and 35 years of age) from various climate-related professions and backgrounds, from eight African countries. 

We wanted to showcase the research from the study in the best way possible within a digital PDF document. As the report was large, we needed to ensure that the information was digestible and structured in a well-thought-out way.

The look and feel drew visual inspiration from the style of personal journals, with a unifying style that can be customised to each storyteller. The use of collage and cut-outs, together with the bright colours and hand-drawn style, makes each story feel unique and personal. The expressive typeface used for the titles brings a unique character, and it’s balanced by a clean, geometric sans serif font optimised for on-screen use.

As part of this work, we worked with freelance illustrator Joy Richu, to bring our ideas to life and create vibrant imagery to be used across each story.

Alongside the report, the accompanying website acts as a digital resource hub and as a means to connect with the young changemakers, since social media accounts were linked for those who provided them.  The platform is helping to shape a new generation of climate leaders who are prepared to confront the challenges of climate change and build a more resilient world.

The website prominently features stories of diverse youth from Africa, engaging in climate-related activities such as reforestation, community organising, and education. By featuring stories and testimonials from youth climate leaders, the website builds a narrative around the idea that young people are not just victims of climate change but are also key agents of change and often amongst the most knowledgeable when it comes to adaptation and mitigation measures.

The team were keen to bring the stories to life and produce these stories as a podcast mini series that APRI could use on their main podcast channel.

Alongside freelance podcast producer, Holly Aquilina, the Soapbox team worked on the end-to-end delivery of the podcast, including the branding of the individual episodes which aligned with the overall project identity as well as the overall production. 

Holly used local sound recordists to capture the sound and conduct the interviews remotely over zoom or WhatsApp. These were then edited together alongside applying other sound design.

From the podcast, APRI were able to convert 30% of people who discovered one episode into active YVR podcast listeners.