WATCHSANKOFA — African Creator Streaming Platform

African creator streaming and discovery platform. Named for the Ghanaian Adinkra concept of Sankofa — flying forward while looking back. The premise: African stories, African creators, African audiences deserve a platform that was designed from the ground up for them, not retrofitted from a Western original.

The Problem

YouTube takes 45% of ad revenue from African creators. Netflix African content represents under 3% of their catalogue. African filmmakers, musicians, and spoken word artists are distributed on platforms that were not built with them in mind, priced in currencies that hurt them, and governed by content policies that frequently misclassify African cultural content as violating community standards.

What WatchSankofa Builds

Creator-first discovery architecture. Upload, profile, and discoverability tools designed for independent African filmmakers and musicians without distribution deals. Community features that connect African creative communities across the continent and diaspora. Content that does not have to be palatable to a Western algorithm to be discoverable.

Technical Architecture

Next.js 14 App Router · TypeScript · Supabase for auth, user data, and creator profiles · Cloudinary for video upload, transformation, and delivery · Zustand for client state · Custom hooks for video player state management · Vercel for deployment.

RLS on all user and creator data. Creator upload pipeline: Cloudinary webhook → Supabase update → creator dashboard notification via Realtime.

Stack: Next.js 14 · TypeScript · Supabase · Cloudinary · Zustand · Vercel