Steve Madgwick

Who am I? I’m not sure I know yet, a grand reason to keep exploring inward and outward if ever there was one, which I guess is what I’ve been doing for a substantial handful of years since my safe and sound upbringing in the northern ’burbs of Sydney.

For me It Began in Africa is the next plane, bus and long walk on this quest, combining my pathological need for travel with my relatively recent career switch to journalism.

Over the past six years I’ve toiled at a regional newspaper on the cusp of the arid Australian countryside, been caught up in the redlining personalities of a fortnightly motorcycle magazine and ebbed and flowed in the strangely contradictory world of a regional newspaper and website based smack-bang in the middle of the world’s most energetic city, London.

Before this, years of working, studying and travelling consistently whispered in my ears that life experience is far more valuable than cool threads, shiny cars and vacuous trinkets. I’ve come to realise you have to discover the world for yourself, drinking in both the positive and negative lessons. For me these lessons have been learned chatting with friends and strangers, working in the depths of the frigid Canadian wilderness, harvesting Christmas trees, toiling against the grey corporate mentality in a succession of office jobs; and out on the road by myself in places that only weeks before I had never even heard of.

I’ve met some inspiring people along the way, some of who I liked, some who didn’t particularly like me; all of them ride along with me in some degree or other and I hope I’m still on their journey as well.

So at its most basic I hope It Began in Africa is simply a way to find and document inspiring people (and ventures).

Of course, Africa is an infinitely diverse continent and it will be impossible to cover all the countries or stories so we’re trying to narrow down a path that is achievable yet mostly challenging and rewarding.

But if working within the media has taught me one thing it is that often we don’t let people tell there own stories, thinking (or imposing) our views and re-enforcing negative, hateful stereotypes in the process.

In the west, Africa is seen as a charity case and a hotbed of conflict, and we believe that to generalise so many people, cultures and religions is lazy and ignorant at the very least.

We plan on visiting places that we’ve heard may have a positive story to tell. You can make up your own minds soon enough.

So if you know inspiring people in Africa with a story you think people ought to know, drop us a line – and we’ll try to get there.

Time to learn more about not just the people of Africa, but a little more about myself as well.