The end of a presidential administration is cause for much reflection on successes and the work accomplished in the previous years. The Obama administration's signature international initiative was Power Africa, a bold effort to bring together the private sector and governments around the world to increase the number of people with access to power in Africa.
As part of that reflection, our team traveled with MCC's then CEO to four partner countries where MCC is making major investments in energy infrastructure to reduce energy poverty: Benin, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ghana.
MCC has a strong commitment to Africa — since the agency’s founding in 2004, more than 65 percent of MCC’s total portfolio has been invested in African countries. Nearly 70 percent of this more than $7 billion has gone toward infrastructure such as roads, ports and power. So, we had a lot of work to promote, and a lot of itinerary options to chose from.
To amplify the trip itself and highlight MCC's work in those countries, we created a digital trip log. Starting from the airport on the way from DC to Benin, we captured and created content daily to update the page -- keeping our audience informed and engaged throughout the 2-week trip.
We created video shorts of various stops from the people we interviewed, including reflections from the CEO herself.
We also created photo albums of the project sites and people who both played a key role in the work, and were impacted by it.
Ultimately, the site generated hundreds of daily views over the course of the trip, and gave us a solid platform of content for producing many more communications materials over the following months.
Work to rehabilitate the Mt. Coffee hydropower dam, which supplies 95% of Liberia's electricity -- the project is a priority for Liberia's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Nii runs a barber shop in Accra. Unreliable power means he is unable to use the equipment he'd need to offer additional services to grow his business. And sometimes he has to turn away customers when the power is off.
This printing company was started by a young University of Ghana graduate named Delali and his brother Billy. Due to a lack of reliable power in Accra, they were forced to purchase a costly generator to stay in business.