TONL x Microsoft: Cheraé Robinson, Tastemakers Africa
We don’t think that Cheraé Robinson would have ever imagined that her business, Tastemakers Africa, would be the next big thing. With interest now rising in travel to Africa, Cheraé was keen in letting us know that Pan Africanism is something that she has been working diligently on over the last decade in spite of the many barriers women of color founders like herself face. Her résumé of work in Pan Africanism boasts working for the World Bank, starting Afripolitans in 2012 and eventually starting Tastemakers Africa. In 2010, Cheraé stepped foot on the African continent and was hooked ever since. “I once imagined a world in which black people saw coming to Africa as a wave and built something that in some small way made that dream a reality” she explained. Tastemakers Africa was that dream realized. When we first caught up with Cheraé, she was showing us her investor deck as she prepared to raise money for a seed round. Women of color businesses are shockingly underfunded. Less than 1% of black women founders get VC funding. Venture Capital (VC) firms are made up of predominantly white men and studies show that these same groups of people invest in businesses founded by white men. Black female founders like Cheraé have had to work 3x as hard as their white, male counterparts to get access. Access is so critical so tools like Microsoft Azure have become one less thing that Cheraé has had to worry about on her entrepreneurial journey. Micosoft Azure allowed her to scale from a Wordpress site that she built herself that was already not managing her growth, to building her own platform with all the capabilities required to meet the needs of her user community.
Speaking of community, that is what makes Tastemakers Africa so unique. Cheraé bridges the gap between people wanting to visit Africa and those in Africa eager to show visitors what all their country can offer. “Tastemakers began as a solution to a problem I was seeing firsthand in my experiences. I was traveling to the continent for work and spending hours and hours researching things to do beyond safaris and tourist traps. Over time I saw that the experiences that I found along the journey were the very thing everyone else was looking for - authentic, exclusive experiences and recommendations that connected them to the movers, shakers, and makers in Africa. It was the desire to shift the narrative and close the access gap on the cool, poppin things to do for people around the world,” Cheraé explains.
The Year of Return in 2019 brought hundreds of thousands of people, particularly from the diaspora, to Ghana. This marketing turned a deeper lens on Africa as a whole. As such, there are many tourist groups trying to capitalize on this surge in tourism. So, what makes Tastemakers Africa so different we asked Cheraé, “We make it a point to both wow people and ensure that they are uber-connected to Tastemakers cities. That means gallery crawls and studio visits with rising artists, cooking classes run by local celebrity chefs, traditional spiritual rituals and experiences led by elders, priests and priestesses, access and insider info on the best parties and events, pop-ups, and an overall sense that you're connected with the people in the know. On our most recent experience in Ghana our travelers kept remarking how everyone either knew me or Tastemakers wherever they went - for us this isn't bragging rights - it's evidence that we're embedded into every Tastemakers city and driving positive impact wherever we go.”
Money is what may have initially held Cheraé back on her dream fully manifesting, but it’s been the technology access that has supplemented that. It will be her continued grit and vision that with sustain her business. With her recent round where she raised $1.4M, we cannot wait to see what more African experiences she will bless the world with.
Be sure to shop our TONL x Microsoft photo collection below!