Content creators wield the power to influence their followers to heed the life hacks they share, emulate their lifestyle, and shape consumer behaviour. In Mozambique, there has been a surge in digital creators, which has presented an entrepreneurial opportunity for influencers, and a direct market access to consumers for brands. AMAKA meets some of the women making a name for themselves as influencers in the capital city, Maputo.

Years before her rise to fame as a fashion and lifestyle influencer, Madina Esmeralda Davane Abacar, known online as Miss Abacar, frequently used digital platforms like Fotolog and hi5, where she was unknowingly building social capital that would stand her in good stead as an influencer. “I went from approaching restaurants and businesses to let me promote them on my blog to becoming the first influencer in Mozambique to represent Coca-Cola for Coke Studio.”

Most brands in Mozambique are now gravitating towards social media influencers and moving away from traditional brand ambassadors. Not only is social media more affordable, it is also a more effective way of promoting your brand directly to your desired target audience. 

A multicultural country with diverse groups of immigrants, Mozambique has a majority Black population, and people of Indian descent, Caucasians and biracial people make up its minority communities. This distinction is reflected in online campaigns as most brands prefer to collaborate with Black influencers, especially women with curly or kinky hair in an attempt to reflect their target audience.

“I started creating content not necessarily intending to be an influencer, because I feel like holding a certain level of power over people is a big responsibility,” says Naomi Selemane as she narrates the genesis of her journey as an influencer. “It all started in the early days of the pandemic. Being very passionate about multimedia, I found myself having a lot of free time and so I started capitalising on that time to explore my creative side,” she explains. “I started making hair care content on Instagram and I started playing around with TikTok. After a while, people started dubbing me as an influencer because people felt like they could come to me for advice about how to style and take care of their hair.” 

A micro-influencer can be paid anywhere between $45-$245 per post, a nano-influencer can earn from $160-$325 upwards, and a macro-influencer can command $400 or more for combo packages or contracts. By comparison, a South African influencer charges roughly between $35 to $635 per post. Most influencers have their own fixed price that can be negotiated. However, brands are not always ready to meet their demands. “I’ve had brands go out of their way to bash me as a result of refusing to pay my quoted price,” Selemane says. 

Mozambique is an emerging market and the term “influencer” is still not fully understood by many. Some still link it to socialites who simply post pictures of themselves with no legitimate value or relevancy or celebrities who on occasion produce content for leisure. An influencer by definition is “a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.” In this context, online personalities like Miss Abacar make a difference by collaborating with brands that cater to her lifestyle and belief system, and then curate content with an intended purpose—influence her followers and online audience. According to Miss Abacar, who explored the power of influencers in Mozambique for her master’s thesis, “To be a successful influencer one has to be authentic.” An insight that has helped her to further capitalise on the growing market.

“I realised the impact I had as an influencer when all the clothes in my store would sell out,” says Sheila Ibrahimo, entrepreneur and founder of SI Cosmetics. “At that point, I realised not only did people like the way I dressed, but they [also] wanted to dress like me.” Ibrahimo was inspired to start her cosmetics line after observing that while the likes of Kylie Cosmetics, Fenty Beauty, and Huda Beauty were great brands, they were inaccessible to Mozambican women. 

“As an influencer, it’s important to understand your niche market and respect that by not stretching yourself too thin and focusing on your brand,” says Ibrahimo, who has a master's degree in marketing. Her expertise and experience has helped her to assert her position as one of Mozambique’s leading influencers. “I’m somewhat of a perfectionist and I like to do a lot of research so that I can produce quality content. I can say that today I earn half my income from social media which is something I could have never imagined when I started,” she says. Majority of influencers in Mozambique still rely on their day jobs, even the most ambitious amongst them still treat it as a side hustle because it is not very profitable.

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One of the first prominent influencers in Mozambique was the late Alichia Adams. She came up at a time when a cultural shift was taking place in Moz, as people were using digital spaces more creatively and people had an appetite for something new, content creation. And it presented an opportunity for brands to promote their products in a medium that was more affordable than television.

Creating a unique online identity is one area where Mozambican influencers struggle. Many of them fall into the mousetrap of participating in popular global trends without doing anything that sets them apart from the pack, or simply settle for replicating the aesthetic feel of a fellow influencer’s online feed.

“Mozambican influencers need to invest more in becoming a brand as opposed to just an individual entity,” says Alix Liasse, a digital account manager at Create Mozambique marketing agency. Globally, brands are increasingly betting more on micro-influencers because they are able to add value and reach the consumer directly and with immediacy — the same applies to Mozambique. “There’s a certain level of trust instilled and a genuine connection between the influencer and followers,” Liasse adds.

“I see my page as my own personal diary where I can showcase all of my different personalities,” says Leticia N’zualo, a micro-influencer who creates fitness, travel, and DIY content. She tells AMAKA she never envisioned herself as an influencer. “I had no idea how the algorithm worked or what engagement meant or any of that stuff. At the beginning of the pandemic I started thinking about my daily routines like going to the gym, which later led me to start working out at home and filming my journey,” she explains. N’zualo elaborates that she learnt how to use a camera and edit videos so she could share her home training sessions. “I got a surprising response—like people wanting to train with me—which made me save my videos in my highlights. Then they started asking about my nutrition tips and things really took off from there,” she adds. 

While being an influencer seems like a glamorous lifestyle, in Mozambique, influencers do have to contend with the challenges that arise as a result of the environment in which they operate. Access to the right tools and resources required for their trade being a common one. ​​“Accessibility is a really important issue. I remember when I wanted to buy a ring light but it was not available here. So, I had to get it shipped all the way from China,” says Selemane. “Now that influencer marketing is gaining momentum, ring lights are being sold in bulk and like anything new and on-demand in Mozambique, it’s being sold at an exorbitant price” she exclaims. Because being an influencer is often interpreted as living a lifestyle of luxury, newbie influencers are sometimes expected to have a certain amount of social capital that most don’t yet have access to. Another prevailing struggle is the lack of places for people to create content and the major hub at present is limited to the capital city, Maputo.  

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Language is also a major barrier as the Portuguese market is much smaller than the English market, which although very saturated, offers far more opportunities. Influencers within the African Lusophone market have a clear limit to their growth prospects due to their inability to scale beyond borders. Being a Portuguese speaker, it would be difficult to convince a brand in neighbouring countries like South Africa (which has a larger market share and reach) to work with a Mozambican influencer unless one already has a significantly large base in Mozambique. An example of this scenario would be Tino Bacela, who started off making videos in English but moved towards producing content in Portuguese, which helped him to grow a strong audience base—so much so that he was able to collaborate with Mozambican beer company 2M—but at the same time, it limited him to a much smaller niche market. 

Looking at the current scenario, Mozambican influencers still have a long way to go before most of them can comfortably live off of this career path financially. For now, they are doing the work, learning and growing.