Media Notes #3 - Bridging the Gap: Dina Aboughazala on Egab and Building Media Infrastructure
In this edition of Media Notes, I sat down with Dina Aboughazala, founder of Egab, to talk about the challenges and opportunities that come with creating a journalism platform designed to empower.
Hi, my name is Anita Eboigbe and this is the third edition of Media Notes. Before you read more, check out why this exists in the first place and previous editions here.
Dina Aboughazala carries the kind of warmth and quiet intensity that immediately puts you at ease, even through a screen. She sparkles and as she speaks, you can see the passion for the work and the people pour out effortlessly. From the moment we began speaking, her precision, and deep sense of purpose came through.
For me, every conversation for Media Notes presents a chance to connect with someone whose journey reflected the tensions and possibilities of media in Africa and beyond. Ours was no different and I was keen to understand the story of Egab, a media organisation she founded in late 2020 and that continues to do the important work of matching journalists and newsrooms, giving both sides the opportunity to do better journalism.
Dina began her career on the frontlines of journalism, cutting her teeth on hard stories but her turning point came during her time in London, between 2015 and 2019, what she called the “Brexit years.” Watching the news from afar, she often felt as though Egypt was collapsing. Terrorism, economic crisis, instability with every news bulletin painting the same bleak picture. Yet when she went home, she saw something different. Yes, the country was struggling but it was alive and a good part of it was thriving.
That dissonance became a seed of doubt. “I started to question whether I was doing my job right,” she said. “If I could see exaggeration in how my own country was covered, what did that mean for the way I was reporting on other places like Syria, Libya, or Nigeria?”
The questions were compounded by personal loss. When her father, also a journalist, died suddenly at 62, Dina was forced to confront her own sense of purpose. “If I died tomorrow, would I be happy with what I have achieved?” she asked herself. Working at the BBC carried prestige, but she felt she was giving more to Britain than to her own community. “At the end of the day, the BBC is a British corporation. Good for them, good for the UK. But what was I giving back?”
Layered on top of this was the parental instinct to show her son what was possible. “I wanted to show him — not tell him — that you can do whatever you want in life,” Dina said. “I wanted him to see that I walked away from a job people thought I was crazy to leave, and I built something of my own.”
The road to Egab
The initial idea was to create a media outlet built around solutions journalism, a model of reporting that moves from simply spotlighting problems to deeply interrogating and reporting what’s working, why it’s working, and how communities are responding. Dina had only recently discovered the concept, yet it immediately struck her as something the continent desperately needed. Still, she knew she couldn’t leap into it blindly. “As a woman, financial independence is very important to me,” she said. “I wasn’t going to leave the BBC without a plan.”
She took an unpaid sabbatical to study Innovation and Interactive Journalism at City St. George’s, University of London. She took time to learn about the start-up model, business canvases, and the discipline of starting with the problem before designing a solution. “It was my first real introduction to business thinking,” she recalled. “And it changed everything.”
The true breakthrough came in 2019, when she joined an incubator that didn’t require a prototype, only an idea. There, mentors challenged her thinking: Was she creating a product people actually wanted, or just another outlet for herself? Reflecting on years of messages from young journalists desperate to get into the BBC, she realized the real gap wasn’t more outlets but the industry needed a bridge. “There was no shortage of media outlets, and no shortage of journalists,” Dina said. “But for some reason, they weren’t reaching each other.”
That realization gave birth to Egab, a platform designed to connect young, underrepresented journalists with global outlets while also mentoring them through the process. Till date, they have supported local journalists in over 60 countries to get published in top media outlets.
The organisation’s model includes identifying promising pitches, refining them through coaching, and then linking them to editors in need of fresh, original stories. For the journalists, it means by-lines and payment far above local rates. For the media organisations, it means access to perspectives and stories they would otherwise miss.
“We are creating a virtual newsroom for young journalists,” Dina explained. “We don’t just connect them. We guide, mentor, and develop them.”
Do we need more newsrooms?
As Dina described Egab’s journey, I found myself reflecting on a common trap in our industry: the saviour complex. Too often, journalists decide to start outlets because they believe the world needs their version of the truth. “Whenever I speak with up and coming media entrepreneurs,” I told Dina, “the one question I ask is: does this need to exist on its own? Or should it be a vertical for an existing outlet? Nobody really looks at the cost of doing business when the idea is fresh.”
Dina’s approach is refreshing because it isn’t about ego, but building a pipeline to balance the ecosystem. She recognized that quality samples were often the barrier to entry for young journalists and set out to change that. One Egyptian journalist, after publishing three stories through Egab, finally landed a job she had failed to secure for years. “That, for me, was a yay moment,” Dina said, smiling.
The impact operates on multiple levels. At the individual level, Egab helps journalists build careers. At the narrative level, it shifts how Africa and the Middle East are covered. Instead of endless stories of war and poverty, Egab has published features on ancient Sudanese traditions resolving conflicts or community innovations tackling local problems. “We’re not waiting for saviours,” Dina insisted. “We’re showing that we have our own solutions.”
And at the ecosystem level, it is slowly building the next generation of high-quality journalists and entrepreneurs. “Even if tomorrow we woke up with the best laws and press freedoms, we don’t have the calibre of journalists we need,” she said bluntly. “Most are not well-equipped. That’s what we’re trying to change.”
The weight of mentorship
This is not easy work. Mentorship at Egab is painstaking, often one-on-one. From the pitch stage to final publication, every step is a process of feedback, revision, and coaching. Rejected pitches aren’t dismissed but explained. First drafts are compared with final pieces so journalists can study their own growth. “It’s unfair to think you can put journalists in a one-week workshop and say, ‘You’re ready to go,’” Dina said. “It takes practice. It’s a process.”
Listening to her, I recognised the truth of it deeply. In my own newsroom days, I had a few reporters who were brilliant at gathering news but struggled with the writing itself. One of them I paired with an assistant. He would dictate voice notes, she would transcribe, and together they learned the craft of structuring a story. A year later, he wrote his first publishable piece alone. Transformations like that take time, patience, and belief, the very qualities Egab has made its core mission.
“It’s not just a job,” Dina told me. “Everyone on our team has to buy into the vision. We don’t hire them otherwise.”
But belief alone doesn’t pay the bills. Here, Dina’s frustrations mirrored my own. “One of the biggest flaws in our industry is that we don’t think of media as a business,” she said. “We start projects, and only afterwards think about how to make money. It should be the other way around.”
The funding ecosystem remains shallow. Donors distrust for-profits, labelling them greedy, while traditional investors see media as a dying industry. The result is a paradox where non-profits get attention but lack sustainability. Businesses struggle to scale without external support. “I tried applying for grants for a year,” Dina said, “but the effort wasn’t worth it. The return was zero. I decided to focus on my business instead.”
Yet media ventures still need time to reach profitability. And without core funding, many fold before they get there. “In tech, you can fail a couple times and still get funded again,” I pointed out. “In the media, especially niche media, it’s not the same level of trust.”
The lack of specialized accelerators for media entrepreneurs makes the problem worse. “We don’t have a proper ecosystem for media businesses,” Dina said. “We need education, training, and investors who understand what it takes.”
She’s right. What the sector is missing is a development pipeline that mirrors what tech enjoys that includes sustained incubation, business-skills training, long-term funding, and investors who understand that journalism has different timelines, different metrics, and different success indicators. Until these structures exist, individual organisations will continue carrying burdens that should be shared across the ecosystem.
What’s Next?
As we wrapped up, I asked the question I always end with: what’s next? For Egab, the immediate focus is expansion beyond Africa and the Middle East toward the broader Global South. But the bigger goal is sustainability. “Our ambition is to break even next year, and by the end of the year, be profitable,” Dina said. “Not because we fear collapse, but because I want to dream. I want to invest in new technology, not just survive.”
Her answer echoed our own goals at Big Cabal Media. “We are working hard to expand our bets in quality and coverage,” I told her. “We’re experimenting with formats like short films under Zikoko, just to see how audiences engage with the universes we’ve built. It’s exhausting, but exhilarating.”
She laughed knowingly. “Yeah, that’s the work.”
And she’s spot on. The work is tough and exciting in equal measure, but it is also necessary. Because at its core, Egab is trying to unlock a different future for African journalism. If its bets succeed at scale, more reporters across the region will have access to rigorous mentorship, more underreported stories will reach global platforms, and more local communities will see their realities reflected with dignity and depth.
Dina’s model shows what can happen when journalists are given the support to grow and the space to be taken seriously. The promise of Egab is a continent where great stories don’t die in drafts or WhatsApp pitches, but find the editors, training, and platforms they deserve.
Because in the end, building media that lasts is not about prestige or power. It’s about stories. The ones that have yet to be told, the ones that change how we see ourselves, and the ones that will outlive us if we build wisely.
This piece was edited by Afolabi Adekaiyaoja.