Skip to content
PR Africa International
Events

Fixed dates,
immovable deadlines.

Conferences for governments and multilaterals, trade exhibitions carrying official endorsement, and the beach festival that started it all. An event is the one kind of campaign that cannot slip, the delegates are already travelling.

Conferences

Multi-day programmes for government, multilateral and industry clients, where the deadline is fixed and the delegates are already travelling.

    • A performer on the Lekki Sunsplash stage at Maiyegun Beach, palm trees and a crowd stretching along the sand behind him.
      Photographer unidentified — provenance to confirm.
    • Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation album, showing the festival's palm-tree logo over a photograph of the beach crowd.
      Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation record.

    ICASA 2005

    2005

    Abuja

    Delegates
    8,000+
    Countries
    16
    Volunteers coordinated
    700
    Budget
    $4m

    ICASA is the largest HIV/AIDS conference on the continent, and the 2005 edition brought more than eight thousand delegates from sixteen countries to Abuja for five days. PRAfrica International was project co-coordinator.

    The logistics were the substance of the job: twelve sessions to schedule, seven hundred volunteers to recruit and coordinate, and delegate accommodation spread across a hundred and two hotels, all against a four million dollar budget and a fixed, immovable date.

    Our role

    • Event management
    • Media publicity and management
    • Event sponsorship and management

    Source: PR Africa company profile, Milestones.

    • A performer on the Lekki Sunsplash stage at Maiyegun Beach, palm trees and a crowd stretching along the sand behind him.
      Photographer unidentified — provenance to confirm.
    • Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation album, showing the festival's palm-tree logo over a photograph of the beach crowd.
      Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation record.

    Business Investment Forum 2005

    2005

    Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg

    Days
    3
    Target sectors
    9

    Held over three days at the Sandton Convention Centre with the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, the forum existed to consolidate joint business activity between Nigerian and South African businesspeople and to attract foreign direct investment into the Nigerian economy.

    It was structured around targeted sectors rather than general networking: agriculture and agro-allied, mining, oil and gas, telecommunications, education, transportation, tourism, industry and manufacturing. NIPC and PRAfrica International organised it as project consultants.

    Our role

    • Media relations
    • Public marketing
    • Project consultancy

    Source: PR Africa company profile, Milestones.

    • A performer on the Lekki Sunsplash stage at Maiyegun Beach, palm trees and a crowd stretching along the sand behind him.
      Photographer unidentified — provenance to confirm.
    • Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation album, showing the festival's palm-tree logo over a photograph of the beach crowd.
      Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation record.

    CBN 2020 Financial Conference

    2007

    Nigeria

    Held in June 2007, the conference mobilised senior stakeholders across the banking industry for a working session on strengthening the sector, set against the national goal of making Nigeria one of the world's largest economies by 2020.

    Our role

    • Media relations
    • Stakeholder forum

    Source: PR Africa company profile, Milestones.

    • A performer on the Lekki Sunsplash stage at Maiyegun Beach, palm trees and a crowd stretching along the sand behind him.
      Photographer unidentified — provenance to confirm.
    • Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation album, showing the festival's palm-tree logo over a photograph of the beach crowd.
      Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation record.

    UNESCO Business Roundtable on Education for All

    2002

    Nigeria

    Days
    2
    Held
    May 2002

    A two-day conference held in May 2002, and a UNESCO initiative aimed at arresting the poor state of education planning and delivery systems in developing nations through the participation of the organised private sector.

    That participation was the whole design. The roundtable put the funding and delivery question directly to the businesses the programme depended on, rather than to the ministries that already agreed with it.

    Our role

    • Event management
    • Media publicity and management
    • Sponsorship drive and marketing

    Source: PR Africa company profile, Milestones.

Exhibitions

Trade platforms built to put Nigerian business in front of foreign buyers, and to carry official endorsement while doing it.

    • The Barbican Centre in London, seen across its lakeside terrace on a clear day.The venue today
      Nevilley, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
    • The white art deco frontage of Wembley Arena in London, seen across the empty square in front of it.The venue today
      Pmsphoto, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

    Made-in-Nigeria / Best-of-Nigeria Exhibition

    1999–2006

    London and Johannesburg

    Barbican Centre, London
    1999
    Wembley Arena, London
    2000
    Sandton Convention Centre
    2004–06

    MINEX opened at the Barbican Centre in London in 1999, returned to Wembley Arena in 2000, and ran at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg from 2004 to 2006. PRAfrica was the organiser throughout, in partnership with the Nigerian Export Promotion Council and the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission.

    The premise was simple and unusual for the period: rather than describe Nigerian manufacturing to foreign buyers, put the manufacturers and the buyers in the same hall. The trade relationships followed from the exposure.

    It drew formal endorsement at the highest level. President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote in March 2004 backing the Johannesburg edition and pledging the support of the relevant government agencies; the NEPAD Secretariat conveyed its own endorsement that September.

    Our role

    • Organiser
    • Exhibition production
    • Government liaison and endorsement
    • Sponsor recruitment

    Source: PR Africa company profile; endorsement letters from the Presidency (March 2004) and the NEPAD Secretariat (September 2004).

Entertainment

Live events and festivals. The company's founder built one of the largest Nigeria has had before he built the agency.

    • A performer on the Lekki Sunsplash stage at Maiyegun Beach, palm trees and a crowd stretching along the sand behind him.
      Photographer unidentified — provenance to confirm.
    • Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation album, showing the festival's palm-tree logo over a photograph of the beach crowd.
      Sleeve of the Lekki Sunsplash compilation record.

    Lekki Sunsplash

    1988 onwards

    Maiyegun Beach, Lekki Peninsula, Lagos

    First held, 26 December
    1988
    Company formed to produce it
    DP Lekki

    Lekki Sunsplash began with a favour. Friends were looking for somewhere to hold a beach party, and Dapo Adelegan, then teaching at Bolade Grammar School, Oshodi, went out scouting and found Maiyegun Beach, at that point an undeveloped stretch of the Lekki Peninsula. What he took away from it was a bigger idea: an annual festival where established and unknown musicians would play to the same crowd.

    He set up a company, DP Lekki, to produce it, and the first concert was held on 26 December 1988. It returned every December for years afterwards and became the first major beach mass-tourism event Lagos had seen, a December fixture that drew crowds out to a peninsula most of the city had never visited. Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Majek Fashek, Daniel Wilson, Alex Zitto and KWAM 1 were among those who performed, and a compilation record, Lekki Sunsplash '88, followed in 1989.

    Its inheritance is easy to see. The December festival economy that Lagos now exports to the world as "Detty December" runs on the template Sunsplash set: a beach, a line-up, and an audience willing to travel for it.

    Our role

    • Founded and produced by Dapo Adelegan
    • Venue development at Maiyegun Beach
    • Artist booking and programming
    • Sponsorship and media

    Source: Press accounts including BusinessDay, New Dawn Nigeria and allAfrica; the 1989 Lekki Sunsplash '88 compilation is catalogued on Discogs.

Tell us what you’re launching.

Send a brief and we’ll come back within two working days with an honest read, including whether we’re the right team for it.