From LinkedIn Posts to Global Impact:
How AfroRama Is Redefining Job Access Across Africa

Introduction

If you’re building a job board or considering launching one, Chloé Bertrand’s journey is a blueprint in smart, lean, and values-driven growth. In this in-depth interview, Chloé sits down with Martyn Redstone to share how she turned a pandemic-era frustration into AfroRama — a fast-growing job board focused on social impact jobs tied to Africa.

Now followed by over 36,000 people on LinkedIn, 500,000+ reached, and with 30+ paying clients across the globe, AfroRama is a powerful case study in the power of niche, consistency, and resourcefulness.

Watch The Full Interview:

5 Actionable Takeaways for Job Board Builders

1. Start with the Pain You Know

Chloé didn’t set out to build a job board—she just needed one that didn’t exist. Like many great platforms, AfroRama began by solving a problem she personally experienced: scattered, inaccessible job opportunities in the African social impact space.

Lesson: The most sustainable platforms often begin by solving your own unmet need.

2. You Don’t Need Fancy Tech to Get Traction

AfroRama started with Google Forms, Zapier, and a weekly LinkedIn post. That simple stack powered its early growth and helped Chloé test demand without overbuilding.

Lesson: Before you invest in software, validate the idea with tools you already have.

3. Niche Is a Superpower

By laser-focusing on jobs based in or connected to Africa and only in the social impact space, AfroRama became the go-to platform for recruiters with hard-to-fill roles and for talent seeking meaningful work. That tight niche built loyalty—and revenue.

Lesson: Don’t try to serve everyone. Own your niche completely.

4. Revenue Can Be Inbound—If Your Value’s Clear

AfroRama never did outbound sales. Organizations started asking to pay simply because the platform delivered results. Eventually, a simple PayPal form and Zapier setup became their monetization engine.

Lesson: Consistent value and a clear audience can generate demand without cold outreach.

5. Impact Can Be Measured in More Than Hires

AfroRama tracks growth not only through jobs posted, but also through volunteer engagement, grants won, and workshops delivered. Former volunteers have gone on to work for the UN—thanks to the experience they gained helping build the platform.

Lesson: Community-building and upskilling are retention tools, not just nice-to-haves.

Full Interview Transcript

Martyn Redstone (00:01)

You know how frustrating it is when you're looking for a job and every opportunity is hidden across WhatsApp, Facebook, and a dozen LinkedIn groups. Well, my guest in this episode didn't just deal with it, she solved it. Chloe Bertrand is the founder of AfroRama, a fast growing job board connecting global organizations with social impact talent across Africa. This is how she built it from a LinkedIn page during a pandemic. Let's jump in.

Martyn Redstone (00:31)

Barry Bertran, thank you so much for joining me today.

Chloé Bertrand (00:34)

Thank you for having me, Martin.

Martyn Redstone (00:36)

More than welcome, more than welcome. So jumping straight into it, Chloe, why don't you give us a bit of a background to ⁓ you, your professional background and why you started AfroRama.

Chloé Bertrand (00:52)

Absolutely. So I am an economist. I studied economics and international relations ⁓ at a bachelor level and then did a master's in public policy. ⁓ And I now work in the development finance world, ⁓ world of DFI's and I also run Aforama, which is a job board focused on social impact opportunities.

Martyn Redstone (01:14)

Fantastic. So why did you start Afro-Rama in the first place?

Chloé Bertrand (01:18)

Yeah, great question. So I actually started Aforama when I was looking for a job in this very niche sector of a social impact or an international development. And I was looking for a job focused on the continent, on Africa, or related to the continent. So either based or related to the continent. And I couldn't find actually one centralized platform or website that would do that. I had to always be part of, you know, different networks, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups. And so...

As I was looking for a role, decided to just centralize everything so that it would be useful for others who are also in the same position as I was. And coincidentally, actually, I started doing COVID. So actually the first newsletter went out on the 13th of October, 2021. And it was during that time where there were quite a lot of job fairies on LinkedIn. I don't know if you've ever heard of this term.

But it's basically accounts that were centralizing opportunities, particularly related to the care, the health or ⁓ social impact roles. And I saw a lot of these roles were focused on European jobs, European opportunities or American ⁓ opportunities, but they were none actually related to Africa. And I'm an optimist, as I like to call myself. And so I really wanted to have Africa's voice in there as well. And so that's why I also started posting ⁓ and becoming a job fairy.

Martyn Redstone (02:44)

Fantastic. So tell me, how did you go about ⁓ building the original version of Aforama? It's not a small job building a job board and distributing those jobs out. So talk us through some of the thoughts that went through your head around building the actual job board, ⁓ finding the jobs to post on there, bringing companies to post the jobs there, but also

⁓ finding people to actually apply for the jobs as well.

Chloé Bertrand (03:15)

Yeah. Yeah. I think Aforama's sort of development has been quite organic. So as I mentioned, I started on LinkedIn and basically it was just, you know, one day I decided I want to start a job board. I want to centralize all these different opportunities. And I really liked one of the works of another job board called genderjobs.org. And so I reached out to the founder of job board, one of the co-founders actually, and then asked her.

Loads of questions. Just like how do you how do you go about this? Why did you start? I'm thinking of something but not quite sure if it makes sense And also just to get ideas on how you know what technology they used and and also do did a bit of research myself Just to see how I could make this as efficient as possible ⁓ Because obviously I was looking for a job at the time which is a full-time job in itself to look for a job and then also was always looking to have this ⁓ sort of You know next to to whatever out I'd be doing

in terms of ⁓ work. And so what I started doing basically is just ⁓ rounding up these different opportunities ⁓ through the different networks I was already part of, but using Zapier, and Zapier is a life changer. ⁓ Zapier is basically a tool that helps you build different workflows to automate different tasks that you might otherwise do manually. So I've managed to build a quick workflow, and from there, every Wednesday,

was able to consistently post on LinkedIn. And that's, think, what really helped Afarama was the consistency of the posting. And then as we posted, as I continued posting, obviously found a job, which was great, thanks to my own job board. And then what, yeah, it's great. It's great success story. And then from there, I started getting messages from organizations asking how they could pay to post.

Martyn Redstone (04:58)

Fantastic.

Chloé Bertrand (05:10)

on our job board. And I had never thought of this as, you know, a sort of ⁓ an opportunity to get organizations to pay to post. ⁓ And so with that, again, bootstrapped and started a Google form, very rudimentary, using PayPal, using Zapier again, and then was able to start sending these links for organizations to basically to post on our job board. ⁓

Martyn Redstone (05:21)

Mm-hmm.

Chloé Bertrand (05:38)

So that's basically how it started as a sort of more formal job board, I would say. And then in 2023, I was participating in different pitching competitions because I thought I wanted to go to the next level with this job board and actually see what other opportunities there are out there. And so I joined several programs and did pitching competitions and was able to get grants to then build a website.

⁓ to have a specific website because prior to that we were just pushing people through different links. ⁓ We were still recording the number of clicks done through our job board, ⁓ but we're not really able to get all that granular data. So that's how we grew.

Martyn Redstone (06:24)

Fantastic. So using the grant money, you built a job board software specifically for AfroRama.

Chloé Bertrand (06:34)

So built a website, but again, very much a bootstrapper, used a, I don't know if I should say the name, but basically used a website designer, designed it myself, built whatever I could. I've learned coding in the past. So just added basic code and then got someone, a freelance designer to actually fix all my different mistakes and just make sure that the website looked the way I wanted it to look.

⁓ so that's been, you know, going on for a year and a half now that we have this website, ⁓ and we're still growing if someone is scale. And so now we're looking more into getting, you know, an actual job board, SAS, ⁓ you know, platform because it makes the most sense sense for us. ⁓ but just in terms of evolution, as I said, it's been very organic and just responding to people's feedback. ⁓ and, trying to spend the least money possible to just test these different ideas and see if they work before we actually, ⁓

We actually go for it.

Martyn Redstone (07:30)

Going back to that moment where you started being contacted by people who wanted to actually pay to use the job board, how long did it take between starting up the LinkedIn group to having paying customers?

Chloé Bertrand (07:46)

Yeah. So we actually just posted on a LinkedIn page. wasn't, it wasn't a group, ⁓ per se, it was just the company page for Aforama. but it took about in between eight to 12 months since we, before we started posting. ⁓ and I think it's when the account had reached just close to 12,000, followers. the, think the benefit or sort of the advantage that we had as a forama is we're very niche. And so people start knowing us because, you know, we only post.

opportunities related to social impact and based or related to the African continent. And so we get a lot of organizations who are actually just, you know, looking for the specific talents, ⁓ particularly in, you know, areas that might be more difficult to find talent when you are based in the U S or based in Europe.

Martyn Redstone (08:34)

Yeah, absolutely. So fantastic. So that would have been a couple of years ago then that you started your first paying clients. So what does ⁓ the business look like now? I appreciate that you're ⁓ still doing it almost as a kind of side business compared to obviously your day job. But what does the AfroRama job business look like now?

Chloé Bertrand (08:59)

Yeah, so I think we've made a lot of progress since October 2021. And I say a lot of progress because as you mentioned, working on this part-time within the team, I work on it part-time and then we have two other volunteers actually who work on this part-time. But since 21, I would say the way in which we've grown is to reach over...

500,000 individuals through our social media, also through workshops that we do online and in person and through different media engagements. We've also grown to reach 36,000 followers on LinkedIn with 25,000 followers on our newsletter. We've also engaged, as I mentioned, people through workshops, over 100 people there. And now we have clients who

are quite, you know, the majority are recurring. But I would say, you know, over 30 different clients who are based throughout the world. You know, it's not only big foundations in the US, but also have smaller organizations, for example, based in Namibia. So that's also great to see. And then just as well, another achievement of ours since starting has been we've had different cohorts of volunteers. And so volunteers stay

on average six months. That's the sort of the program. ⁓ some of these volunteers have gone on to get great roles, used Afarama as a leverage, their experience at Afarama as a leverage to go on to bigger roles at the UN or other ⁓ big organizations. So that for us has also been ⁓ a success.

Martyn Redstone (10:46)

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So not only, you know, helping your, ⁓ you know, your candidates and your clients kind of connect, but also bringing on board volunteers into AfroArmor and actually helping them ⁓ connect with other opportunities as well. Fantastic. It's kind of like a three-dimensional opportunity going on there. So that's wonderful. So

Chloé Bertrand (10:57)

Exactly.

Martyn Redstone (11:07)

In terms of success metrics, you mentioned there about the number of people that you're engaging with, the number of social media followers, and the number of companies. What does it look like in terms of the number of people that you've actually helped secure employment?

Chloé Bertrand (11:22)

Yeah, that is the million dollar question for us. currently, because of our website, and this is something that we're working on in of Aforama 2.0, is trying to track candidates more. Currently what we track is the number of clicks that people in general, individuals have clicked on the apply now button. And then we have discussions with our different clients on as to

you know, whether or not they were able to find candidates through, through Aforama. But we don't have a specific figure because, you know, some of those clients don't disclose, ⁓ et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ So yeah, so we don't have that specific metric, but this is something that we are looking to implement in our next version.

Martyn Redstone (12:10)

Yeah, it is the million dollar question for a lot of job boards. It's the most difficult metric to track. was interested whether you crack the code, but it sounds like you're in the same situation as a lot of people, is absolutely fine. in terms of going back to the monetization piece then, and you talk about returning customers and all those kind of things, what's been your... Obviously, you have people coming to you in the beginning, but have you spent time...

building business, outbound outreach. How are you getting business for the job board, especially such an interesting niche such as the one that Afro-Rama does?

Chloé Bertrand (12:50)

Yeah, so actually, interestingly enough, for the moment, we have not done, you know, specific business outreach. Everything is through word of mouth and we're quite lucky. ⁓ But yeah, this is something that we're trying to ⁓ do more of to make our, ⁓ to obviously get more business and support our growing running costs as they will be growing more and more. ⁓ But one of the ways that we have started exploring is going through different ⁓ networks. So

There are a lot of different networks out there related to people finding jobs or even recruiters that are interested in social impact, the social impact sector, and then the continent more specifically. So reaching out to these different networks is really important. And also through LinkedIn as well, we've found that it's been quite ⁓ interesting for us to ⁓ get known from recruiters.

Martyn Redstone (13:43)

Fantastic, absolutely fantastic. So one of things I want to talk to you about was the DJAX awards. We had this conversation whether it was DJAX or DJAX, but we'll call it DJAX because my teeth don't work for the other way of doing it. ⁓ Now, ⁓ I know the awards quite well. I was at them last year, but not this year, but I understand that you were finalist in a couple of categories ⁓ at the awards. So what categories were you a finalist in?

Chloé Bertrand (13:52)

You

⁓ I was a finalist of the category most outstanding impact. And then the second one was for best niche job board, I think. I need to double check the wording.

Martyn Redstone (14:23)

Fantastic. No, no, that's, I

think that's right. I know there's a few different categories there, but I think that's right. So it'd be interesting because I know a lot of people talk about, you know, submitting to awards or not knowing how best to submit. And you probably didn't have much support in terms of creating that submission, but it'd be interesting to find out, you know, why did you decide to go in for the awards to start with? And also, you know, how did you create a submission that got you through?

Chloé Bertrand (14:28)

Yeah.

Martyn Redstone (14:52)

⁓ to the shortlist, to the finals.

Chloé Bertrand (14:56)

Yeah, so I think the reason why we decided to go for it is, ⁓ so within our team, we have a team member that works on ⁓ just our general brand awareness. And so she found the award and so she decided to put us forward. I don't necessarily look a lot into those. So it's good to have someone else ⁓ who could do that for us. ⁓ For us, I think it was really important just to get the visibility, you know, be alongside other job boards who also doing great work.

And also being part of the whole award ceremony was just a networking opportunity in itself. I was able to meet different organizations from the whole job board ecosystem, which I actually didn't know existed. And I think it's a great industry in itself because a lot of organizations actually support each other. So for us, think going in the award was very successful for those reasons.

Now, how did we go about the application? I think what we really focused on was our impact. So sharing these different impact metrics, ⁓ everything that we've been able to achieve in a very concise manner. Our submission was actually really, really small, like short paragraphs straight to the point, but just really to show what we've been able to achieve given our limited resources and also what we're looking to further achieve going down the line.

Martyn Redstone (16:19)

Well, I'm sure that a lot of people are going to be getting in touch because it's a real secret source putting together a submission for an awards that actually has an impact. maybe, know, maybe shortened to the point is probably the secret source that people need to start thinking about rather than the long rambling submissions. So there we go. You might have people getting in touch, but I think that having that under your belt is superb, you know, and just to really kind of put your

your name out there and like you said the kind of brand awareness would be would be absolutely superb as well so it's really really interesting. So one of things that I like to ask people who come on to this series is to look back a little bit and think about you know back in October 2021 when you were first ⁓ launching AfroRama as an idea because we can't really call it a job board but it was a LinkedIn page and an idea.

If you could go back in time and have a word with your past self, what would you tell that person? What would you tell them to do differently that might mean a different outcome for you?

Chloé Bertrand (17:31)

and

Yeah, I think the biggest advice I'd give my former self would be from the outset to think of it as a business. ⁓ I really thought about it as with other job fairies, know, at the time we were just doing it ⁓ because we really wanted to, we really wanted to support people finding jobs, particularly during COVID. It was a tough time for everyone. ⁓ But at the end of the day, you know, whatever you put in into an initiative, an idea,

takes time and you use resources like Zapier, which I mentioned, which is this automation, it supports automation. You have a website, et cetera. All of that are inputs that cost money. ⁓ And so I think from the outset, I think I would have tried to be a bit more commercial minded. ⁓ And you know, not even, know, today, Aforama is not a for-profit, we're not for-profit company, ⁓ but I don't think that means that we shouldn't be commercial minded. And so I think...

Yeah, in hindsight, would have spent a bit more time on the business model and maybe better understanding what job boards were. mean, there's different types of job boards, different types of organizations that share opportunities. could be an aggregator. could be, you you could, there's different ways in which you can ⁓ generate revenue. So I think I would have spent a bit more time on that and been clear from the outset ⁓ what to do. But that being said, I think the role of an entrepreneur is to keep on learning. ⁓

And so don't think we made mistakes. Maybe we did, but I don't think we did because each time we were learning from our experience, people were giving us feedback. that's basically what brought up Fororama to what it is today. The second thing, and I think we did a lot of this, which is bootstrapping, but I would argue do more of it. Really try and test ideas in the most simple way possible. You don't need to spend a lot of money. I think...

One of things that I did when I realized, okay, this could be, you know, something I started spending, investing a lot of my own money into, you know, trying to build a specific, you know, service or, you know, something. but in hindsight, you can use very simple tools that people will happily use, ⁓ you know, Google forms, which is practically free, et cetera, ⁓ without having to spend too much money and testing ideas before launching, I think is extremely important.

Martyn Redstone (19:58)

Yeah.

Chloé Bertrand (19:57)

just one last thing, actually, just another

piece of advice I'd say is ⁓ try and build partnerships. You know, there's a lot of people that might, we're not the first people to have an original idea. Sometimes, you know, it's borrowed ideas and there's probably someone else in the world that's trying to do what I'm trying to do. But I think there's power in actually collaborating in partnerships. And I was really lucky because as I mentioned, when I started, I reached out to the co-founder of genderdrops.org ⁓ and they gave me their advice on how to start. ⁓

you know, the LinkedIn page and then ultimately the job board and they did the website before we did a website. So we're able to follow each other in those journeys and now actually sits on their board as an advisor. But that's just to say that we can really, you know, support one another and ask questions. anyone out here has actually questions for me, you know, specific to their experience and their job board, you shouldn't hesitate to reach out.

Martyn Redstone (20:50)

What a lovely offer. Thank you so much, Chloe. That's a really, really lovely offer. I love that as well. You know, the power of partnerships and, you know, and building relationships with people in the industry who are either ahead of you or going on the same journey as you. Super important. I completely agree with you on that. finishing up, what is the plan with AfroRama over the next 12, 24, 36 months? What's next for AfroRama? Yeah.

Chloé Bertrand (21:15)

Oh, exciting question. So

this is an exciting time for our forama. And the reason why is since 2021, we've just been growing gradually, thinking on a year by year basis, what are we trying to achieve this year? And how are we going to get there? And then just tracking different KPIs to measure our performance and our achievements. And this year, actually, is the first year that we have come up with a five year strategy.

The strategy is going to go to 2030, which is a very important year for our industry, which is social impact and sustainable development more generally. And we're looking to scale and really have more impact in the number of individuals that are able to find roles through Afurama, but also the companies and increase that. So we're looking to upgrade our website in coming weeks, actually.

So it is ⁓ going to be a website. will have more capabilities in terms of our job board. So sharing more jobs, but also being able to track ⁓ candidates more. We're also going to be ⁓ working on specific projects to increase the employability ⁓ of our community or candidates that use the job board. So that will be through micro courses and sort of boot camps to really work on specific.

skills. And finally, we're actually going to launch a community. So this is going to be a community of effort optimists, the people who are, you know, love the content, passionate of the content, want to contribute to the continent's sustainable development. And it's going to be a place where you can network with one another, learn with another and also an opportunity for recruiters to also find specific candidates within within that community.

So that's the idea for the next coming weeks and months. We're to be growing Afarama. ⁓ And we're really excited because we're finally going to be able to respond to some of the feedback we've gotten over the past few years.

Martyn Redstone (23:19)

sounds fantastic. So I think I feel like you know you're kind of almost saying that you know the next kind of weeks and months is the growing up phase of Afro-Rama, you're really kind of coming into your own by the sounds of it and love that thought of developing a community around ⁓ a job board as well. I think a lot of people have thought about that so I'm very interested in circling back at some point over the coming months and finding out just how those initiatives have gone. ⁓

But on that note, Chloe, thank you so much for taking the time to share the benefit of your story with us.

Chloé Bertrand (23:56)

Thank you so much for having me.

Martyn Redstone (23:57)

been an absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure. Chloe Bertron, thank you so much.