Aminata “Ami” Mbaye had a path that looked familiar to many young people in the diaspora: build a life in the United States, find a stable career, and keep moving forward. But after returning to Senegal, she began questioning what success and freedom actually looked like for her—and whether the future she wanted could include building something back home.

In this episode of They Lied About Africa, I sit down with Ami, Founder & CEO of PYNK, a women’s wellness brand being built between New York and Senegal.We talk about what changed when she returned to Senegal after years away, the realities she encountered once she was on the ground, and how those experiences eventually pushed her toward entrepreneurship.

Ami shares how struggling to find menstrual products that met her needs helped inspire PYNK, why she believes women’s wellness deserves greater attention and investment, and how her vision for the brand extends beyond menstrual health.

But we also get into the part of entrepreneurship that often gets left out of the conversation: how do you actually build back home when your life is still in the diaspora? Ami is working a full-time job in New York while building PYNK in Senegal, traveling back and forth and creating a supply chain that doesn’t require her to be physically present every day. We talk about how she manages it, the assumptions the diaspora can have about doing business in Africa, and what she has learned from actually trying to build.If you’ve ever thought about returning, investing, starting a business, or contributing to the continent while still living abroad, this conversation is for you.

Learn more about PYNK:

Website: https://pynk.sn/

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At just 20 years old, Imran Bakaluba is building the kind of company many Africans in the diaspora have been waiting for.

Growing up in the UK before moving to Uganda, Imran founded HomeLink Uganda to solve one of the biggest challenges facing Africans abroad: how do you safely build, invest, and manage property back home when you're thousands of miles away?

In this episode, we discuss what it takes to build a business in Africa as a young entrepreneur, why trust has become one of the biggest barriers to diaspora investment, the realities of returning to build, and how Gen Z can play a role in shaping Africa's future.

If today's conversation inspired you and you're based in London, Imran and the HomeLink Uganda team are currently building a community of young East African entrepreneurs who want to connect, collaborate, and build together. If you'd like to get involved, you can reach him at [email protected].

If you're looking for trusted support managing property in Uganda or would like to learn more about HomeLink Uganda's services, visit https://homelinkuganda.com.

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🎵 TikTok: @imranbakaluba

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If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to and share it with someone who dreams of building, investing, or creating opportunities in Africa.

European football is filled with some of the best players in the world—but have you ever stopped to ask why so many of them have African roots, or why Europe's biggest clubs invest so heavily in scouting talent across the continent?

In this episode of They Lied About Africa, we explore the history, economics, and global systems that helped shape today's football landscape. From colonial history and migration to youth academies and talent pipelines, we look beyond the game itself to understand how African talent has become such an important part of European football.

Whether you're a lifelong football fan or just curious about the bigger story behind the game, this episode will change the way you think about European football.

What if I told you that African countries once boycotted the FIFA World Cup—and that this protest is part of the reason African teams are able to qualify for and compete in the tournament today?

Most people know who won the 1966 World Cup.

Far fewer know that almost an entire continent refused to participate.

In this episode, we explore one of the most important yet overlooked moments in African sporting history: why African countries boycotted the 1966 FIFA World Cup, how FIFA's qualification system treated Africa differently from Europe and South America, and how a united protest changed the future of African football.

This wasn't just a story about football.

It was a story about representation, collective action, and a generation of newly independent African nations refusing to accept unequal treatment on the world stage.

If you're watching the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this is one piece of history you shouldn't miss.

Sub-Saharan Africa loses $95 billion every single year because women are systematically excluded from owning land, accessing financing, and being compensated for their labor.

In this episode, I will walk you through the three specific mechanisms that make this happen, take you inside Nigeria's inheritance laws , where the Supreme Court ruled women have the right to inherit and it still doesn't happen, and then show you what Rwanda did when it actually changed its laws and what that did to their economy.

It's 2026. Africa cannot afford to keep leaving $95 billion on the table every single year. The continent's most powerful economic asset has always been its women, and it's time we start treating it that way.

If you're wondering how patriarchy took root in Africa in the first place, meaning where it came from, how it was installed, and why it stuck, check out the previous episode: Patriarchy Is The Most Successful Import In African History. The two episodes together tell the full story.

Before colonialism, Yoruba women controlled entire regional economies. Ashanti Queen Mothers had veto power over who became king. Igbo women fought a war against the British in 1929 to protect their economic independence. So how did African women go from that to being raised from birth to cook and clean for a husband they have never met. This episode traces exactly what happened and who is responsible.

One plot of land. Five different buyers. Five families who each believed it was theirs. This is not a horror story — this is what is actively happening to diaspora investors trying to build back home in Senegal right now. In this episode I sat down with Paya, founder of Paya Residence in Almadies, to get the full picture — what documents you need, where to verify ownership, which neighborhoods are actually worth investing in, and exactly how people lose everything before a single brick is laid. If you have ever said "one day I want to build back home" — this episode is your starting point.

In this episode, I sit down with Senegalese stylist and textile exploration artist Marième Mboup to unpack a question that feels simple, but isn’t: is modesty really a choice? Raised in Dakar, where modest dressing is lived, embodied, and culturally rooted, Marième brings a perspective that challenges how global fashion has reframed modesty as a trend, an aesthetic, and a market category. Together, we explore what gets lost when identity becomes content, who benefits from the commercialization of modest fashion, and how African Muslim women are reclaiming authorship in an industry that has long borrowed from them without credit. This is not just a conversation about fashion — it’s about power, narrative control, and redefining what freedom and creativity actually look like.

Apartheid is often taught as a uniquely South African system, but the ideas that shaped it didn’t appear out of nowhere. In this episode of They Lied About Africa, we explore how apartheid was built from systems that already existed across the world, including American Jim Crow segregation, colonial governance structures, and racial classification laws. By looking at the global influences behind apartheid, we uncover how governments study, borrow, and adapt systems of power and control. This episode challenges the narrative that apartheid was simply an African problem and instead places it within a broader history of racial governance. Tune in to rethink what you thought you knew about apartheid and the global systems that helped shape it.

The aid industry didn't just respond to poverty in Africa. It built a system around it. In this episode, we break down how foreign aid became an industry, how that industry shaped the global narrative around an entire continent, and what that framing has cost Africa in capital, sovereignty, and power. This isn't about whether aid helps. It's about what gets built when crisis becomes the dominant story.

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