Why MUSIMA

I am not going to open with a statistic. Enough of those are already going around, and in any case it was not a statistic that made me set up this association.

Two ways of talking about us, and both of them tire me out

The first is the register of lack. Africans get talked about when there is a problem to report: what is collapsing, what is missing, what ought to be “helped”. However well meant, it always lands in the same place — someone to be rescued.

The second is supposed to be the cure, and it is not much better. The flawless profiles. The careers that rise in a straight line. Words like “inspiring” and “visionary” laid over people nobody actually knows. It gleams, it travels well on social media, and it is no use to anyone. Because you cannot do anything with a story that has had all the hard parts taken out.

Between the two is what I see every day, which is neither.

What I see

People who have built something, here, without it ever being known beyond their street or their family. A business that has been running for six years. A project started by two people, in the evening, after work. A craft built slowly, by starting over.

Taken separately, nothing spectacular. Put end to end, enormous.

And every time, the same thing: when I asked how they had gone about it, the answer lasted an hour and was worth ten conferences. How to find the first customer. What you do when you have no citizenship, no network, no bank balance to reassure anyone. Who you ask for help, and who you absolutely do not.

Nobody records that hour. It stays in a kitchen, and that is where it stops.

The gap

That is what decided me. Not an abstract injustice — a very concrete gap.

On one side, people who know things because they have done them. On the other, people who need exactly those things and will never hear them, because there is nowhere for them to be said.

For a while I waited. I looked for who was organising this in Barcelona. I found professional networks, trade fairs, perfectly decent things in their own way, but nothing resembling what I was after. So I stopped waiting.

What MUSIMA actually does

We invite people who have already done something. Not “talent to be discovered” — we dropped that word on purpose; it always places the speaker above the person being spoken about. People who do things, and who come to say how.

We ask for the detail. The beginning, the money, the mistakes, who helped, who never replied. And we let the room ask its questions, including the ones you would not dare ask elsewhere.

Three words sum up what we are after: connect, build, make a mark. Put people in the same room. Help get things built that hold. And make sure something outlasts the evening.

What I do not want it to become

A network where people come to collect contacts. A platform promising opportunities to hand out — we have nothing to hand out, and the people who come do not need anything promised to them.

Nor do I want a showroom. If someone turns up to say it was all straightforward, we will have wasted the evening.

Why Barcelona

Because I live here, and because this is where I know people. It is not a strategic statement, it is just honest.

That does not mean it stops here. What gets said in Barcelona also gets said in Marseille, in Lisbon, in Douala, in Dakar. Catalonia is an anchor, not a border. But you start where your feet are.

What comes next

The first gathering is on Saturday 26 September 2026, from 5pm. It is called “What Gets Built Here”. You can come without knowing anyone — that is rather the point.

And if you have built something and you are thinking, reading this, that your story is nothing special: that is exactly the kind of story we want to hear. Write to us.