In the vibrant, rhythm-filled heart of Africa’s creative ecosystem, a persistent dissonance has long undercut its global potential. While artists produce groundbreaking work, the systems to measure its impact, particularly in the crucial offline spaces where culture is born, have remained shrouded in ambiguity. Marketing budgets vanish into opaque campaigns, DJ spins in buzzing clubs go untracked, and decisions are guided by instinct rather than insight. Into this landscape of overlooked challenges, two brilliant women, Darkor Ofosu-Dorte and Zainab Olawoyin, are not just asking for a seat at the table; they are building a new one, powered by data, transparency, and a profound understanding of the African market.
Their answer is Pine & Gingr, a performance-driven music marketing agency, and its pioneering engine, Spins. Together, they represent a fundamental shift from assumption to accountability. They are building not just another agency, but the missing infrastructure for Africa’s creative economy. Their mission is to turn the continent’s undeniable cultural momentum into a measurable, sustainable enterprise by bringing radical clarity, accountability, and transparency to how music campaigns perform.
The Founders and the Foundational Problem
The force behind Pine & Gingr is a powerful duality. Darkor Ofosu-Dorte, the CEO, brings the mindset of a creator and strategist. As the founder of the Ghanaian swimwear brand SwimsbyDidi, she understands the grind of building a tangible brand from the ground up. Zainab Olawoyin, the Head of Operations, provides the legal and operational rigour to make that vision credible and scalable.
For them, the status quo was not an option. Before going public, they worked quietly, running real campaigns while building data and automation infrastructure designed to address local data gaps and operational pain points. That work was shaped through live campaigns with independent artists and established industry partners, allowing them to refine their systems and standards under real commercial conditions. They observed a creative sector brimming with talent but stifled by systemic inefficiencies. The most glaring issue? A massive data void.
In Africa, a song’s journey to anthem status often begins not on streaming charts, but in the live, pulsating energy of clubs, parties, and events. Yet, this critical cultural layer was a black box. PR agents and artists had no reliable way to know how often a song was played, by which DJ, or where, making it impossible to accurately gauge a campaign’s real-world impact or prove value to brands and global partners. Where others chalked this up to “just how things are,” Darkor and Zainab saw a solvable problem. They embarked on a mission to bring clarity, accountability, and transparency to the African creative economy, ensuring that creators could finally seize control of their own narrative and value.
“The African music ecosystem is incredibly rich in creativity and talent,” notes Zainab. “However, one major gap we’ve consistently seen is the lack of structure needed to fully and fairly maximize that talent, especially on a global scale. This shows up in poor data collation and reporting, and limited use of data-driven decision-making. Pine & Gingr was built to address this gap by creating systems that provide accurate, actionable insights and help stakeholders make more informed decisions.”
Darkor adds a strategic lens: “African culture moves fast and creates real value, but the systems needed to turn that momentum into sustainable enterprise have often been missing. Pine & Gingr was built to bridge that gap by giving creative work the structure, measurement, and accountability it needs to scale and compete globally.”
Pine & Gingr: The Strategic Backbone
Pine & Gingr is the culmination of their vision. It is far more than a traditional marketing agency; it is an intelligence hub. Built on AI-powered data aggregation and automation, the company offers 360-degree music marketing and campaign management designed to eliminate guesswork.
Their goal is to eliminate ambiguity in campaign tracking and reporting, enabling local creative services to be credible, measurable, exportable, and globally competitive. They provide teams with real-time visibility into what drives conversion and predict ROI ranges, ensuring every decision is grounded in local context, not imported assumptions. Before public launch, they meticulously refined their model through live campaigns, building a robust infrastructure that addresses uniquely African operational pain points.
Spins: The Revolutionary Heartbeat & The DJ Data Revolution
At the heart of their solution is Spins, a proprietary technology that is quietly revolutionary. While global analytics tools track radio and digital streams, they are blind to the live, offline spaces where African music truly comes alive. Spins was built specifically for this gap.
It is an automation engine that detects, logs, and attributes DJ plays in real-time. For the first time, an artist’s team can receive a notification that their song was played at a specific time, in a specific club, and by a specific DJ. This transforms anecdotal evidence, “your song is blowing up in Nairobi,” into actionable data, “Your song was played 62 times across 18 key venues in Nairobi this month.”
Spins focuses on the cultural layer where momentum often starts, but the inspiration for centring DJs in their data model is deeply intentional. “DJs are often where momentum starts,” says Darkor. “In many markets, they’re the first to test records, shape taste, and move music into the wider culture, yet their impact is rarely captured in a structured way. Spins was designed around that reality. Instead of relying only on third-party reporting or PR narratives, we wanted to capture activity at the source and turn it into reliable data. Bringing DJs into the system allows us to reflect on how music actually moves on the ground, while giving teams clearer insight into what’s driving performance. With the help of local sound systems across Africa, we are exploring ways not just to spectacle DJs but to help them monetize that visibility effectively.”
Zainab highlights the systemic gap this fills: “DJs are undeniably a critical part of the music ecosystem; they act as tastemakers and influence what audiences connect with. Despite this influence, we noticed a clear gap in how DJ data was being collated and reported in a structured, reliable way. Spins was created to bridge that gap. Teams actively pushing music through DJs deserve accurate insight into how frequently and where their records are being played, and that insight needs to come from a credible and verifiable source. By centering DJs in the data process, we’re able to reflect a more authentic picture of music consumption.”
Human-Led Intelligence in an AI Age
In an era skeptical of AI and automation, Pine & Gingr takes a refreshingly balanced approach. They use AI as a powerful tool for aggregation and identifying patterns, but firmly keep human expertise in the driver’s seat.
“At Pine & Gingr, technology is a tool, not the product,” clarifies Darkor. “We don’t use AI to replace judgment or creativity, but to provide clearer visibility into performance so teams can make better decisions. Our approach is grounded in transparency.”
Zainab reinforces this human-centric philosophy: “We view AI as a complement to human expertise, not a substitute for it. We use AI to identify patterns, generate insights, and support informed recommendations, while all final decisions remain human-led. By keeping people at the centre of the decision-making process, we’re able to use technology responsibly, ensuring that our services enhance judgment rather than replace it.”
Building a Continental Mainstay
With operations in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and the UK, the vision for Pine & Gingr is expansive yet precise. The goal is to become a trusted, value-driven mainstay across the continent.
“For Pine & Gingr, the priority is consistency,” states Darkor. “That means delivering the same level of clarity, accountability, and performance in every market we operate in. We will only expand into service verticals where performance can be clearly tracked, either by leveraging existing tools or by building infrastructure that captures reliable local data.”
Zainab outlines the relationship-driven path to growth: “We aim to expand our operations into key African markets, forming strong local partnerships while maintaining a high standard of service for every client we work with. By prioritizing value, long-term relationships, and operational excellence, we’re focused on becoming a dependable, go-to platform for music businesses across the continent.”
Their service offering, encompassing 360-degree marketing, brand partnerships, and retainer-based campaign management, is all unified by their data backbone. This allows for campaigns to be adjusted in real-time based on what is actually resonating on the ground, making marketing spend efficient and accountable.
The Impact: A New Ecosystem for African Creativity
The impact of Pine & Gingr’s work is foundational. They are writing the new rules for the African music business by:
- Moving the industry from reactive guesswork to predictive, data-driven strategy.
- Making marketing spend clear and accountable, building trust with global partners.
- Quantifying the offline buzz that has always powered African hits, finally giving it a metric.
- Arming African creatives with the robust, export-standard data needed to compete on the world stage.
Darkor Ofosu-Dorte and Zainab Olawoyin are advocating and building infrastructure for a generation of African creators. By building tools that measure true value, they are ensuring that the continent’s undeniable creative pulse is not just felt, but precisely tracked, rightfully valued, and powerfully amplified for the world to see. In their hands, data becomes not just numbers but the key to unlocking sovereignty within the global creative ecosystem.
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