Meaningful Gigs Puts African Creatives At The Forefront

It’s no secret the design world has a diversity and gender equity issue. According to Kerning The Gap , only 17% of creative directors are female. Even worse, the gender pay gap between men and women is over 20%. Meaningful Gigs is on a mission to change just that. They’re a Washington, DC based tech-enabled marketplace, connecting skilled African designers with companies seeking high quality digital design in the US and Europe. Founded by Ghanaian technologist Ronnie Kwesi Coleman, Meaningful Gigs has successfully secured high-paying roles for designers with companies such as Meta, AARP, IDEO, Starbucks and more.

• Lize- Marie | South Africa

 Lize-Marie Dreyer is an illustrator and designer from Cape Town, South Africa. Before working with Meaningful Gigs, she freelanced, but the income was variable. Now, income is more stable, and she is getting better-paying jobs with globally recognized brands, which has improved prospects for the future. She has been able to secure a bond (mortgage) for her first house! Lize-Marie and the enterprise partners that empower her such as AARP, Shopify, NYU, Unicef, and Volkswagen have had a sustained financial impact on Lize-Marie and her community. She’s become one of AARP’s go-to designers, working with them for over 2 years.

• Adebimpe | Nigeria

Adebimpe is a young product designer from Nigeria, that recently moved to the UK to complete her master’s degree in human-computer interaction design. To move to the UK and pay for her studies, Adebimpe took loans from friends and family since traditional loans were not accessible to her as an international student. However, because of her work at Meaningful Gigs, Adebimpe was able to pay off her loans for her studies in August and graduated debt free in May 2022! She has been able to increase her salary by 2x! She plans to use the degree and extra income to potentially immigrate to Canada next year.

• Rhoda| UK -portfolio available upon request

Rhoda recently began working with Meaningful Gigs doing UX research and design. She uses her income to further her education. Rhoda is currently getting a master’s degree in artificial intelligence in the UK. She is also invested in getting certifications such as AWS Cloud Practitioner and Udacity Computer Vision certificates. Her Meaningful Gigs projects and income covered the remaining half of her tuition, as well as the certificate programs. Rhoda hopes to one day start her own business at the intersection of tech and health.

Founded in 2019, Meaningful Gigs is the solution to Ghanaian CEO and Co-founder Ronnie Kwesi Coleman’s struggle to connect with top technologists and designers. The inspiration drew from his desire to specifically connect diverse product designers and developers around the world with better job opportunities. Collectively, Meaningful Gigs’ designers help to fulfill the company’s big picture mission: to bolster local African economies through spillover benefits from US-based earnings. Guided by an economic perspective, Meaningful Gigs makes an intentional choice to be more than just aspirational, but to rely on action—moving US dollars onto the African continent and creating lasting socioeconomic change throughout communities.

​Meaningful Gigs is a tech-enabled marketplace connecting skilled African designers with companies seeking high-quality digital design. Meaningful Gigs currently supplies talent for companies such as Starbucks, Bloomberg, Facebook, IDEO, and Vans, and has a vision to create 100,000 skilled jobs in Africa by 2028. Meaningful Gigs has created a community of thousands of skilled, diverse designers for creative, product, and marketing teams. By curating and upskilling its designer community, Meaningful Gigs provides companies with a way to tap into global diversity while also delivering critical design solutions for their businesses. By supplying people in Africa with skilled jobs, the company focuses on continuous economic empowerment and socioeconomic advancement. For more information, visit meaningfulgigs.com.