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Joannes or "Joe" Hotagua is a Sierra Leonean/American living in West Africa. Strategic Advisor with 13 years of professional experience helping Startups monetize their digital assets & Fortune 500 Brands reach their target customers through Digital Media advertising. Early in his career, Joe was responsible for using email marketing and affiliate advertising to drive product purchases and lead generation for direct-to-consumer companies.
In 2009, Joe began working as an Internet Marketing Consultant and has been advising startups since. In 2011, Joe made the transition to helping fortune 500 brands reach their target consumers through programmatic advertising. This focus was in 3 key areas; 1. Desktop (via display ads), 2. Mobile (via video/native/display), and 3. IP Connected TV (via Advanced TV).
In 2012 Joe began his investment career by personally investing in PeepsOut, a minority-run Livestream mobile app, that allowed users to see the crowd size at bars and restaurants in real-time. At its peak, there were 90 restaurants and bars (in two cities) on the service, and $350K raised in funding ($100k Joe personally sourced from investors).
In 2019, Joe launched Hotagua Enterprises, a Freetown, Sierra Leone based firm, focused on improving the lives of underrepresented and underserved populations. Hotagua Enterprises LTD is currently operating in 4 sectors: African Startup Advisory, African Film Production, E-commerce, and Realestate.
Advisory
*African For-Profit advisory - Atunwa (Ghana), Blvck (Nigeria), and DoChase (Nigeria).
*African Non-Profit advisory - United African Congress (Worldwide), and WMB Launchpad (Sierra Leone)
African Film Production - Focused on telling the stories of the underrepresented and underserved.
*Irish Goodbye - screened at Cannes in 2019
*The German King - is an Oscar qualifier in 2019.
Ecommerce
*Authentic African, is both an e-commerce store and Social Media Page. The e-commerce mission is to connect the diaspora with their African roots through African handmade products while helping local African entrepreneurs build their businesses internationally. The @Authentic_African IG Page delivers History, News, and Culture to the African diaspora.
*ForevergreenSupply.com, is an online grocery, looking to bring healthy living and eco-friendly products to the African Diaspora. It houses 20,000+ natural, organic, gourmet, and specialty products from the top brands in the industry(Method Soap, Seventh Generation, Honest Co, etc.).
Real Estate developments in Freetown and Bo, Sierra Leone, designed to create sustainable, eco-friendly rentals.
YT: / @authenticafrican
IG: / authentic_african
A room; styrofoam shells from TV packages; Kente Cloth; an array of Star Wars toys with that classic 1995 “Power of the Force” Millennium Falcon; and the fearless encouragement of his older brother. This was all that Amartei Armar needed to fuel his imaginations and it served to be the beginnings of his journey towards becoming a storyteller through film.
The product of a Ghanaian father and an American mother, he found topics surrounding identity, immigration, and the human need to feel a sense of belonging both utterly fascinating and conflicting having spent most of his life moving back and forth between the two countries.
Upon completing his BFA in Film Production at the University of British Columbia, he completed his first film “ARC” which went on to screen successfully at many international festivals. He later moved back to Ghana permanently to team up with super producer, Yemoh Ike, working together to create “VAGABONDS”, his first film shot in his “fatherland” Ghana. The short film went on to screen at several festivals around the world. It’s highest achievement, winning the Oscar Qualifying 1st Prize Award in the Short Film World Competition at the Montreal World Film Festival. His most recent film, “I Like It Here’” received the coveted Vimeo Staff Pick Award online.
Currently he is Paris on course to release two more Ghanaian short films this year in 2022, as he prepares to direct his first feature length film, which will be set in Ghana.
IG: @amartei_armar