Exclusive Interview: ELLE Afrique's Frédérique Nanan
- Clearly Invincible
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
Following the inaugural launch of ELLE Afrique's first edition, Clearly Invincible had the pleasure of speaking with its CEO and Publisher, Frédérique Nanan.
To discover the cover feature, click here.
Frédérique Nanan, CEO and Publisher of ELLE Afrique, shared via video:
“ELLE Afrique was conceived as an extension of Côte d’Ivoire media. Today, we address all women — first in French and in time across the continent building a platform that documents African talent, empowers women, and connects creative ecosystems naturally.”
Clearly Invincible: Congratulations on the expansion of ELLE and on your consistent contributions at ELLE Côte d'Ivoire.
Could you please explain how this expansion contributes to the Fashion, Beauty, Culture and Lifestyle media that the continent has been building and how the telling of these stories will adequately represent the 23 countries that the francophone edition will cover? Do ELLE Egypt and ELLE Côte d’Ivoire remain or does this expansion require a merger?
Frédérique Nanan: ELLE Afrique Francophone is not simply a magazine expanding its footprint, it is a platform answering a structural gap in the African media landscape. For decades, African women in francophone countries have consumed fashion, beauty and lifestyle narratives that were either imported from Europe or filtered through a single-country lens. What we are building is a continental editorial infrastructure, one that can hold the sophistication of Dakar’s fashion scene, the creative energy of Cotonou, the beauty innovation coming out of Abidjan and the cultural richness of Douala within a single, coherent editorial voice.
Our first edition launches across five countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, and Gabon making it one of the largest territories in the ELLE International network. But as I wrote in our founding statement: “L’Afrique francophone est notre ancrage. L’Afrique entière est notre horizon.” Francophone Africa is our foundation. The entire continent is our horizon. The architecture is designed from day one to scale across all francophone African nations and, eventually, beyond…very very soon.
Representation at this scale requires more than ambition, it requires method. We operate with a network model: the founding editorial team itself comes from six nationalities : Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, Liberia and Togo and we work with correspondents covering the entire continent. Our first issue features a selection of 23 African women shaping the continent across fashion, culture, entrepreneurship and innovation. That is how you honour the diversity of African women without flattening it: not one voice speaking for all, but a curatorial architecture that elevates many voices to the highest editorial standard.
This is also a magazine entirely conceived, printed and directed from the continent; printed in Côte d’Ivoire on PEFC-certified paper, with Chanel sponsoring our inaugural cover. That combination matters. Editorial sovereignty is not just about content. It is about the entire value chain and it is about demonstrating that African editorial platforms can attract the most prestigious global partners while remaining rooted in the continent.
Regarding ELLE Côte d’Ivoire: ELLE Afrique Francophone is its direct evolution, a succession, not a coexistence. What was built and tested in Côte d’Ivoire over the past years now scales to a continental platform. As for ELLE Egypt, it operates under a separate licence and territory within the Lagardère network. Our mandate is francophone Africa. We are complementary forces within the broader ELLE global ecosystem. There is no merger, there is coexistence and potentially future collaboration on pan-African editorial projects.
Clearly Invincible: It’s incredible how many lives have been saved via the NGO Think Tank Nanan and its alignment with SDG 3, 5 & 8.
Could you expand on how partnerships with ELLE contribute to the Health Dignity Fund and its impact on female entrepreneurship? You can specify how individuals or organisations can get involved, if possible.
Frédérique Nanan: Think Tank Nanan was born from a deeply personal place. I am a breast cancer survivor. I am a heart attack survivor. And I built this NGO because I witnessed firsthand what African women face when a health crisis strikes: silence, financial abandonment, and a system that diagnoses too late.
The numbers speak for themselves. In Africa, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer is 30 percent compared to 90 percent in other regions. 70 percent of women are diagnosed at an advanced stage. Thousands abandon treatment every year not because medicine fails them but because they simply cannot afford to continue. The problem is not only medical. It is economic. A woman who cannot pay for her care is condemned.
That is why Think Tank Nanan is structured unlike any other NGO on the continent. We operate as a quadriptyque, four integrated pillars: the Health Dignity Fund for direct financial intervention, an Observatory producing data and policy recommendations, a Laboratory for social and technological innovation, and an Advocacy platform to influence public policy and international agendas. The action feeds the research, the research informs the advocacy, the advocacy strengthens the action. This is a cycle, not a programme.
The Health Dignity Fund, « FSD » Fonds Santé Dignité is the engine. It works through a rigorous pipeline: identification through hospital partners, evaluation by a medico-social committee, direct payment to healthcare providers, never to intermediaries and psychosocial follow-up. Every single donation is traceable. Every donor knows exactly where their money went. We conduct independent annual audits. This is not charity. This is precision impact.
To date, we have supported over 1,000 women and documented 127 lives saved. Our October Rose 2025 campaign mobilised 460 donors, more than 15 corporate partners, and raised 4.3 million FCFA. 78 percent of women enrolled completed their full care pathway. We hold a two-year renewable convention with the Côte d’Ivoire Ministry for Women, Family and Children, signed on February 7, 2025, and work directly with the CNRAO, the country’s national oncology centre.
But what truly differentiates Nanan and connects us to SDG 3, 5, and 8 simultaneously is that we address the invisible link between environmental pollution and women’s health. Research shows that 80 percent of breast cancers are hormone-dependent, meaning they are sensitive to endocrine disruptors. African women face double exposure: through food processing, untreated water, and waste combustion. Nanan connects the dots that no one else is connecting on the continent: plastic pollution to endocrine disruptors to female cancers. And we turn that crisis into opportunity through women-led circular economy programmes transforming plastic waste into construction materials, textiles into artisanal fashion, organic waste into natural fertiliser. Health, income, environment, and dignity. That is our quadruple dividend.
ELLE Afrique is the amplifier. Think Tank Nanan is the engine. Together, they create a model the continent has not seen before: a premium media platform structurally connected to a social impact organisation, where visibility generates funding, funding generates impact, and impact generates stories worth telling.
The alignment with the SDGs is not performative it is operational. SDG 3 through direct healthcare financing and cancer prevention. SDG 5 through women’s empowerment and gender-sensitive data production. SDG 8 through circular economy livelihoods and entrepreneurship support for survivors rebuilding their economic lives.
For individuals or organisations wanting to get involved: we welcome corporate sponsorships aligned with health and women’s empowerment, direct donations to the Health Dignity Fund with full traceability, and partnerships with hospitals, diagnostic centres, and health-tech platforms across francophone Africa. We are also building the Nanan Observatory, a living data and advocacy platform at nanan.report and we seek partners with expertise in health data, public policy, and impact measurement. Institutions, foundations, and development agencies can reach us directly through Think Tank Nanan or through ELLE Afrique’s partnership team.
Our ambition by 2028: 7 countries, 5,000 women supported, 15 climate-linked health projects, and at least two public policies influenced. Every euro invested is measurable, documented, and durable.
Clearly Invincible: One of the powerful words used in the Release was ‘sovereignty’.
As African media strengthens and reclaims its voice & stories in modern times, what were the deciding factors in choosing the personality, Naomi Campbell, for the cover of the first edition and what narrative in sovereignty does ELLE intend to communicate to its potential audience of 200 million African women?
Frédérique Nanan: Sovereignty is not a slogan for us, it is an editorial doctrine. It means African women defining their own standards of beauty, success, power and desirability. It means the narrative originates here, not as a reaction to Western media, but as an autonomous creative and intellectual act.
And sovereignty, for ELLE Afrique, is material. This is a magazine entirely conceived, printed and directed from the African continent. Printed in Côte d’Ivoire on PEFC-certified paper. Built by a founding team from five African countries. This is not a franchise edited from Paris with local adaptation. This is an African house producing at international standard.
Why Naomi Campbell? Because she is the living embodiment of a sovereignty that was never given, it was taken. For over three decades, Naomi walked into rooms that were not designed for her and made them hers. She challenged an industry that systematically excluded Black women from its highest stages, and she won, not by conforming but by insisting on her own terms. She is deeply connected to Africa, not performatively, but personally and consistently.
Putting Naomi on the cover of our first edition is a statement of lineage. She opened doors. ELLE Afrique walks through them and builds new ones. She represents the bridge between the global and the continental, between legacy and future. She is not our cover because she is famous. She is our cover because her story rhymes with the story we are telling.
And the fact that Chanel chose to sponsor this cover is not incidental. It signals that the global luxury industry recognises what we are building: a platform of consequence, not a market experiment. When a house like Chanel invests in an African editorial project conceived and produced entirely from the continent, it validates a shift that has been long overdue. Sovereignty attracts excellence. That is the point.
But sovereignty does not rest on a single face. Inside this same issue, we present « ELLE LA LISTE » : 24 African women who are shaping the continent in fashion, culture, entrepreneurship, and innovation. The cover is a door. The content is the house. And the house belongs to African women.
The narrative we intend to communicate to the women of francophone Africa and beyond is simple and uncompromising: You are the standard. Not an alternative to it. ELLE Afrique exists to reflect that truth with the editorial excellence, the creative ambition, and the institutional seriousness it deserves.
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