Overview
CNBC Africa is Africa’s most powerful multi-platform business media brand, reaching audiences in over 100 countries. Awsm delivered a frontend design update and redevelopment on a headless WordPress architecture — Next.js handling the reader-facing experience while WordPress remained the editorial team’s familiar publishing environment. The result is a faster, more modern news portal that scales to CNBC Africa’s global traffic without disrupting the workflows of their content team.
Client
CNBC Africa (Africa Business News)
Industry
Financial News • Media
Geography
100+ countries • Pan Africa
Our Role
Tech
The client
CNBC Africa is Africa’s most powerful multi-platform business media brand — part of the global CNBC family and the only African member of the CNBC international network. Headquartered in Johannesburg and reaching audiences in over 100 countries, CNBC Africa provides real-time coverage of financial markets, international business news, and economic analysis to business leaders, investors, and the financial services industry across Africa.
The challenge
A media platform of CNBC Africa’s scale requires a technical architecture that can handle high traffic, deliver content fast, and present a modern, professional editorial experience. The existing platform needed a frontend update that would modernise the design and improve performance — while working within the existing editorial and publishing workflows built on WordPress.
What we build
Frontend Design Update
A complete frontend redesign of cnbcafrica.com — modernising the visual identity, improving readability, and creating a cleaner, more professional editorial layout suited to the seriousness and speed of financial news.
Headless WordPress Architecture
The platform uses a headless WordPress approach:
- WordPress handles all content management, editorial workflows, and publishing — the tools CNBC Africa’s team already know and use
- A Next.js frontend serves the reader-facing experience — fast, server-rendered, and decoupled from the CMS layer
This architecture delivers significant performance advantages: Next.js pages are server-rendered and served quickly, while WordPress remains the familiar backend for editorial teams.
Why headless wordpress
For a high-traffic media brand like CNBC Africa, a traditional WordPress frontend creates a performance ceiling. The headless approach — WordPress as CMS, Next.js as frontend — removes that ceiling while preserving the editorial workflow. Content editors work in WordPress exactly as before; readers experience a significantly faster, more responsive site.
Results
- Modern frontend design aligned with CNBC Africa’s positioning as Africa’s leading business media platform
- Headless architecture delivering performance at scale for a 100+ country audience
- Editorial team workflow unchanged — full continuity of publishing operations
