Overview
Forbes Africa came to Awsm for a full redesign and rebuild of forbesafrica.com — the pan-African franchise of one of the world’s most recognised business media brands. The challenge was as much engineering as design: a large legacy content archive, slow load speeds, and inconsistent layouts needed to be resolved without disrupting the editorial team’s workflow. The result was nearly 3× faster load speeds, 200+ articles lazy-loaded on the homepage with zero lag, and a design fully aligned with Forbes International’s global standards.
Client
Forbes Africa
Industry
Media • Publishing
Geography
Pan Africa
Our Role
Tech
The Client
Forbes Africa is the pan-African franchise of the Forbes global media brand — one of the world’s most recognised business and entrepreneurship publications. Focused on business, investing, technology, leadership, and lifestyle across Africa, Forbes Africa reaches a significant pan-continental audience and carries the weight of the Forbes brand identity.
The Challenge
The Forbes Africa website faced a performance crisis. A large and growing archive of articles — including legacy content with inconsistent formatting, old image paths, and varied social media embed structures — was slowing the site significantly. The homepage needed to surface hundreds of articles without lag. The design needed to align with Forbes International’s global standards while serving a diverse African readership. And all of this needed to be achieved without disrupting the existing content workflow.
The stakes were high. For a media brand, page speed is directly tied to advertising revenue, SEO ranking, and reader retention.
What we built
Full Redesign & Rebuild
A complete redesign and redevelopment of forbesafrica.com on WordPress — matching Forbes International’s design language while adapting for Forbes Africa’s specific audience and content mix.
Performance Engineering
The headline outcome: nearly 3× faster load speeds. Achieved through:
- Tailwind CSS as the frontend framework — a utility-first approach that produced lean, performant CSS
- Lazy loading implemented across the homepage — 200+ articles load on demand with zero perceptible lag
- Image optimisation, caching strategy, and CDN configuration
- Efficient database queries and server-side rendering
Legacy Content Normalisation
One of the most complex challenges of the project: ensuring every piece of legacy content rendered correctly on the new site. This involved:
- Remapping old image paths
- Normalising social media embeds (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube)
- Adjusting video embed behaviour across thousands of legacy articles
- Applying a consistent layout to all articles regardless of when they were published
Design Alignment with Forbes International
The redesign closely matched the Forbes International design language — typography, layout, colour, and component patterns — giving Forbes Africa the visual consistency expected of a global franchise while maintaining its distinct pan-African identity.
Technology
Results
- ~3× improvement in page load speed
- 200+ articles lazy-loaded on the homepage with no time lag
- Uniform layout across all legacy and new content
- Design consistent with Forbes International standards
