Despite growing up privileged and attaining success as a black woman in both the corporate and entrepreneurial spaces, Eyitemi Popo is no stranger to the unique challenges black women face.
“I think it’s hard to exist as a woman, and as a black woman especially in this world. It’s been a difficult road to get where I want to go. It’s like with all the degrees and despite being told you’re overqualified, you are still undervalued, underpaid and micromanaged,” she says, describing some of the frustrations she’s encountered.
While she attests that these encounters can have a negative effect on one’s mental health, she attributes her ability to remain sane to her entrepreneurial endeavors, which she has run alongside her full-time job in the past ten years. “I thank God for entrepreneurship because if I didn’t have that, I would literally think I was crazy in this world.
“I would think maybe I’m overconfident or maybe I overthink things. Because when I get into the entrepreneurship space, and it’s time for me to make my own way, I do exceptionally well. But in corporate, there’s always this ceiling…”
Having attended an all-girls high school and historically women’s university, may have influenced her zeroing in on young African girls, who don’t have a fraction of the opportunities she has had, and whose wings struggle to take flight against different societal forces. “It started with wanting to instill confidence in them, to listen to them, and to understand what they were going through; and to surround them with women who had been there and done that.”
Eyitemi with some of the girls at the Girls MAP scholarship program launch (Kenya 2019)
Describing herself as “a naturally helpful person” and a “connector,” she’s been able to bring together the right kind of women to achieve the social impact she envisions through Girls Trip Tours by Iranti.
The idea of Girls Trip Tours came to life sometime in 2018 when she wanted to explore more of the African continent, after realizing she had been to far more European countries than African countries. At the time, she was also running a lifestyle publication, Ayiba, which sought to connect Africans in the Diaspora to the continent. She reasoned that her trips to the continent would be a practical way to achieve such a connection.
A private tour of Cape Coast Castle (Ghana 2018)
She set her sights on Accra, Ghana, and put up a website about her trip to see if anyone would be interested in joining her—four women showed up. “That first year, we had women who were working at organizations like Google, Linkedin, Ebay, and Ford Foundation.” She also had a friend who was running a coding academy in Ghana, called the Soronko Academy which helps to equip young women and girls, especially, with the technical and soft skills they need to attain dignified, fulfilling jobs and overcome the gender gap in technology. This served as the social impact focus of their trip.
Since then, Eyitemi, through Girls Trip Tours, has organized trips to Nairobi, Johannesburg, Victoria Falls, Livingstone, Kasane, and Cape Town, and is looking to curate more trips to other African cities.
Tour of Lamu Old Town (Kenya 2019)
Drawing from her experience building communities, she’s been able to create an efficient ecosystem, called the Iranti Ecosystem, which delivers significant value to all its clusters. In one cluster, there’s the experience of luxury travel that connects women from all walks of life with African culture, history, and people.
Impromptu dance session at the Zimbabwe Border (Zambia 2023)
These women are able to amplify their impact on African societies by collaborating with local organizations to provide learning opportunities for young girls in the visited communities, helping them to develop critical skills especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects.
“The impact that I see is being able to, through travel, fund girls’ education across the continent in ways that are scalable,” shares Eyitemi.
These girls are part of another cluster in the Iranti Ecosystem, called Girls MAP Foundation Inc., which now boasts of over 150 members.
Girls MAP program launch (South Africa 2019)
Initially, it started out with Eyitemi organizing boot camps for the girls, where they learnt skills from the women she was traveling with. So far, the structure of the ecosystem has evolved, whereby they have partnerships with local organizations like Junior Achievement Africa in South Africa, GirlCode S.A; AkiraChix, Kenya, which is a coding academy, and Soronko academy in Ghana.
Workshop at AkiraChix (Kenya 2019)
Giraffe Center, Kenya with Girls MAP students (Kenya 2019)
Then, there’s the ecosystem of local black women-led businesses in the tourism space. “When I find black women working in the space, my goal is to funnel all the money their way so that they get a cut of the bookings that I make.”
This is how the Iranti Ecosystem serves as a solution to validate a gender-based scalable approach to shift the power in the African tourism industry. This was further confirmed when Girls Trips Tours was published as a case study in the United Nations World Tourism Organization Academy Course.
There is a personal joy she derives from watching the wheels of the ecosystem in motion. On one hand, there’s the experience of the women who come on the trip. “Whether they’re African-American, whether they’re second generation, Africa feels like home. And it’s something that you feel as soon as you land. I always find it beautiful, how they can have an immediate connection with a place they’ve never been to, and how familiar it feels.”
On the other hand, is her interaction with the girls. “One of the things I found across countries is sexual assault, and it is so rampant in that demographic (we deal with girls between the ages of 12 and 21. The number of girls that come to me in that session and tell me about sexual trauma is crazy, and it wasn’t something I was prepared for. So I have really tried to learn how to respond better, and as tough as those conversations are, I also feel truly honored that some of these girls have never told a soul and yet they feel okay to tell me.”
Investing in the future of ambitious young girls (Zambia 2023)
Eyitemi’s energy and devotion towards social impact come from having her grandmother, a foremost educationist and first deputy permanent delegate of Nigeria to UNESCO in Paris, as her inspiration and role model. “I have had so many random people come to me to ask if I am Teresa Chukuma’s granddaughter. I’ve had grown women literally carry me up and say ‘Wow! That’s my favorite teacher!’ She is the ultimate servant leader and I have seen the impact she has made.”
As Girls Trips Tours grows, Eyitemi continues to run with her grandma’s legacy, unleashing the untapped potential that lies in the hearts and minds of African women.
Want to join the Girls Trips Tours movement, check out the 2024 Girls Trip Tours calendar here.
