For journalists · documentary producers · photographers · authors

For press — fixer, accreditation, expert access on the West African coast

When the story is in the room and the room takes years to enter.

Heritage and Routes operates as press fixer and access producer for journalists, documentary producers, photographers, and authors working on the Vodun world, the trans-Atlantic slave trade memorial sites, West African mask traditions, panafricanism, and the contemporary politics of culture in Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria. We are based in Cotonou. Our founder Fèmi is academically trained and available as expert source.

What we provide

Access, accreditation, context

Press work on this coast lives or dies on three things: the relationship that opens the door, the accreditation that keeps you inside, and the context that lets you understand what you are seeing. Western reporting on West African religious traditions has a long history of misreading them as folklore, exoticism, or sensationalism. We exist, in part, because the story is better than that and the reporting can be too — when the access is real and the context is given.

We work with serious press: investigative, long-form, documentary, scholarly. We do not work with framing that treats the Vodun as voodoo-spectacle, the mask traditions as primitive curiosities, or the slave trade memorials as dark tourism. If your editorial direction needs that framing, we cannot help you. If it needs the opposite, we can probably open more doors than you expected.

Services

What press work looks like with us

Editorial discipline

What we ask of you in return

Honour the protocols we negotiate. When the FENAVOB releases a press list to attend the Great Ceremony, it does so based on the journalists we have vouched for. Reckless filming, breach of the photography rules at restricted moments, or coverage that ends up framing the practice as superstition all impact future access for everyone we work with.

Pay your fixers and your scholars properly. West African scholars are often paid a fraction of what foreign expert sources receive for the same expertise. We will not facilitate exploitative rates. Our pricing structure for scholar honoraria is published in the partnership packet.

Send us the final piece. Not for editorial control — we do not have that — but for our archive and so that the scholars and chieftaincies who opened their doors can see what came of it. This is a small ask that most foreign press fail to do, and it matters here.

Pricing

How we charge

Day rate fixer services, project-rate documentary production assistance, hourly rate expert source consultations. We share a written rate sheet at first contact. Pricing is on the lower end of comparable Lagos and Accra press fixers (we are not running a press business; press work is a complement to our cultural tourism operation), but firm.

Documentary productions with significant budgets are charged at project rate with milestone payments. Smaller editorial assignments at day rate with a minimum two-day engagement.

Tell us about the project.

First contact, NDA on request, no obligation. We respond within 48 hours.