About
Stories that move through place, memory, and systems.
I'm Fu'ad Lawal, a writer, storyteller, and builder whose work moves between reporting, editorial systems, archives, travel, and the web.
I publish through Vistanium, my creative company, and I tend to be drawn to the kinds of stories that reveal how people live, how institutions remember, and how culture gets carried forward.
I've built and shaped projects like Naira Life, a money column about how Nigerians earn, spend, save, and survive; Jollof Road, an 80-day journey across mainland West Africa; and Pulse 36, an 80-day trip across all 36 states in Nigeria.
I've also worked on projects with a stronger civic and archival pulse, from Haemo, a blood-donor coordination effort, to The Archivi.ng Fellowship, which commissions people each year to enter the archives and produce new original work.
This site is where those threads meet: writing that lives across the web, and projects that deserve deeper case studies of their own.
Body of Work
The homepage is the short front door. This page goes deeper into the work, writing, and conversations behind it.
A running record of the publications, companies, and institutions I have spent time helping shape.
- TechCabal Editor in Chief 2025-2026
- Big Cabal Editorial Director 2024-2025
- Archivi.ng Chief Archivist 2021-
- Eden Life Growth Lead 2021-2023
- Risevest Content Strategy 2021
- Vistanium Writer 2020-
- Zikoko (Big Cabal Media) Content Strategy, EIC, Head of Content 2018-2020
- Party Jollof (RED) Writer 2016
- Pulse Different roles, from reporting to strategy 2015-2018
Essays, features, and notes published through Vistanium and other platforms, with this site acting as the map back to them.
- Small businesses spent years optimising for Google. ChatGPT turned that into sales A single ChatGPT sale shows how AI search is reshaping customer discovery for small businesses.
- Next Wave: Insiders covering insiders What happens when startup reporters cover friends, sources, and the people funding them.
- Mapping my AI brain A field note on how I think, write, and organise my days with AI.
- Make It Magical On building moments of wonder that interrupt habit and make people pay attention.
- Maker Complex Trying to name the maker’s itch before it hardens into identity, ambition, or output.
- Superman Day Using Superman to think about heroism, inheritance, longing, and the stories we inherit.
- Osmosis A meditation on influence and how other people’s worlds quietly seep into yours.
- Vistanium, 2024 A manifesto for the year ahead, shaped by ambition, focus, and creative direction.
- A Paystack Friendship A company portrait told through work, closeness, and the emotional architecture of loyalty.
- A Knight's Endgame An ending about power, ruin, and the final moves people make under pressure.
- Today, I'm Throwing Myself Into The Ring A declaration of intent about choosing risk, visibility, and the work ahead.
- We're Making Sun And Country Why we are building a living guide to the Nigerian Civil War.
A preview lane for talks, podcasts, and recorded conversations while the fuller public archive takes shape.
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Talks archive in progress This lane is reserved for podcast appearances, public talks, and recorded conversations as that library is assembled.Soon
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Longer talks page to follow For now, this tab works as a preview while the dedicated talks page grows into a fuller archive with links and notes.Planned