APO Group (www.APO-opa.com), the communications consultancy built for performance across Africa, has announced the appointment of Fadi El Abdallah, former International Criminal Court Spokesperson and Head of Public Affairs as Chief Strategic Advisor, Reputation and Crisis Communications, and the launch of APO Group’s new Strategic Reputation & Crisis Communications division.
It helps multinational corporations, financial institutions, African governments and sovereign entities, pan-African corporates, and organisations across the continent’s fastest-growing sectors prepare for, manage, and recover from high-stakes reputational crises. Its services span crisis rapid response, executive counsel, crisis readiness, reputation recovery, and continuous crisis intelligence.
As the official Spokesperson and Head of Public Affairs of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for 15 years, El Abdallah, operated at the centre of some of the most complex and high-profile institutional crises of the past two decades, managing media pressure, countering coordinated disinformation campaigns, advising senior leadership under extreme public scrutiny, and coordinating crisis response across multiple stakeholders and jurisdictions.
On the appointment, Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard (www.Pompigne-Mognard.com), Founder and Chairman of APO Group, said: “Reputation and crisis communications are among the most under-served disciplines in Africa, yet also among the most critical.
“For 15 years, Fadi managed institutional reputation during coordinated disinformation campaigns, sanctions crises, and war crimes trials, before a global audience and under permanent legal constraint. There is no comparable practitioner on the continent, and we are proud to welcome him to APO Group to lead this division.”
Bas Wijne, CEO of APO Group, added: “What makes this division different is that we do not only advise, we execute. A strategy that sits on paper is worthless when a narrative is moving across 12 markets in three languages overnight. Fadi brings the strategic framework, and APO Group brings the infrastructure to deploy it across all 54 African markets in real time. That combination does not exist anywhere else in Africa.”
On his appointment as Chief Strategic Advisor, Reputation and Crisis Communications, Fadi El Abdallah said: “Reputation and crisis communications in Africa are at an inflection point. Governments and organisations are facing reputational threats that are faster, more complex and more consequential than ever before, driven by digital media, political pressure and an increasingly discerning global audience.
“What has been missing is a firm with both the strategic depth to advise at the highest level on reputation and crisis, and the infrastructure to deliver at scale. That is exactly what APO Group offers, and it is why I am here.”
APO Group operates two integrated business units that together make it unique on the African continent, celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2027 and trusted by 300+ organisations including Emirates, Canon, Nestlé, the NFL, DHL, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), and Afreximbank.
The first is Africa’s largest press release and content distribution service, the Africa Newsroom newswire, reaching 450,000+ journalists and news organisations across all 54 African markets in English, French, Arabic, and Portuguese.
Through partnerships with Bloomberg Terminal, Thomson Reuters Eikon, LexisNexis, and Dow Jones Factiva, APO Group’s distribution extends directly into the international financial and investor community, guaranteeing visibility with the analysts, fund managers, and financial decision-makers who shape investment flows into Africa.
The second is a full-service strategic communications consultancy managing complete communications strategy and delivery for some of the leading organisations active in Africa: building strategies from the ground up; creating all content formats through a dedicated in-house content department (press releases, opinion pieces, digital assets for social media, white papers, research reports, executive speeches, and multimedia content); organising press conferences, interviews, and international online press conferences; managing influencer programmes; and securing editorial coverage across the continent and in leading international media including the Financial Times, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, TV5 Monde, Bloomberg, Reuters, and AFP.
APO Group has communications professionals on the ground across Africa, a pan-African workforce that no global advisory firm can match in breadth, depth, or local knowledge.
When an organisation needs to move a narrative at speed, APO Group mobilises both business units simultaneously. No other advisory firm on the continent can make this claim.
Ifeoma Okeke-Korieocha is the Aviation Correspondent at BusinessDay Media Limited, publishers of BusinessDay Newspapers. She is also the Deputy Editor, BusinessDay Weekender Magazine, the Saturday Weekend edition of BusinessDay. She holds a BSC in Mass Communication from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Masters degree in Marketing at the University of Lagos. As the lead writer on the aviation desk, Ifeoma is responsible and in charge of the three weekly aviation and travel pages in BusinessDay and BDSunday. She also overseas and edits all pages of BusinessDay Saturday Weekender. She has written various investigative, features and news stories in aviation and business related issues and has been severally nominated for award in the category of Aviation Writer of the Year by the Nigeria Media Nite-Out awards; one of the Nigeria’s most prestigious media awards ceremonies. Ifeoma is a one-time winner of the prestigious Nigeria Media Merit Award under the 'Aviation Writer of the Year' Category. She is the 2025 Eloy Award winner under the Print Media Journalist category. She has undergone several journalism trainings by various prestigious organisations. Ifeoma is also a fellow of the Female Reporters Leadership Fellowship of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.
