Most marketing problems are product problems wearing a marketing costume. #DPGS2026
A campaign underperforms and everyone looks at the marketing team. Pull the thread, though, and the real cause is usually somewhere upstream: an onboarding flow that loses people on day two, pricing that confuses the exact buyer it was built for, a feature that shipped without anyone asking why users would come back for it. The marketer inherited that problem. They didn’t create it.
This November, ADMARP is hosting Africa’s first cross-functional growth summit, and that one observation is the whole reason it exists.
Great marketing starts at the product
There’s a line we keep coming back to: great marketing doesn’t start at the campaign. It starts at the product.
That sounds obvious until you look at how most teams are actually built. Marketing sits in one function with its own targets. Product sits in another with a different roadmap. Engineering is a third planet. They meet in status updates and blame each other in retros. Growth falls through the cracks between them, because growth was never any single team’s job.
Picture the fintech that pours a healthy budget into ads, watches installs climb, and still can’t figure out why revenue is flat. The marketing dashboard looks fine. The problem is that new users hit a KYC screen on day one that half of them never finish. No campaign fixes that. A conversation between the growth marketer and the product team does. When those two people work three doors apart and only meet in a monthly sync, that conversation happens too late, if at all.
The teams getting this right in Nigeria and across the continent look different. Their marketers understand the product well enough to know which features to lead with. Their PMs think about acquisition and retention, not just shipping. Their founders sit close enough to both to make the calls that matter. It stops feeling like three teams passing work over a wall and starts feeling like one motion.
That’s the room we wanted to build.
What a cross-functional growth summit actually is
On 28 November, we’re bringing marketers, product managers, founders, CEOs and CTOs into one venue in Lagos for a single day. Not a marketing conference with a token product talk bolted on. A summit designed from the start around the people who build, market and scale African products, in the same place at the same time.
The day runs across three spaces:
- Main stage; Leadership and vision. Opening keynotes, a C-suite panel with CEOs, CTOs and CPOs, founder fireside chats, and a closing keynote. The big-picture view of where African growth is headed.
- Room A; Marketing and growth. Performance marketing in 2026, why retention beats acquisition, and how to build a growth engine on a startup budget. Real numbers, real case studies.
- Room B; Product, tech and AI. Product-led growth in African markets, building with AI, and scaling technology for the realities of the continent.
You pick your path. Most people will move between all three, which is exactly the point.
Why now, and why ADMARP
ADMARP has been the home of the digital marketing profession in Nigeria for close to a decade. We started in 2017, ran a 400-person conference that first year, and filled a 1,000-person room in 2018. Today we represent more than 2,000 members across Nigeria and the diaspora.
For years our world was marketing. But the marketers in our community kept telling us the same thing: the work that moved their numbers most wasn’t a clever campaign, it was a product decision they influenced, or one they wished they’d been in the room for. The profession outgrew the silo. This summit is us acting on that.
There’s an awards ceremony too, because recognition has lagged behind the work. Eleven categories cover the full growth function, not just marketing. Nominations are free, self-nominations are welcome, and they open this August. If your work moved a real metric this year, you’ll be able to put your name forward.
Who this is for
If you market, build or lead a product in Africa, this is your room. That includes:
- Digital marketers across brand, performance, content and social
- Product managers, CPOs and product leads
- Founders and early-stage operators
- CEOs, CTOs and CPOs from banks, fintechs, telcos and tech companies
- AI founders, martech practitioners, and data and analytics people
- Creators, agency leads and growth consultants
You don’t need to be an ADMARP member to attend. You don’t need to pay either. it’s totally FREE.
What you’ll leave with
Fewer buzzwords, for one. Every session is built for people who are in the work, not observing it, so the bar is honest specifics over stage polish. You’ll leave with a clearer read on what’s actually driving growth in African markets right now, a handful of tactics you can test on Monday, and, if you use the day well, a few people in product and leadership you’d never normally get in a room with.
The details
The summit is free. It’s hybrid, so the 1,000 physical seats at 157 Gardens Event Centre in Ilupeju are capped, while the full programme airs online for anyone, anywhere, including our diaspora community. Doors open at 9am and we wrap at 5:30pm. You can see the full lineup as it’s announced on the speakers page, or read the complete guide to the summit.
If a room where marketing, product and growth finally sit at the same table sounds useful, register for free before the physical seats run out. They will.
See you on 27th November 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Is the ADMARP Digital Product Growth Summit free? Yes. Attendance is free in person and online. In-person seats are capped at 1,000, so register early to secure a physical spot. Online attendance has no cap.
Where and when is the summit? 157 Gardens Event Centre, Ilupeju, Lagos, on Friday 27 November 2026, from 9:00am to 5:30pm. It also airs live online.
Who should attend? Marketers, product managers, founders, CEOs, CTOs, data professionals, creators and students. You do not need to be an ADMARP member to attend.
When are speakers announced? Speaker announcements begin in August 2026. Registered attendees hear first, and the lineup is published on the speakers page as names confirm.
