The Lagos-founded company’s latest recognition brings its total acknowledgements by PRovoke Media to 26, spanning SABRE Awards, certificates of excellence, nominations and best agency designations across the last five years.
Global Media and Integrated Communications Services Company, BlackHouse Media (BHM), has been named one of the 11 Best Agencies in Africa for 2026 by PRovoke Media, the authoritative global publication covering the public relations industry. The recognition marks BHM’s fourth appearance on this prestigious annual list, having previously been named in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and cements its status as the only Nigerian consultancy to have achieved this distinction more than once. Only one other Nigerian firm has ever appeared on the list.
PRovoke’s Best Agencies list is compiled by its editorial team following written submissions. Agencies are assessed across five criteria: financial performance and growth, creativity and campaign excellence, people and workplace culture, thought leadership, and innovation. In announcing the 2026 selections, Paul Holmes, Founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of PRovoke Media, described the listed firms as those with “exceptional capabilities” that have demonstrated “sustained excellence,” adding that the lists are “designed to recognise firms that have demonstrated sustained excellence” and are “even more comprehensive” this year given expanded global participation.
Two of the 11 African agencies named to the list will be selected as Africa’s Agencies of the Year and recognised at the PRovoke EMEA SABRE Awards dinner, to be held at The Brewery in London on 21 May 2026.
The 2026 recognition brings BHM’s total acknowledgements from PRovoke to 26, when accounting for SABRE Awards wins, nominations and certificates of excellence received across the last five years. It is a body of recognition that reflects the company’s consistent performance and is unparalleled among Nigerian communications firms.
“This recognition is a testament to the extraordinary people at BHM, the teams who show up every day and do work that is genuinely excellent,” said Ayeni Adekunle, Founder and CEO of BHM. “Four appearances on this list, 26 PRovoke recognitions in total, none of it happens without our clients who trust us with work that matters, our partners who walk alongside us, and the many friends of BHM who have cheered us on across the years. We are grateful to PRovoke for continuing to see what we are building here, and we remain committed to raising the standard of communications practice in Nigeria, across Africa, and beyond.”
BHM’s back-to-back appearances on the Best Agencies list from 2021 to 2023 established it as the only Nigerian company to achieve consecutive recognitions. The 2026 listing, following a brief absence, underscores the company’s enduring standing in a competitive field that this year includes some of the continent’s most prominent and fastest-growing communications firms.
Founded in 2006, BHM Holdings is the parent company of BlackHouse Media, ID Africa, and Plaqad, an AI-powered communications technology platform. The group operates across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and recently entered a strategic partnership with Redhill, one of Asia’s largest independent communications agencies, to create an integrated Asia-Africa communications corridor spanning more than 20 markets.
In profiling BHM for the 2026 selection, PRovoke described the consultancy as one of Africa’s first truly global PR firms, noting its evolution from a local Lagos boutique into an international consultancy with offices spanning Accra, Dar es Salaam, Edinburgh, Lagos, London, and Nairobi. The profile highlighted BHM’s borderless approach to communications, combining African market expertise with international scale, as the model underpinning its sustained financial performance. PRovoke cited more than 400% revenue growth over the past decade, with recent revenues exceeding £9 million and a compound annual growth rate of nearly 30%.
PRovoke’s profile also drew attention to the scale and social impact of BHM’s campaign work. It cited the company’s leadership of MTN’s Anti-Substance Abuse Programme, which has reached more than 110 million Nigerians and directly engaged two million students, its central role in the SootCity campaign addressing environmental pollution in Port Harcourt, which earned Nigeria’s first Cannes Lions win, and its delivery of Heineken’s 150th anniversary campaign: a year-long pan-African programme spanning nine markets and reaching more than 230 million people.
On innovation and thought leadership, PRovoke noted BHM’s creation of World PR Day, now celebrated in more than 65 countries, and its ongoing investment in technology, including the development of a proprietary large language model, the Qomms platform, and an AI Ethics Readiness Framework rooted in African philosophical principles. The profile described these initiatives as positioning BHM at the forefront of how communications agencies are adapting to AI and data transformation, supported by a global team of more than 100 consultants.