One of the
most cherished parts of a career with an international news channel is the time
spent travelling. While visits to different countries are often frustratingly
short, after a while you get an acute sense of how a place is developing.
As the years go by and one revisits such
destinations again, certain changes catch your eye, and you find yourself
mentally tallying the signs that a country has advanced. Advancements such as a sleek new airport
terminal or a pedestrian walkway where the unmade road use to be, the steady
electricity power during a stay at a hotel and the new store at a junction
where once a fruit stall stood. Also
noted are the numbers of tablets being used in meetings and the appearance of
the latest smartphones in people’s hands.
But keeping
tabs on these signs doesn’t always need a multiple visa entry stamp in your
passport. When it comes to Africa, one of the most striking changes observed
after a decade of working in the continent is in its advertising. Some of the
smartest brands and the most eye-catching commercials on air are African, and
they are vigorously making names for themselves beyond Africa.
The context
to this change is important. In a world
still full of uncertainty following the global financial crunch, Africa stands
out as a symbol of relatively unencumbered economic progress. While much of
Europe struggles under the weight of austerity measures, America eyes a slow
recovery with caution, and Asia sees its meteoric growth cool, the African continent’s
prospects continue to look bright.
African
countries are among the fastest growing economies in the world, matching their
counterparts in Asia. Of course,
everybody talks about the continent having one of the world’s fastest-growing
consumer classes as well as the increasing foreign investment from Europe and
Asia. But recently, it is the reports
that intra-African investment is rising by more than 30% per year that have
added to this picture of growth.
Another
noticeable fact about Africa is their greater focus on quality – an appetite
for superior products and services and from businesses looking to provide
them. At an industrial level, examples
of this search for quality are also emerging on the continent, with prominent
companies that have built their success on identifying Africa’s growing need
for quality materials, and delivering them, coming to the fore.
The next big
question must surely be when an African brand will go head to head with the
major players in the rest of the world.
African brands are conspicuous by their minimal presence in Millward
Brown’s BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands; but the signs are that, the
African business landscape is ripe for this to change. The African financial and communications
sectors, for example, are establishing themselves as formidable players.
For
instance, brands such as MTN who was named as the most valued brand in Africa, in
the Brand Africa 100 awards not too long ago, is already knocking on the door
of the global arena, while Globacom’s current ad campaign focuses on the kind
of mobile services that typify the ways in which Africa is ahead, of many other
markets in communications technology.
Whereas, the likes of Zenith Bank, a long-term sponsor of one of CNN’s
flagship African programmes is part of a financial sector that, given the
travails of so many American and European players is meeting up to its
international rivals.
Indeed, looking
to Europe there are other prime examples of the ways in which a new kind of
relationship is emerging between Africa and other continents. Portugal’s parlous financial state saw Angola
step in as a potential saviour last year; a surprise to Europeans perhaps, but
with Portugal’s economy contracting at -3.2%, while its former colony grows at
6.8%, it should not have come as a shock.
Meanwhile the on-going aftermath of Greek austerity has seen a new wave
of migrant workers seeking jobs in South Africa.
Africa is,
of course, not without its problems and challenges, but its place in the global
economy has been changing for a long time and there is a sense that we are
reaching a tipping point. With the rest
of the world still going through uncertainty, now, more than ever, is the time
for the continent’s major players to rise to the top. If African brands’ products, ingenuity and
advertising are anything to go by, we may not have to wait too much longer.
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*Contributed by Celine DeCarlo, CNN International, her pix insert.
