A.M.C. CONFERENCE 2025

Continent needs a mindset change to maximise its potential, marketers told

By our African Marketing Confederation News Team | 2025

We are too blinkered in our thinking and too locally focused with our strategies, prominent academic and business leader says.

For Africa to grow and succeed it must create a single continent-wide brand, suppress national and regional egos, and grow trust between its 54 nations. 

 

This was the impactful ‘Made in Africa’ theme delivered by Professor Douglas Boateng – internationally recognised chartered director, strategist, social entrepreneur and researcher – when he addressed delegates at the recent 2025 AMC Conference held in Accra, Ghana. 

 

His message emphasised the need for one unified African brand that can be presented to the world instead of numerous and often-competing national brands, a willingness by African countries to support each other’s economies and increase intra-African trade, and a commitment to the free movement of goods and people between African nations. Most of all, there’s an urgent need to change our mindset around what Africa can achieve.

 

Myopic in terms of our thinking 

 

“We have become so myopic in terms of our thinking that we would rather look at a market of 70-million people [in South Africa] and a market of 35-million people [in Ghana] than an Africa-wide market of 1.4-billion people.  

 

Professor douglas boateng addresses conference delegates

Professor Douglas Boateng addresses conference delegates. Photo: AMC

“Our marketing strategies are too locally focused. It doesn’t work [for the continent] … and it will never work unless we change our mindset,” Professor Boateng said. 

 

“There is so much in Africa. Our greatest borders are not geographical; they are psychological. We shout ‘unity’ at the African Union; we seek integration at continental summits; and yet when a truck leaves Lagos for Accra, it faces more suspicion than a container from Berlin because we do not trust each other.  

 

“Africans prefer ‘Made in Germany’, ‘Made in France’, ‘Made in the United Kingdom’ and are very suspicious of ‘Made in Nigeria’, ‘Made in Kenya’, Made in Tanzania’. And, worryingly for me, ‘Made in South Africa’. I am worried, because I see South Africa as a California within Africa. 

 

“We need to market our own, supported by [our own] supply chain strategy,” he said. “But because of our insular thinking we don’t. We always look to a UK, a USA or a Germany.” 

 

Professor Boateng called for the marketing profession, though the AMC, to help change this narrative. The soon-to-be founded African supply chain confederation can also contribute by ensuring the products are delivered at the right time, at the right quality, and are fit for purpose. 

 

At the moment, he warned, creating an effective pan-African supply chain is being hindered by borders and onerous customs requirements.  

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