“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (The more things change, the more they stay the same…” – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849…
In the evolving discourse on Brand Africa, the familiar adage “the more things change, the more things stay the same” must be interrogated not as fatalism, but as diagnosis. It compels us to ask whether Africa’s transformation is structural or merely symptomatic—whether we are witnessing a renaissance of systems or a rotation of symbols.
Africa today is not the Africa of the post-independence era, nor that of the structural adjustment decades, nor even that of the early democratic wave. The continent is urbanising at unprecedented rates, digitising its economies, producing globally recognised creatives, athletes, scientists, and entrepreneurs, and asserting itself diplomatically through continental platforms and South–South cooperation. Yet, paradoxically, the global perception architecture of Africa often remains anchored in dated tropes: fragility over resilience, crisis over creativity, extraction over innovation.
This dissonance reveals a fundamental branding misalignment:
Africa has changed faster than the narratives used to describe it.
But we must also confront an uncomfortable internal truth: narratives persist externally when they are inconsistently challenged internally. Where governance deficits endure, where intra-African trade remains below potential, where cultural confidence is occasionally subordinated to imported validation models, continuity masquerades as change.
From a Brand Africa perspective, this signals that branding is not a communications exercise—it is a development philosophy.
A credible continental brand cannot be constructed through summits alone; it must be experienced in functioning municipalities, trusted public institutions, competitive industries, and empowered cultural ecosystems. The strength of any nation brand—or continental brand—is the sum of lived micro-experiences. A passport control interaction, a reliable rail system, a thriving jazz festival in Newtown, a digitally enabled township enterprise, a university producing globally relevant research—these are the daily ambassadors of Brand Africa.
In this sense, Africa’s brand is not built in advertising agencies.
It is built in classrooms, clinics, studios, factories, and policy rooms.
The enduring sameness we must resist is therefore not tradition, but inertia.
Africa does not need to abandon its historical identity to modernise. On the contrary, its heritage—its philosophies of Ubuntu, its traditions of trade across the Sahel and the Swahili Coast, its artistic lineages from sculpture to jazz improvisation—offers precisely the authenticity that contemporary global audiences seek. What must change is the translation of that heritage into present-day competitiveness.
Authenticity must become infrastructure.
This is where cultural industries, long treated as peripheral, emerge as central to Brand Africa’s future. Film, literature, design, music, fashion, and digital storytelling are not soft power luxuries; they are narrative economies. They shape how Africa sees itself and how it is seen. A film shot in Johannesburg’s inner city, a Nigerian protagonist navigating inclusive urban realities, or a pan-African jazz collaboration is not merely artistic expression—it is geopolitical storytelling.
For Africa to escape the cycle implied in the aphorism, it must shift from reactive branding to intentional identity engineering:
- From exporting raw materials to exporting meaning.
- From being interpreted to being self-defined.
- From episodic excellence to systemic excellence.
- From perception management to performance legitimacy.
The continent’s next chapter demands not louder messaging, but deeper coherence between what Africa says, what Africa does, and what Africa becomes.
Only then will change cease to echo the past.
In reimagining Brand Africa, we are called to move beyond the comfort of symbolic progress into the discipline of sustained transformation. The task is generational: to align policy with possibility, heritage with innovation, and imagination with execution.
If we succeed, the old adage will lose its relevance.
Because when Africa’s transformation is anchored in authenticity, agency, and accountability, change will no longer resemble repetition—it will read unmistakably as arrival.
Tujenge Afrika Pamoja! Let’s Build Africa Together!
Enjoy your weekend.
Saul Molobi (FCIM)
PUBLISHER: JAMBO AFRICA ONLINE
and
Group Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
Brandhill Africa™
Tel: +27 11 759 4297
Mobile: +27 83 635 7773
Physical Address: 1st Floor, Cradock Square Offices; 169 Oxford Road; Rosebank; JOHANNESBURG; 2196.
eMail: saul.molobi@brandhillafrica.com
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