Unilever's senior executive highlights Africa's potential, urges overcoming misconceptions

Douglas Brew, Unilever's Africa Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs, has highlighted the need for Africa to break free from the perception that the continent is somehow "second to the rest of the world".

Acknowledging that there are global challenges, the Unilever official mentioned that Africa’s key challenge is the conventional narrative of a continent failing to stay up with the rest of the world.

Brew made these comments in an interaction with the media in Accra, Tuesday, when asked what he thinks is Africa’s challenge, as he called for a change in the narrative stressing that it is imperative Africa recognized the enormous potential that its youthful and energetic populace possesses.

“The whole world is facing challenges; not just Africa,” said Brew. “Many of the challenges you’re facing here in terms of price inflation, climate change; other challenges are driven from outside Africa and are common across many parts of the world.”

“If it’s a key challenge for Africa, it’s overcoming any perception that Africa is second to the rest of the world in any way because there is nothing you can’t do with the young, energetic population.”

Touching on the progress of Unilever on the continent, Brew expressed delight over the growth of the company while trumpeting their resolve to satisfy the consumer with a favorable pricing strategy.

“We’ve seen a steady performance in growth across Unilever Africa driven by our ability to tap into the selling of our products to the mainstream consumer at prices they can afford,” said Brew. “The core of our strategy is to get closer to the consumer and service their needs.”

“…We’re traditionally stronger in Ghana than Côte d'Ivoire because of our history here; we’ve been in Ghana for a very long time, it’s a stable country, it’s growing and we’ve got a solid consumer base here. It’s obviously not as large as Nigeria but that’s simply due to population size,” he added.