Brand SA pushes for improved african brand

Linda Magapatona-Sangaret, Chief Marketing Officer for Brand South Africa, has called for renewed conscious efforts on the part of African governments to improve their countries’ brands to help project the continent as the preferred destination for investors in the Diaspora.

Speaking to the media recently in Accra, Mrs Magapatona-Sangaret, who was flanked by Ms Sindiswa Mququ, General Manager for Africa & Middle East, Brand SA, said such efforts would present Africa as a well-branded continent ready to do serious business with the outside world.

She also called for collaboration among countries on the continent, saying that would unify them and afford them opportunity to learn best practices from each other and position themselves to promote a vibrant Africa brand.

Noting that South Africa was seriously engaged in branding itself, she stressed: “If we have nation brands all over the continent, those nation brands together are the ones that will project the image of Africa as a whole.

We, of South Africa, cannot do it alone and we do not intend to. We also believe that the stronger and more prominent other African nations’ brands are, the bigger Brand Africa itself is going to be.”

“When we go to Europe or the USA, it’s more about promotion, but when we come to Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria or any other African country, it is about let us sit down and see what we can do together to take this continent forward and to represent it in a better light, take hold of our destiny and project the image that we want people to have of Africa and not allow others to define us.”

Brand South Africa has three offices in the UK, New York and China.

Ms Sindiswa Mququ, in a remark, said Africa was making progress and it was important that such rich stories were told to the rest of the world.

According to her, the collaboration with Brand Ghana was very key, as it would help in the sharing of ideas and programmes between the two countries and ensure sustained mutual benefit.

South Africa’s branding efforts helped it to attract R64.3-billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) between 1 April and 31 December 2015, the first three quarters of the financial year – surpassing its target of R45-billion by almost R20-billion.