My reflections from the 2026 Africa Global PR Week in Nairobi<\/b><\/p>\n
On 28 August 2026, I joined EYITEMI ADEBOWALE, ANIPR<\/b><\/a>, Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Sunbeth Global Concepts<\/b><\/a>; Lekha Seebaluck<\/b><\/a>, Managing Director at Blast Burson<\/b><\/a>; and Guntram Kaiser<\/b><\/a>, Managing Partner at KaiserCommunication GmbH<\/b><\/a>, on a panel at #AfricaGlobalPRWeek titled Global Alliances: Positioning Africa as the Investment Destination of Choice Through Strategic Communication.<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n My provocation to that room, and to every communicator and C-suite still budgeting for perception over performance, rests on my mantra, which I return to often: PR is what you do, not what you say.<\/p>\n Africa does not have an awareness deficit; investors already know what this continent holds. What we have is a confidence-conversion problem \u2013 the gap between a market that gets noticed and one that gets reinvested in. A market becomes the investment destination of choice when its institutions behave in ways that make the story true, and when someone measures it and presents it to the people who allocate capital.<\/p>\n Three reflections I keep returning to.<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Positioning without performance produces exposure, not confidence<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Roadshows and glossy campaigns can never compensate for unpredictable regulation or commitments that shift with political cycles, as mines, ports and telecoms networks run for decades, whereas political mandates last four or five years.<\/p>\n When a licence or tariff framework remains credible only while one president holds office, that is political dependence, not institutional confidence \u2013 a problem no campaign can fix.<\/p>\n A nation brand is simply the international read-out of a country’s domestic performance, which is why, within five years, the African countries attracting the most Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will not be those running the best campaigns, but those whose official communications and key data sources, such as the World Bank Business Ready or even the Allianz Risk Barometer, finally stop contradicting each other.<\/p>\n Every contradiction is a tax investors quietly charge because capital prices risk with confidence, but not contradiction.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The unrealised SAA\u2013Ethiopian Airlines partnership was a missed reputational opportunity<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n In 2020, Ethiopian Airlines was in talks to support SAA’s recovery by providing aircraft, pilots and expertise, while reasonably declining to absorb SAA’s legacy debt. The talks stalled, and South Africa instead selected the Takatso Consortium, a deal that collapsed in 2024.<\/p>\n I am not arguing that any deal should have been accepted on any terms. The possibility on the table was always bigger and stronger than an airline transaction \u2013 a meaningful alliance.<\/p>\n Two of Africa’s most recognisable flag carriers, already linked by codeshare, choosing to invest in each other would have been evidence, not another promise, that African institutions believe in African capability enough to back it with African capital first.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What I did not have time to say in Nairobi<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Once awareness stops being the constraint, communication’s task shifts to amplifying African narrative shapers already doing that work more credibly than any campaign could: thinkers like Victor Kgomoeswana<\/b><\/a>, whose Africa is Open for Business<\/i> surfaces what conventional coverage overlooks, and Phuthuma Nhleko, former Executive Chairman of the MTN Group whose The Invisible People<\/i> asks whether this continent can build the confident identity that one in four people on Earth being African will demand of it. One makes the opportunity visible, the other makes the future imaginable, and only our institutions’ behaviour can make both true.<\/p>\n What does this mean for Strategic Communicators?<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n None of this waits for the next summit. It starts with an audit, not a campaign: does what your institution says match what it does?<\/p>\n Communicators should be present when commitments are made, rather than called in once a deal needs explaining. That is the seat from which we can truly protect reputation.<\/p>\n Thank you to Mary Njoki<\/b><\/a> and the Africa PR Week<\/b><\/a> team for building a platform where African communicators challenge one another and advance the continent’s story together. At Decode.<\/b><\/a>, I am holding us to that same standard – PR is what you do, not what you say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My reflections from the 2026 Africa Global PR Week in Nairobi On 28 August 2026, I joined EYITEMI ADEBOWALE, ANIPR, Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Sunbeth Global Concepts; Lekha Seebaluck, Managing Director at Blast Burson; and Guntram Kaiser, Managing Partner at KaiserCommunication GmbH, on a panel at #AfricaGlobalPRWeek titled Global Alliances: Positioning Africa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-insights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3681,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions\/3681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decode.co.za\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}