There is a pattern I have noticed working in communications across transport, aviation and development in Nigeria. When a brand wants to look premium, it reaches for a European aesthetic. When it wants to sound credible, it mimics language lifted from American corporate decks. When it wants to feel aspirational, it borrows imagery that has nothing to do with the lives of the people it is actually trying to reach.
I understand the instinct. The West has spent decades building the infrastructure of desirability — the fonts, the colour palettes, the brand archetypes, the storytelling frameworks. It can feel safer to copy what already works than to risk something unfamiliar.
But here is what that approach costs us: authenticity. And authenticity, in a world oversaturated with content and deeply fatigued by noise, is the only real currency left.
Africa is not one story. It is thousands of them. It is the driver who has been behind the wheel for twenty years and knows every shortcut in Lagos better than any algorithm. It is the smallholder farmer in Kano who has developed crop rotation methods passed down through generations and refined through her own experimentation. It is the young creative in Accra building a design business on a laptop and a dream.
These are not poverty narratives. They are not development sector talking points. They are fully realised human stories with texture, intelligence, humour and complexity. And most brands walk right past them.
The most powerful brand communication does not sell to people. It reflects them back to themselves with enough accuracy that they feel seen.
When I worked on the BATNF Farmers for the Future campaign, the brief could have gone in a direction that was functional and forgettable. Here is a programme. Here are the benefits. Apply now. Instead, we made a choice to lead with the people — their faces, their words, their land. The campaign attracted over 500 applications each year not because the programme was well-designed, but because people saw themselves in the communication and believed it was actually for them.
When an African brand mimics Western aesthetics without interrogation, it sends an unintentional message: that the local is inferior. That the aspirational belongs somewhere else. That success looks like somewhere you have never been and sounds like someone you have never met.
Audiences feel this even when they cannot articulate it. They engage with the brand transactionally because there is no deeper invitation. There is no recognition.
Contrast this with brands like Flutterwave, Paystack or even older institutions like Indomie Nigeria, which built deep cultural resonance by understanding that the emotional logic of their audiences was specific, local and completely valid on its own terms. They did not need to look like Silicon Valley to feel credible. They needed to feel like they understood you.
It does not mean rejecting craft or quality. It does not mean rejecting global design principles or best practice in communications. It means grounding all of that in a specific, honest understanding of your audience's real life.
It means asking: what do they actually value? What language do they use when no one is performing? What does success look like in their world, not in a mood board?
It means being willing to use Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa or Pidgin not as an afterthought but as a genuine creative decision. It means letting the warmth, the humour, the resilience and the intelligence of African people show up in the work — not as stereotypes, but as the full, complex, interesting reality that it is.
Africa has the youngest population in the world. It has some of the fastest-growing middle classes. It has a generation of consumers who are digitally native, globally aware and increasingly allergic to inauthenticity.
These are not people who want to be sold a fantasy about somewhere else. They want to be reflected, celebrated and understood where they are.
The brands that figure this out first will not just win market share. They will build the kind of loyalty that no advertising budget can manufacture. They will become part of the culture rather than just a vendor to it.
That is the opportunity sitting in front of every African brand right now. All it requires is the courage to tell your own story instead of borrowing someone else's.