When looking forward at where culture is going and where the future of business may lie, the best place to look is where the youngest people are or may be. The only correct answer is Africa. The Brookins Institute estimates that Africa will add around 100 million children by 2050. This, along with the fact that 60% of Africa’s population is under 25 creates a compelling opportunity for business and industry. Why is this information important? Why does this information matter? Whoever can capitalize on this young and steadily growing population will have the opportunity of a lifetime. The issue is that this information is public, and the opportunity hasn’t been fully taken yet. The reason may be that Africa is a huge continent and people may be underestimating just how diverse it is. This is the Africa dilemma.
Africa has 54 countries and there are over 2000 languages that are spoken. The total population across the continent is over a billion. Somewhere here is where the dilemma of reaching this large group lies. These numbers seem large, but it gets more complicated. Kenya has at least 42 different tribes. That’s 42 different subcultures within Kenya. Complete with different languages and customs. Nigeria has over 300 unique tribes, also possibly with different languages and customs. So when looking at doing business in certain industries on the continent, the numbers are staggeringly high. What do they eat? What do they drink? What music do they like? What clothes do they wear? These are tough questions because you have to decide if you’re asking about the whole continent, a specific country, or a specific tribe. How would you even narrow it down? It’s almost impossible to broadly generalize. You have to get specific with where and who in Africa you’re trying to reach.
Vogue learned this the hard way. At some point, Vogue Africa was considered. The debate, although details aren’t widely known, hinged on this very issue. On one hand, Vogue Africa should make sense. Based on the aforementioned data, Africa simply makes sense for any business to thrive. On the other hand, Africa is too diverse to broadly take an idea and use it to represent the whole continent.
As easy as it is to dwell on the problems, there may be a solution or two. When dealing with such large and diverse groups of people, a great way to reach a portion of them is to find commonalities that make sense. In this situation, it could be age. Youth culture, because of the internet, is relatively homogenous. The low-hanging fruit is the younger group because an older audience or consumer group may be harder to convert and stuck in their ways. Another commonality could be career. People who are in similar careers sometimes have similar points of need. The best commonality that may be used in order to push a service or a product, is language. Swahili is the most commonly spoken language in Africa and a top 10 most spoken language in the world. It has over 200 million speakers worldwide. So, maybe the loophole in reaching the continent is to look at Africans at large who are on the continent as well as off. If you look at Swahili speakers who are across all 7 continents as opposed to the 1, there may be a leg to stand on.
But let’s stay focused. Africa is younger, growing faster, and is more tech-savvy than ever before. As recently as 2021, It was reported that 5 countries in Africa had 94% mobile phone ownership. If you look at the rate of mobile phone ownership as well as the rapidly growing youth population, there is more evidence of the opportunity to reach the continent and capitalize on what appears to be a blue ocean. So once again, why hasn’t anyone done it? Outside of the issues of size, diversity, and sheer volume of data and people, it could be that no one wants to go on the ground and do the work. Talk to the people, see the lay of the land, ask questions, and observe the cultures personally. There are no shortcuts here. In order to reach the people, you must be amongst the people. Africa is too big to reach from afar. The dilemma of attempting to build and scale can only be solved if you work with people on the ground via strategic partnerships and if you yourself go at some point and see for yourself. The question isn’t whether companies will start to capitalize on the opportunity or even when will companies start to capitalize on the opportunity. The real question is, will you?