Strategic Communications in Africa

The Sub-Saharan Context

Hugh Mangeya,Isaac Mhute,Ernest Jakaza

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000533781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

Strategic communication is a pre-requisite for the achievement of organisational goals, and an effective strategic communication plan is vital for organisational success. However, systems and models dominant in the West may not necessarily be best suited for the sub-Saharan Africa reality, where many organisations lack adequate financial resources to develop and implement an effective strategic communication plan.

This book examines current practices in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the challenges faced and the intersection with culture. It packages inspiring debates, experiences and insights relating to strategic communication in all types of institutions, including private and public sector organisations, governmental organisations and NGOs, political parties as well as social movements in the sub-Saharan context. It explores how culture is integral to the attainment of strategic communication goals, and diverse case studies across socio-economic contexts offer insights into the successes of organisations across Africa, including Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Lesotho and Nigeria.

This unique edited collection is a valuable resource for worldwide scholars, researchers and students of strategic communication and organisational studies, as well as related fields including public relations, advertising, political and health communication and international studies.

1 Introduction Conceptualising strategic communication in sub-Saharan Africa

Isaac Mhute, Hugh Mangeya and Ernest Jakaza

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224297-1

Nowadays, the thought of how to make a major breakthrough in business, or any other venture for that matter, would certainly bring every organisational management face-to-face with the concept of strategic communication, among others. Strategic communication has proved to be a prerequisite and a major instrument that guarantees the achievement of every organisation’s vision, mission and set goals. This is reiterated by Hallahan et al.’s (2007, p. 3) observation that strategic communication is “the purposeful use of communication by an organisation to fulfill its mission”. Its pervasiveness to the survival and/or growth of organisations is underscored by the fact that scholars and professionals have adopted the term “strategic communication” as a generic term for a variety of communication-related professions such as advertising, public relations, brand communication, technical communication, information/social marketing campaigns and political communication, among others. To that end, it, therefore, is multidisciplinary because it draws from a variety of methods and disciplines. This has enabled it to achieve a multiplicity of goals that range from profit-making, advocacy, awareness creation, lobbying to political socialisation for various organisations across the world.

Africa in general, and sub-Saharan region in particular, presents a unique situation in that, whilst its rich natural resources and large market place it at the centre of global economic development, it is yet to enjoy the full economic benefits consummate with its great potential. Mersham and Skinner (2009) argue that, judging by the potentially vast and effectively untapped market, Africa is probably the world’s next great consumer market. Indeed, Chasi (2021, p. 54) argues that “Africa is a frontier for those interested in investing in emerging markets”. This means that the African market offers more or less low-hanging fruits that are there to be plucked by organisations that can best manoeuvre and properly place themselves in that position. Whilst an array of reasons have been put forward to account for this economic anomaly in which Africa is failing to reach its full potential (largely economic and political), one school of thought has accounted for it from a communication perspective.

On a macro level, there is a general tendency to base strategic communication systems and models on dominant theories of the West, which may not necessarily best suit the sub-Saharan reality. Mersham (1992, 1993), Mersham, Rensburg and Skinner (1995) and Mersham, Skinner and Rensburg (2011) aptly note how most dominant paradigms in strategic communication have mainly been developed in the West, specifically in the United States and Western European countries. Naturally, these conceptual frameworks have been suited to these areas of the world. Consequently, Okoro (2001) calls for a reconceptualisation of strategic communication contexts, issues and theoretical frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa.

On a micro level, a greater majority of organisations (mainly in the small-to-medium level bracket) in sub-Saharan Africa lack adequate financial resources to develop and implement an effective strategic communication plan. In contrast, bigger multinational organisations have the requisite budgets, personnel and means to develop, implement and assess a full-fledged and effective strategic communication plan. Smaller, mostly local, organisations do not necessarily enjoy this privilege. Over and above this, these smaller local organisations have to compete for a shrinking market who, more often than not, have an ever-shrinking disposable income. In such an operating environment, where most organisations have significant targets but lack significant budgets for marketing-related activities like advertising or public relations and yet have to compete to gain a foothold in a finite market with an ever-dwindling low expenditure capability, a good strategic communication plan becomes not only an imperative but the currency to further organisational goals. For instance, Mershma, Skinner and Rensburg (2011) reveal how almost half of the 81 poorest countries prioritised by the International Development Association are African. This serves to emphasise the low disposable income that various organisations operating on the African continent have to jostle for. A poor strategic communication plan is likely to have disastrous effects on the organisation. Over and above this, as has already been pointed out above, the sub-Saharan region offers a totally unique social milieu to that of the West. As such, chapters incorporated in this book interrogate all-embracing issues in sub-Saharan African strategic communication with the desire to present a taste of the strategic communication issues in sub-Saharan Africa as well as demonstrating how much organisations are obliged to engage in strategic communication practices best suited for the contextual realities they are operating in.

The book does not pretend to be the panacea to solving sub-Saharan Africa’s strategic communication problems. Rather, it is aimed at achieving two salient objectives. The first is to expose the nature of some of the strategic communication problems bedevilling the sub-Saharan region in the light of the fact that strategic communication problems are not similar across the world. Each and every social milieu has its own peculiar communication problems. As such, for organisations to enjoy any ounce of success, they need to develop and/or model their strategic communication endeavours or practices in sympathy to prevailing realities. One way of enabling this is to expose the strategic communication problems confronting practitioners in their respective environments. Secondly, the book hopes to initiate a debate on some of the ways in which some of these problems can be tackled from a strategic communication perspective. Having noted that these problems will necessarily differ from one context to another, it stands to reason that the ways to resolve them will also necessarily differ. From this perspective, the book is, therefore, an indictment for the need for Africa to model its strategic communication theory and practice in accordance with its peculiar realities as illustrated by both existent and emerging trends in the entire sub-Saharan African context. This is not, however, implying that sub-Saharan Africa offers a homogeneous social milieu, which can be accounted for by a one-size-fits-all theoretical approach. On the contrary, Windeck (2010, p. 17) aptly argues that

The sheer size of the region and the concomitant political, religious, linguistic and cultural heterogeneity this entails makes it almost impossible to make any kind of generalisations, since these differences necessarily result in political methods and behaviours that can, and do, vary greatly from one country to another.

The same can definitely be said about strategic communication endeavours in the region. The diversity deriving from sociocultural, economic, political, linguistic and religious heterogeneity demands a full appreciation of the exact nature of sub-Saharan Africa’s strategic communication realities so as to come up with solutions that are tailor-made for it.

This edited book takes a step towards exposing the nature of sub-Saharan Africa’s strategic communication problems and, in the process, offers possible theoretical paradigms that may be best suited in resolving them. This is achieved by drawing from a considerable cross section of diverse socio-economic contexts such as Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, Tanzania and Nigeria. Whilst they engage with a wide range of strategic communication issues from diverse sociocultural, economic and political contexts, the chapters have been subcategorised according to the salient issues they grapple with. These are cultural heritage and strategic communication, culture and strategic communication choices/practices case studies and strategic communication and political institutions.

Chapter outline

In Chapter 2, Fadipe and Salawu use Salawu’s (2001) Model of Indigenous Language for Development Communication and explorative research method through review of relevant literature, to provoke debate on the various ways in which African indigenous popular music can be used to tackle strategic communication problems by different organisations and institutions. Arguing from an African indigenous language media perspective, they note that African popular music still carries sublime potency that strategic communication experts have not fully tapped into. As such, African music should be utilised as a communication tool for such endeavours as development communication in health-related campaigns, protest movements and political parties, among others. They see no reason that African popular music should not be employed by corporate organisations in Africa whose aim is to achieve a set goal or mission by influencing people’s attitudes towards their messages. The authors add that using African indigenous popular music as the core of their communication strategy, African corporate organisations would be bestowed with the opportunity of employing an effective indigenous medium with indigenous languages to disseminate messages that would be better understood and responded to by their target audiences in Africa.

In Chapter 3, Mobolaji brings the indigenous language question vis-à-vis strategic communication to the fore. The chapter challenges the taken-for-granted that strategic communication should proceed using the former coloniser’s language (which are almost invariably the official languages in most African countries). Mobolaji argues that an organisation that desires customer loyalty, brand acceptance and profit-making in the highly competitive Nigerian market must communicate strategically with its stakeholders so as to achieve the desired organisational objectives. As such, he demonstrates how Yoruba as an indigenous language is an important subset of strategic communication that could be employed in passing across messages that will influence purchase behaviour, brand acceptance and loyalty. The findings reveal that some messages are only properly understood if relayed in the language that people understand. He also emphasises that the use of indigenous languages to communicate about a product will not only help consumers to patronise but help the product and service to register it in their minds.

In Chapter 4, Adesanmi investigates the strategic communication import of epitaphs beyond their commemorative function among the Basotho of Lesotho. The chapter argues that tombstones are not arbitrarily written by the bereaved, the epitapher. Rather, epitaphs participate in a communication process involving both the living and the dead. Specifically focusing on the major schematic element of ‘Closing’, the Basotho appropriate the tombstone as a space on which to strategically communicate both personal and group/clan identity. This is achieved through the juxtaposition of the Basotho clan names with their iconic animals (mentioned or drawn). It emerges that Basotho, both the living and the dead, carry Bequeathed Social Identity (BSI) which then serves as an eternal communication conduit between the two groups.

In Chapter 5, Mangeya explores how the narrative paradigm, an overarching strategic communication tool that has largely been construed as more of a persuasion gimmick narrowly used by organisations to target external stakeholders, has been exploited by Matonjeni, an organisation that emerged in a crumbling Zimbabwean economy and later expanded into Zambia and South Africa to gain a foothold in a market dominated by bigger and more established competitors. This is done using Fisher’s (1984) narrative theory to critically analyse the efficacy of job titles, presentation on pop-a-balloon shows and hampers and the incorporation of legends on product packaging. The chapter demonstrates how ‘Matonjeni’, the company name, constructs a ‘return-to-source’ narrative built on a conceptualisation of the greatness and pride of pre-colonial Africa. Mangey spells out how the narrative woven on familiar historical phenomenon of the Matonjeni sacred pool and allusions to the great Rozvi Empire acquires narrative probability, coherence and fidelity, all of which are essential to the organisation’s good reason to positively engage with the return-to-source narrative. He also explores how having the narrative paradigm as the organisation’s DNA ensured that it did not only focus on external stakeholders at the exclusion of its internal stakeholders (the employees) as most organisations are likely to do.

In Chapter 6, Hondo and Jakaza, influenced by the well-documented stance that the problems bedevilling most African organisations emanate from heavy reliance on western and/or non-African strategic communication theories in order to solve organisational communication problems, argue that Western informed dominant theories are not best suited to solve sub-Saharan communication problems. In the mode of reconceptualising strategic communications, their chapter introduces a home-grown approach, the Stakeholder-Oriented Strategic Communicative Control Approach (SOSCCA), which emanates from the perspective that stakeholders strive to be in control of organisational activities. Informed by qualitatively collected and analysed data from organisations in sub-Saharan Africa, the approach assumes that compliance to stakeholder control by managers or organisational authorities leads to lesser crisis and reputation management expenditure. The approach views stakeholders as the dominant force in society and that stakeholder communicative control is also strengthened by online rhetoric or persuasion characteristics. They argue that managerial control at times conflicts with stakeholder control, and its aim is to predict elements impeding effective stakeholder communication with managers and the entire workforce.

Having realised that strategic communications have become ubiquitous, an effort by Muchena in Chapter 7 to establish the nature of Mambo’s Chicken’s advertisements adopts a multimodal social semiotic analysis approach on eight purposively sampled Mambo’s Chicken Twitter advertisements and randomly selected Twitter comments and found out that the food outlet’s advertisements are sexually charged. Both the language and the images in the advertisements employ double entendre, where an advertisement would give two different meanings, one clean and innocuous with the other being sexually suggestive. He notes that followers of the fast-food outlet’s Twitter handle managed to decode this double meaning. The advertisements were, however, received with mixed feelings. Muchena argues that unlike mainstream media which is ethically regulated, social media is more liberal and thrives on self-regulation when it comes to the content of advertisements. The existence of audiences against the sexual dimension of the food outlet’s strategic communication practices highlights Mersham, Rebnsburg and Skinner’s (2011) argument that the African worldview has a huge infl...