Thebe Ikalafeng, founder of Brand Africa, says Africans need to own their narrative and build brands that reflect the continent’s potential and guard its economic independence.
Having worked for two of the world’s best-known brands, Colgate and Nike, he says he can contribute to building Africa-focused brands.
Ikalafeng grew up in Kimberley, raised by his grandparents while his mother was training as a nurse in Gqeberha, and attended St Boniface, a Catholic school. An early ambition took him to Milwaukee in the US, where he earned a BSc in business administration and an MBA, and to New York to work at Colgate Palmolive, which also employed him in South Africa.
After stints at Sun International and a PR firm, he joined Nike Africa, where he became chief marketing officer. In 2002, Ikalafeng founded Brand Leadership, focusing on African businesses; in 2010 that led to the founding of Brand Africa to promote homegrown brands. The initiative tracks and ranks brands in Africa, its data showing that global firms dominate, with African brands accounting for less than 18% over the past 15 years.
“Africans consume what we don’t produce and produce what we don’t consume,” he says, quoting the late Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui. He suggests: “When we buy Africa, we build Africa.”
Ikalafeng was named one of the 100 most influential Africans by New African Magazine in 2013, 2015 and 2024; one of the most reputable Africans by the Global Reputation Forum in 2023 and 2025; and one of the 100 most creative people of African descent in 2023.
He has received lifetime achievement awards from FM AdFocus (2021) and the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (2022). In 2023, he received an award for advancing a brand-led African agenda. Honorary doctorates came last year from Unisa and the University of Johannesburg.
The story of Africa must be told by Africans
— Thebe Ikalafeng
His memoir, The Traveller: Crossing Borders and Connecting Africa, was published in 2024. It chronicles his journey and adventures from Kimberley to about 125 countries — all 54 of the African ones. His first book, Conquer the Job Market: 5 Steps to Win the Job You Want, was for professionals in post-apartheid South Africa. In November he launched Rooted and Rising: Reclaiming Our Culture and Redefining Our Global Influence, in which he argues that Africa’s future strength lies in reclaiming and celebrating its cultural foundations.
Two moments reshaped his outlook for an Africa-led agenda. The first was the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa, which he says was a turning point in global perceptions of Africa. The second was a 2013 meeting with KK Park, then Samsung’s CEO for Africa and the Middle East.
Park told him Samsung’s success came from executives visiting every African country to tailor solutions to local realities. “It struck me then that I hadn’t been to enough African countries myself,” Ikalafeng tells the FM. That set him on his way, travelling from Antarctica to Greenland.
Travel, he says, has long shown that Africa is too often spoken for by outsiders. “More than 60% of reporting about Africa is done by people who have never set foot here. That is why the narrative remains about instability, corruption, dependency and poverty.”
At FNB Art Joburg in September, he launched an “Africa Re-Union” initiative that redrew the map of Africa by removing colonial borders and divisions and correcting the cartographic size and position of Africa using the Equal Earth projection. It reverses the old European convention of Africa’s map in relation to the rest of the world. One of the symbols at the initiative’s gathering was an empty chair.
“The story of Africa must be told by Africans,” Ikalafeng says. “That empty chair is for the unborn child, for the ordinary African, for anyone who must still take their place in writing our story.”
Now one of the most decorated and respected branding thinkers on the continent, Ikalafeng has blended corporate experience, entrepreneurship, authorship and pan-African advocacy throughout his career. Yet he insists his measure of success remains simple.
“I hope when I’m gone, they will say that when Africa needed us, I raised my hand and played an active role in changing its narrative and catalysing the growth of made-in-Africa brands.”
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