The Nature and Status of Public Relations Practice in Africa

Abstract

Research on the continental practice of public relations in Africa is for the most part sparse and fragmented, a large proportion of it carried out on specific aspects of practice in specific countries. There are unfortunately few studies that try to treat Africa as an entity and from a communication perspective. However, the recent report “The Public Relations Landscape in Africa” (2006), carried out by the UK-based consultancy Gyroscope, is one that claims a measure of success in this challenging task. As the report points out, the continent we refer to as “Africa” is a patchwork of 53 countries, some sharing common borders, with others separated by thousands of kilometres. They range from large, prosperous and cosmopolitan Egypt, to landlocked, impoverished and troubled Chad; and from the scattered Atlantic island state of Sao Tome and Principe to the thriving economies of South Africa, Nigeria and more recently the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deliberations around NEPAD—the New Partnership for African Development, a continent-wide initiative for the social, economic and political development of Africa— and the “African Renaissance,” actively promoted by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, in fact highlight the challenges that will have to be addressed before we can speak of an authentically integrated and united Africa First, there is a daunting lack of physical infrastructure. Road networks radiate from capital cities to the major provincial hubs and the pattern remains constant: the nearer the capital, the better the road. As the roads spread beyond the provinces toward