My interest in communications and graphic design may come as a surprise to my recent professional connections, but not to my family-members and close-friends who know my background growing up at New Fadama, located in Accra, Ghana. Even at the writing of this piece, there’re many professionals in my network who know very little of my works; but I now want to re-visit and correct that chapter in my works in this short article.

Also, many of my good ideas and concepts in design-thinking is no surprise to those who have worked and continue to work with me as part of our project team.

So much has changed in web technologies since I developed my first website in January 2002 in the Bronx, New York. I wish TheAfricanPatriop.com is still available with all the news and articles I uploaded online to tell the world about Africa Affairs. Most designers are talking-new-tech: HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, WordPress, Drupal, and Adobe XD. When you add all these new-tech to User Experience Design, you’re in for some serious disruptive work.

My professional work and technical experience are the results of over a decade of ups and downs, high and lows. Between 2003 to 2005, I volunteered for Ghana Cyber Group as a web developer and senior strategist. In 2004, I reached out to work at University Medical Associates PC, under the supervision of Dr Muhammad Adam in Bronx, NY—where I played two dual role as office administration and IT Consultant between 2005—2010.

I did good work for African Day Parade & Festival in NYC (2012-2014) with some good-people in NYC who were passionate about African Diaspora connections, providing most of the marketing directions to what I term the “African Market” in NYC. All these are things I consider great achievements, and indeed it gave me the opportunity to show how ideas are important to any business or organization.

No wonder I continue to dedicate most of my time studying several areas of development across the continent. Specifically, my interest involves trends in branding and communications design. So far I see both challenges and opportunities with respect to marketing to Africans—home and abroad. This is because, unlike others, my African people are lovers of glamour (or what we call ‘swagga’) and taste. The growing craze for entertainment and fashion—from Lagos to Johannesburg) is the big-buzz in this line of work.

Essentially, marketing to the African Market is more about deep study of some very interesting stuff. It requires a shift from old to new, meaning one must understand both Old Africa and New Africa. I take the new because it provides more insight into the demographics than ever before.
Marketing to Africans is about blending what is “cool” with what is “really selling or going to sell”. The strategic blend of what’s-going-on with the crazy-interest of what matters is what you need to understand before entering into the Africa Market.

To the marketer, you should know that you’re selling to an audience of young savvy-ladies like Yemi Alade or Asa, and savvy-men like Davido, Nigerian pop-singer, and the young-leaders like Fred Swaniker, the Ghanaian-born education powerhouse. It means an eye for details and substance.