Kabelo Makwane is Google South Africa’s country director and works to drive growth and innovation in tech and digital transformation across enterprise, consumer, and government pillars. The data and insights in this article were provided by Ipsos South Africa’s equity lead, Catherine Burton; group service line lead, Kim Larsen, and MTN’s senior manager of brand insights, Rhulani Baloyi.
How can global brands succeed in Africa? Eleven years of research, including 37.9 million interviews across five continents, have gone into answering this question.
For decades, global marketing playbooks have relied on the foundational premise that product adoption will follow an established emotional connection. However, new data from Ipsos has proven this logic fails when it comes to market growth in Africa. Here, on the continent, delivery and practicality unlock emotional connection — not the other way around.
From retail to fintech, market leaders across the continent do not lead with lifestyle promises; they build trust through functional execution.
This revelation makes the next move clear: considering that Africa will be home to a quarter of the world’s population by 2050, global and local companies alike should bake these critical insights into their long-term growth strategies.
Accessibility, not price, is the primary gatekeeper to purchase
A common misconception is that price drives consumer purchasing behaviour in emerging markets. The data proves otherwise: in 2025, price was only the sixth most prevalent barrier to purchase in Africa at 9.2%, an improvement from 10.5% in previous years. By comparison, price consistently ranks as the third largest barrier across Latin America, North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific at an average of 11%.
Africa’s single largest barrier to purchase is accessibility, showing how physical availability, distribution, and systemic exclusion halts consumers from getting the products they want and need. Interestingly, accessibility is a shared barrier across all five continents, ranging from 26% in Africa to 33% in Europe.
Brands can look to MTN, a South African telecommunications company, as a source of inspiration. MTN scaled from starting in a single market to 16 countries with 300 million subscribers by tackling accessibility first.
Because of low, irregular or cash-only incomes, the company knew that many consumers purchased data and airtime for their mobile phones in small currency denominations. By introducing micro-airtime vouchers starting at just 50 cents, MTN accommodated consumers and established the infrastructure for massive scale. Additionally, they embedded 1.3 million agents across their markets so that, if a customer care issue arose, their “Army of Yellow” was easily accessible.
Africa is the only continent where trust is a top 3 driver of brand desire
Ipsos South Africa’s research uses real market share to reflect brand desire. And, while North American consumers justify brand desire through status, individual optimisation, and willingness to pay more, African consumers demand proven reliability. The analysis reveals a unique triangle that drives brand desire in Africa:
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The primary driver of desire (54%) is when the brand is one the consumers loves and would call their favourite.
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“For people like me”, at 48%, speaks to cultural resonance and requires authentic cultural fluency and hyper-local presence over an aspirational lifestyle.
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Africa is the only region where trust, at 42%, enters the top 3 drivers of brand desire. Trust ranks fifth in Latin America, ninth in Europe, 14th in North America, and 15th in Asia Pacific.
Unlocking emotional connection through functional delivery
Since “meeting my needs” is the fourth most impactful driver of brand desire, connecting with African consumers is about delivering exactly what is promised.
People on the continent do not evaluate brands based on abstract feelings: 53% of Africans are functionally focused, compared to 43% in North America and 33% in Europe. Conversely, only 7% of verbatims are explicitly emotional — the lowest globally. In other words, when spontaneously thinking and talking about a brand, people in Africa ideate around what they do, not what they represent or how they make them feel.
This creates a clear operational mandate: emotional connection exists, but it must be earned through reliable performance.
We’ve successfully seen this play out with global brands in Africa when they’ve followed this blueprint. For example, when Visa launched its cardless payment app, Visa Pay, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), product adoption campaigns bypassed abstract aspirational messaging. Instead, they focused directly on the app’s security, ease of use, and practical everyday utility for people and businesses alike. Visa knew that to connect with a user in the DRC, they needed to focus on the service’s functional delivery.
Decoding the strategic growth formula
Scaling (and winning) in Africa requires executing a strict, non-reversible sequence:
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Function earns emotional connection: Aspirational product adoption campaigns can fail without practical proof of performance.
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Trust is earned, not assumed: Trust must be demonstrated consistently through meaningful, visible, tangible and authentic engagement.
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Authenticity over proximity: Authenticity means solving market-specific challenges at the point of transaction, even for international brands.
Global brands looking to enter into and scale across Africa can’t rely on imported frameworks. Success belongs to the companies that remove functional friction, build trust and cultural authenticity, which opens the gateway to deep emotional connections and market leadership.
