Ethical storytelling: The quest to enhance Africa’s narrative

In its pursuit to enhance Africa’s narrative, the African Public Relations Association (APRA) will once again host its annual African Public Relations Conference, which is set to take place in Kigali, Rwanda from 13 to 17 May 2019. Now in its 31^st year, APRA’s conference is geared to inspire and provide a platform to share best practices to over 500 delegates from across the continent working in the public relations and marketing communication space. The overarching mission? How ethical storytelling can help change the narrative of a continent vast in opportunities and growth.

This year’s theme of the APRA conference is ‘Africa and Storytelling: Changing the Narrative’. “The conference is aimed to inspire professionals and committed individuals working in  public relations, media, brand management, advertising, and integrated marketing to communicate in an ethical manner so that they contribute towards the African narrative,” says Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, president of APRA. “It is time that Africa tells Africa’s story. A continent with a rich history and many inspiring stories deserves a platform where opinions can be debated so that strategies can be refined and ethical storytelling, a powerful public relations tool, can be explored,” adds Badejo-Okusanya.

To build the perception of the continent, and to change the narrative of Africa, we need to take a step back and understand the extent to which we, as Africans, see ourselves, the organisations we work for, and the countries we live in as ethical. For the second consecutive year APRA has asked its key stakeholders their perceptions about ethics and reputation on these three levels – individual, company and country.In total 225 CEOs, executives, directors, senior management and public relations individuals in Africa participated in the survey. Powered by reputation research agency, Reputation Matters, the aim of the research was to assess the importance of ethics and reputation in all areas of the participants’ lives. “This year we saw an increase of 47% in responses over last year,” says Chanell Kemp, reputation specialist leading the reseach project.

The research results will be one of the many interesting and necessary talking points at the conference in Kigali in May 2019, which boasts internationally acclaimed speakers as well as key speakers from across the continent.

“The survey also asked the question of the country perceived to be the most ethical in Africa and we are delighted that our host country, Rwanda, has been voted as the second most ethical country in Africa for the second year in a row and interestly Botswana the host for APRA’s 30^th Conference in 2018 still holds the lead as number one most ethical country ,” shares Kemp.

Professionals working in the marketing and communications industry are encouraged to join their colleagues at APRA Rwanda 2019.  To participate, you can register by visiting: http://aprarwanda2019.afpra.org/.

For more information about APRA visit:

For more information about reputation research, contact Reputation Matters research@reputationmatters.co.za, or visit www.reputationmatters.co.za.