Introduction Conceptualising strategic communication in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book takes a step towards exposing the nature of sub-Saharan Africa’s strategic communication problems and, in the process, offers possible theoretical paradigms that may be best suited in resolving them. It describes the taken-for-granted that strategic communication should proceed using the former coloniser’s language. The book argues that tombstones are not arbitrarily written by the bereaved, the epitapher. The book explores how the narrative paradigm, an overarching strategic communication tool that has largely been construed as more of a persuasion gimmick narrowly used by organisations to target external stakeholders, has been exploited by Matonjeni, an organisation that emerged in a crumbling Zimbabwean economy and later expanded into Zambia and South Africa to gain a foothold in a market dominated by bigger and more established competitors.