The recent 50th anniversary celebrations of the African Union (AU) appeared to breathe new life into the ideology of Pan-Africanism, at least among the leaders of the continent who gathered in Addis Ababa last month.
There was much talk of African unity and solidarity, of a continent seemingly moving towards a borderless future, where differences among individual African countries would melt away.
In a growing number of Africa's capitals there is a very different conversation going on. It is about promoting singularity, distinctiveness and, indeed, difference. The Africans having this conversation don't want to exploit the African "brand", they want to escape from it.
This does not mean that all the bullish assessments of Africa's growth prospects are unfounded. What it does reveal is that despite them, Africa still has an image problem.
Beyond the resources sector, investor confidence in the continent as a whole is still restrained by concern that its manifold challenges, from transnational security threats to persistent youth unemployment and inequality, could yet undo all the continent's recent gains.
For individual African countries that are making real progress, yet feel stigmatised by the overall negative image the continent still evokes in the minds of outsiders, a growing number are turning to techniques commonly used in marketing to emphasise their uniqueness and thereby increase their competitiveness. And none has attracted more attention than the idea of a national or nation brand.
Nation brand management
Over the past 10 years, at least 13 sub-Saharan African countries, from South Africa and Botswana to Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana have attempted to manage their nation brands in order to attract more investment, trade and tourism.
Yet the field of nation brand management is still young and poorly defined. How to implement such strategies and, more importantly, whether or not they work, are hotly contested among supporters and sceptics alike.
Nonetheless, a growing number of marketing and communications firms are touting themselves as nation brand experts, able to steer countries' reputations through the worst crises and ensure no national achievement is underexploited.
But they don't come cheap. In Uganda, public relations firms tasked with whitewashing some of the government's more controversial policies have cost the nation nearly $2-million. The country's image is none the better.
In Nigeria two nation-branding initiatives costing more than $5-million flopped, not least because ordinary Nigerians took to the streets against what they saw as wasteful government propaganda.
What these and other cases illustrate is that no amount of branding will make failed or failing policies any less detrimental to countries' development, even if they may help to obscure them from public scrutiny for a while.
Critics dismiss concept
Critics of the nation-brand concept have dismissed it as an inauthentic attempt to promote a simplified concept of a nation, an entity they claim is too dynamic and complex for a brand to embody honestly.
Other sceptics emphasise the absence of any reliable measurement of how successful governments have been in influencing their countries' brands. There are myriad internal and external factors that affect national image and none is easy to track, quantify or directly attribute to proactive nation-branding strategies.
Mindful that any nation-branding in Africa today could occur only within a highly constrained financial and skills environment, where basic issues of health, education and public safety are paramount, can it ever really be money well spent?
Only time will tell. Concrete impact can be assessed only in the long term, even if such measurements still remain largely subjective.
But there are indications, based on evidence from the growing number of African-based initiatives, that there may be a role for nation- branding, in the right conditions. Africans have struggled to write their own national stories, to develop their own narratives.
The narratives which have tended to dominate perception have, historically, mostly been written by outsiders. Nation-branding could help Africans take ownership of their future.
Understanding the existing perceptions
At its core, the act of nation-brand management is about implementing strategies that enhance a nation's soft power — the perceptions of its people, culture, governance, and economy. Any attempt to influence a country's brand must, therefore, engage actors across civil society, the private sector and government.
This requires understanding the perceptions that already exist. All nations have a de facto brand, however weakly or powerfully it resonates with their people and the outside world.
Thus, it is imperative for all key stakeholders to come together to articulate the nation's strengths and weaknesses, and then direct actions and policies to fixing the weaknesses and promoting the strengths.
Rarely do the examples, African or non-African, reflect such comprehensive nation-brand management. In Africa's most advanced nation-branding initiative — Brand South Africa — major challenges persist.
In just a few years in the 1990s South Africa's image went from racially segregated and oppressive to democratic and progressive. The action that brought about this image makeover was, as we all know, colossal. Leaving aside the highly evocative "rainbow nation", branding never came into it.
But in 2010 the Fifa World Cup provided an opportunity to revitalise a by-then faltering national brand. And South Africa's successful hosting of the event did just that, but only for a time.
Tourism branding
Brand South Africa's own internal review suggested that it did not seize the country's time in the global spotlight to take potentially catalytic action in other areas of the brand. Instead, action from within the government probably served to diminish the country's competitiveness in the eyes of investors.
Tourism branding is easier to implement than holistic nation-branding. As such, there is a tendency to privilege tourism promotion over the more fundamental reform necessary to give credence to claims that a country is, to use an oft-heard but frequently disingenuous slogan, "open for business".
Given tourism's high vulnerability to climatic, financial or security shocks, this over-reliance can backfire, as experiences in Egypt or Kenya attest.
In some respects, the process of nation-brand management may be just as important as the outcome.
Nation-branding cannot hope to achieve its desired impact unless it is based on intensive consultation and collaboration across key sectors and involving all principal stakeholders, from within and outside government.
On a continent still susceptible to democratic backsliding, that is a highly useful exercise.
As Africans reflect on the legacy of the AU and as the heady rhetoric of "oneness" subsides, it may be time to consider the merits of difference. More than anything, African nations should be thinking about how to translate more than a decade of solid economic growth into much greater benefits for all their citizens.
They are not just up against other countries on the continent, but everywhere. In this increasingly competitive global marketplace, image certainly counts.
Ngozika Amalu is the Machel Mandela Intern at The Brenthurst Foundation.