The State of Marketing in Africa.

Executive summary.

African marketing entered 2026 with more digital reach, more video consumption, stronger commerce rails and cheaper content production than it had a year earlier. Yet the operating environment remained fragmented. A campaign designed around Morocco’s 92.2% internet penetration faces a fundamentally different reach problem in Ethiopia at 21.3%. The correct response is not a generic ‘digital-first Africa’ playbook; it is a shared strategy with market-specific channel, creative and conversion design.^1-14

Across this study’s 14-market sample, early-2025 country reports describe approximately 469.6 million internet users and 205.9 million social-media user identities within a combined population of about 965.5 million. These are descriptive aggregates, not estimates for the continent, and social identities are not unique people.^1-14

Six findings

1. 01

   Scale without uniform reach

   Internet penetration ranged from 21.3% to 92.2% across the sample

   2026 implication

   Set market-level reach assumptions and offline continuity

2. 02

   Digital growth diverged

   Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa show different growth and maturity patterns

   2026 implication

   Use market archetypes instead of one regional budget model

3. 03

   Video became an operating system

   Social, streaming and creator formats increasingly overlap

   2026 implication

   Plan a total-video system, not isolated platform posts

4. 04

   Commerce moved closer to media

   Mobile money, merchant payments and retail media shortened the path to transaction

   2026 implication

   Design payment and assisted-conversion paths with the campaign

5. 05

   Value and cultural fluency rose

   Cost pressure and demand for local relevance shaped response

   2026 implication

   Express practical value in local language and context

6. 06

   AI lowered production friction

   Global ad production adopted GenAI quickly; African media firms began local use

   2026 implication

   Invest savings in evidence, distinctiveness and quality control

The recommendation

The market context.

One continent, very different reachable markets

The most important planning fact is the spread, not the average. Internet penetration across the sample differs by more than 70 percentage points. Social-media identities range from 6.2% to 55.5% of total population. Even adjacent markets can require different assumptions about digital reach, platform mix and the role of television, radio, retail, events and field activation.^1-14

Cross-market snapshot

The planning postures are a way of reading the evidence, not industry standards. The social-to-internet ratio is derived from published user and identity counts. Sources ^1-14.

Three practical market postures

Six shifts that defined 2025.

Finding 1
Reach expanded, but access remained the strategy

GSMA reported 416 million mobile-internet users across Africa and a 28% penetration rate in its 2025 regional report. It also described a large usage gap: hundreds of millions lived within network coverage but did not use mobile internet, with device affordability and digital skills among the barriers.¹⁵ DataReportal’s country figures show how uneven this becomes in actual planning.^1-14

The implication is operational. A campaign cannot assume that network coverage equals addressable digital demand, that a mobile connection equals mobile data use, or that a social-media advertising estimate equals an active user. Marketers need three layers of reach: technically reachable, economically reachable and behaviorally reachable.

Finding 2
Internet advertising grew, but not through one model

PwC’s Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook 2025-2029 shows three different market paths. South Africa is more mature and hybrid; Nigeria combines enormous absolute reach with accelerating digital revenue; Kenya is projected to have the world’s fastest-growing internet advertising market at a 16% CAGR through 2029. PwC projects video advertising in Kenya to grow at 22.3% CAGR and identifies retail display and paid search as fast-growing segments in South Africa and Nigeria.¹⁶

This is evidence against allocating a single regional percentage to digital and copying it across markets. Maturity, retailer concentration, payment behaviour, broadband quality and platform availability change both the opportunity and the cost of conversion.

Finding 3
Video and creators became an operating system

Kantar’s 2025 Africascope results show why digital did not simply replace traditional media in Francophone Sub-Saharan capitals. Across eight capital-city markets, 89% watched television daily, 64% connected to the internet daily and 43% listened to radio daily. Television and internet together accounted for 88% of total media consumption in the study.¹⁷ The lesson is a total-video and total-attention problem, not a binary television-versus-social decision.

Creators added community, language and cultural interpretation to that system. UNESCO’s 2025 work with creators in Ghana and Nigeria also highlighted a professionalism gap: creator partnerships need fact-checking, ethical standards, disclosure and capability building, especially when content carries claims or public-interest information.¹⁸

Finding 4
The transaction layer became part of media strategy

Mobile money and real-time payments continued to shape the path from attention to action. GSMA’s 2025 industry report describes mobile money moving toward meaningful everyday use and stronger merchant-payment activity.¹⁹ Mastercard, citing the same GSMA report, reported that $1.1 trillion flowed through mobile money accounts across Africa in 2024 through 81 billion transactions.²⁰

For marketers, the point is not simply that digital payments are growing. It is that conversion design must match the market: mobile money, bank transfer, cards, USSD, cash-on-delivery, messaging assistance and physical retail may each play a role. Media optimisation cannot repair a checkout that excludes the audience.

Finding 5
Value and cultural fluency beat generic global gloss

Kantar’s Africa Life 2025 study, covering Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa, identifies an expectation for African solutions to African problems.²¹ NIQ’s outlook using 2025 market data argues that cultural fluency beats global gloss and specifically notes demand in West Africa for local nuance, language and design aesthetics.²²

Consumer pressure made that relevance practical rather than decorative. PwC’s 2025 consumer research included Egypt and South Africa and found cost of living to be the leading near-term concern across Africa and the Middle East. At global level, 51% named better value for money as a top reason to switch food brands.²³ The global number is a comparison point, not an Africa estimate, but it reinforces a regional question: can the customer see what the offer does for the money now?

Finding 6
AI changed production economics, not the need for judgment

PwC reports that generative AI began to shape local storytelling and production in African media, including use by South African companies and startups creating local-language content.¹⁶ Comparable Africa-wide marketing adoption data remains thin, so global advertising evidence should be used cautiously. In IAB’s 2025 digital-video buyer research, 86% were using or planning to use GenAI for video creative and buyers expected it to touch 40% of ads by 2026.²⁴

The opportunity is more variants, faster localisation and lower production barriers. The risk is more generic content, unreliable claims, inconsistent assets and weak provenance. Kantar’s global 2025 trend research found meaningful consumer distrust of AI-generated advertising and called for transparency and trustworthy source data.²⁵

The 2026 marketing operating agenda.

The six findings converge on one operating change: marketing teams need a common strategic core and market-specific execution systems. The following agenda is designed for teams that must make progress without assuming perfect data or large budgets.

Eight decisions every priority market needs

1. Reach: who is technically, economically and behaviorally reachable?
2. Objective: what business or behaviour change should marketing produce?
3. Channel system: what combination creates reach, relevance and action?
4. Creative: which distinctive assets and local codes will carry the idea?
5. Creator role: where does community credibility add value?
6. Conversion: how will people enquire, pay, receive and get support?
7. Proof: which claims can be substantiated and understood locally?
8. Measurement: what can be observed confidently, and what remains directional?

Capability roadmap

A practical 90-day sequence

Signals to watch through the rest of 2026

The leadership scorecard

Methodology and limitations.

Research design

This inaugural study is a synthesis and cross-market analysis of publicly available evidence. It does not claim to be a representative survey of African marketers, consumers or advertising spend. The market table uses the same DataReportal Digital 2025 reporting family to improve comparability, while the trend analysis draws on regional institutions and named industry research.

Market sample

The 14 markets were selected to provide coverage across North, West, Central, East and Southern Africa and to include a mix of large, fast-growing, mature and access-constrained markets. The sample covers Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia.

Metric definitions

Limitations

• Comparable public advertising-spend and campaign-performance data are not available across all 14 markets.
• The PwC outlook focuses heavily on South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya; its forecasts should not be generalised to every market.
• Africascope covers capital-city populations in eight Francophone Sub-Saharan countries, not whole national populations or the continent.
• Global IAB and Kantar findings are included only as comparison signals where Africa-wide evidence is thin.
• Public platform reach estimates can be revised and should not be treated as audited active-user counts.
• The report excludes proprietary brand performance, consumer panels and campaign-level lift data.

Editions.

1. 2026
   This edition

   Published 5 September 2026. Evidence to August 2026.

2. 2027
   Coming February 2027

   The second edition, with the first year-on-year comparison.

   Get it first through Ground Truth

All editions of The State of Marketing in Africa.