Why we must promote the unique Rwandan brand

Allan Brian Ssenyonga Last week, I attended a business cocktail organised by the The ServiceMag at the Kigali Serena Hotel. The importance of communication in organisation was also discussed during the event; and we can all agree that there is a lot to say about the topic. Communication at work is responsible for effective running of a business or organisation or the exact opposite. How does the lowest paid staff member communicate with the boss? How about the outsiders, how do they communicate with the company and how does the company interact with them? Such questions and many more issues raised at the cocktail are still running through my mind... Maybe next week I should arrange these thoughts into a column. Today, however, I want to tackle something that crossed my mind a while ago; the way we brand our products and whether we think a lot about the impact of the branding decisions we make. The heart of the matter here is the debate on whether to go Rwandan or African. There seems to be some confusion as to whether a locally-produced product should be branded as African or Rwandan. Recently, I was at one of the popular coffee shops and as I was drinking ‘my usual’ African tea I started to wonder whether it was really African or just Rwandan. What qualifies it to be African? A few days later I saw a friend tweeting about the same issue, wondering why we are quick to brand things African and not as those from a particular country. You see, a brand reflects an experience. It represents the way a customer relates to a product. Therefore, what do you experience is being sold when I see Rwandan tea in the supermarket shelves but the tea I get at my favourite hangout is African tea? Maybe we need to customise some of these things, defying conventions to suit our aspirations and strategies. Business people need to think deeply what it means for their brand to have a distinct identity of its own if it is to stand out and become competitive. Producers need to, for example, realise that Africa as seen by outsiders is a largely negative concept thanks to the newsfeed that only has room for war, poverty and disease. Secondly, an African brand could be seen as an ambiguity since Africa is not that homogeneous anyway. West Africa is very different from East Africa or North Africa. South Africa as a country is very different from the DRC or Chad. Rwanda is different from Djibouti. Rwanda is actually unique and has an amazing recovery story to sell to the world. This is something that business people should take advantage of to market their brands. By riding along the amazing Rwandan story, they can have products that one looks at and thinks of the rolling hills, mountain gorillas, resilient people, clean streets, etc, as opposed to the poverty, disease and war that comes with the African tag. Some people argue that ‘out there’ people do not know much about individual countries and so it is safe to just say this is an African product. To such people I often ask, how are they supposed to even know about your country if you are hiding it among 53 others? We know of Italian shoes, German cars, French wines, Japanese cars, Cuban cigars, and even Ethiopian or Indian food. Even Chinese products steer clear of the Asian tag because Asia can be North Korea or Bangladesh. The only time products from Europe are referred to as European is when they are talking about certification by a European Union body. Country branding taps into the authenticity of a product. A Swiss watch will always stand out compared to a European watch because we all know the comparative advantage the Swiss have when it comes to the time gadgets. Rwanda has some good products that should be marketed as Rwandan. The Rwanda Development Board and the Rwanda Standards Board could organise awareness workshops to explain to small-an-medium enterprises more about product branding. Where Rwanda has a comparative advantage regarding quality, then it should be clear to the rest of the world that it is a Rwandan product, and not to ambiguously take on an African tag. Indeed, what is Agaciro if we cannot market and build an authentic Rwandan brand?

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Why we must promote the unique Rwandan brand