The two (2) day Advertising conference, dubbed ‘Africa Rising Leadership conference’ has ended in Accra. The conference which took place from the 27th –28th April 2015 at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel was organized by the International Advertising Association (IAA) in conjunction with the Advertising Association of Ghana (AAG) and had the theme “Africa Rising – the New Consumer Generation.”

This conference provided an in-depth assessment and understanding of the economic, social forces and trends facing consumers, brands and governments in Africa and assessed the implications for those businesses with
interests in Africa within the wider advertising industry who wish to expand their frontiers.

Over 40 speakers, selected from across the marketing communications and Advertising industry from around the world delved into various topics for the two days. Some of the topics for the conference were; The emerging consumer in Sub-Saharan Africa, Are African brands scalable across the globe?, Maintaining consumer engagement and promoting consumer participation in multiple worlds of Africa.

Others are;’The trends and future of Out-Of-Home advertising’, ‘What do current global media trends mean for Africa?’, What is the industry learning from Africa?, ‘Advertising and self-regulation versus protectionism, The way forward for Africa?’ And ‘The challenge of change: Your business in the new economy’.

Closing the conference,Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah,the Minister of Trade and Industry commended the organizers and speakers for bringing the conference to Ghana and hoped that the deliberations would help to shape policies by African Governments.

The Minister said,the huge advances the African continent had made was yet to be acknowledged and tasked the IAA to collaborate with their local chapters in various countries to apply the requisite communication tools to rebrand the continent to create a compelling image for it as a preferred destination for doing business.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said though the Western media and their agents have always painted a poor picture of Africa to the rest of the world, some African NGOs,in their quest for funding also carve a sorry state of the continent and appealed to them to stop.

The Minister called on practitioners in the advertising and marketing communications fraternity in Ghana to work in collaboration with Government to carry out behavioral changes among the populace for the development of the country.

The World President and Chairman of IAA,Mr Faris Abouhamad thanked the local chapter of the IAA and the AAG for the efforts put into rolling out the conference successfully.

He promised that the IAA will continue to work with the various chapters in the African countries to bring the conference back to the continent in the very near future.

The conference attracted about 300 delegates with about 40 coming from various countries around the world.
A summary of the breakdowns of the international delegates is as follows:
Cameroon – 1
Nigeria – 25
UK – 5
USA – 2
South Africa – 2
Benin – 2
Cote d’Ivoire -2