Vogue Italia’s ‘Rebranding Africa’ Disaster

In this article Elliot Ross of Africa is a Country dissects the ‘Rebranding Africa’ edition of Vogue Italia.  The author attacks the concept of outside intervention as a defining characteristic of Africa before dealing with some of the more troubling assumptions made by the magazine.  It is a fantastic read.

This article was originally published on June 6th, 2012 on the website Africa is a Country.


By Elliot Ross, 8th June, 2012

Everybody’s trying to rebrand Africa, and it isn’t going so well. Vogue Italia’s latest issue — boosted by great billowing gusts of editorial hot air from both the New York Times and the Guardian — is called “Rebranding Africa”, and as you’d expect the whole thing is an embarrassing and insulting shambles. The images are okay, but otherwise it feels like something a middle-schooler cobbled together for a class project. And then got a “D” for it.

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