Panel 74: Imagining a Better Life: Consumption, Advertising and Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa

While Sub-Saharan Africa has often been associated with draught and famine, consumption has been interpreted as an indicator of crisis in Western capitalist societies. In consequence, advertising, entrepreneurship and consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa have not received their due scholarly attention. Likewise, anthropological approaches to consumption often seem to start from assuming that consumption in non-Western contexts equals the appropriation of Western consumer objects and habits.

This panel intends to complicate this interpretational scheme by proposing an alternative perspective on consumption. It views advertising, entrepreneurship and consumption as practices central to the imagining of better futures and a dignified life; and it seeks to investigate from a comparative perspective the interplay of advertising and local entrepreneurship through a focus on changing culinary practices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since many of these consumption patterns are the result of transformations in consumer habits initiated in the colonial period, we particularly welcome contributions that address this topic from a long-term perspective.