Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

“Scent of Africa” Marketed to “Afropolitans”
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
11 May 2020
🖨️ Print Article

Fifty years after most African nations won nominal independence, ad agencies are marketing upscale products like the perfume “Scent of Africa” to so-called “Afropolitans,” a cohort defined by Dr Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin, of Canada’s Queens University, as “mobile and relatively well-off” Africans. Adeniyi-Ogunyankin said Afropolitans are criticized for “trying to envision these same capitalist ways of consumption that continue to produce such inequalities.” However, she prefers to think of Afropolitans as Africans that are “aware of the world,” and part of it.

Africana Studies

Related Podcasts

Women Loom Large in African Secessionist Movements
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Women Loom Large in African Secessionist Movements
14 May 2019
In Cameroon and the former Spanish Sahara, “women are using traditional ideas about power to drives these secessionist movements,” said 
A Grandfather’s Powerful African Microphone
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
A Grandfather’s Powerful African Microphone
26 February 2019
GoGo Breeze, an elder with a radio program on a provincial Zambian station, counsels listeners on wage theft and other problems facing the common p
Seton Hall Students Will Renew Push on Africana Studies
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
Seton Hall Students Will Renew Push on Africana Studies
17 December 2018
Students with the Concerned 44 movement, representing the 44 percent of students that are ethnic or gender minorities, plan to renew their protests

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Ultimate Betrayal of Alex Saab and the Fate of Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan People
    16 Sep 2026
    The United States got its hands on Alex Saab a second time in order to use him in its case against Nicolas Maduro. The state succeeded in getting a guilty plea from Saab, but the current Venezuelan…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    COMMENTARY: The Shrinking American Empire, Glen Ford, 2009
    16 Sep 2026
    “The Iraq invasion greatly accelerated the process of U.S. imperialism’s decline.”
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Black Radicalism and the Return of the “Subversive Negro”
    16 Sep 2026
    NSPM-7 and the State Department's international campaign against "far-left political terrorism" represent a twenty-first-century continuation of COINTELPRO, reconstructing the historical figure of…
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Colin Kaepernick’s “The Perilous Fight”
    16 Sep 2026
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Colin Kaepernick.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    A Climate “Movement” Homonym: (Or, How the Big Apple’s Annual Environmental Gathering Surfaces an Imperative Inquiry, Climate Week or Climate Weak?)
    16 Sep 2026
    The climate movement has been captured by a professional managerial class that prefers charity galas and virtue hoarding to building power.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us