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 and Sabby
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist , Sabby Sabs
    Trump ABANDONS Gulf States! Iran Base HIT!
    28 Oct 2026
    BAR Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley joined Sabby Sabs to analyze recent developments in West Asia.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Twenty Years of Black Agenda Report
    28 Oct 2026
    Reaching a 20th anniversary for Black Agenda Report is indeed a milestone. But longevity alone is not what makes this publication special to thousands of readers. BAR’s principled journalistic…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: O.A.S., Roque Dalton, circa 1970
    28 Oct 2026
    “The President of the United States is more/ the President of my country/ than the President of my country.”
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Rubio, France’s Student Uprising, and the Politics of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe
    28 Oct 2026
    Marco Rubio's speeches invoking a shared Western civilization are part of the ideological consolidation of fascism, mobilizing white racial solidarity to defend a declining capitalist order.
  • Nayib Bukele's face superimposed over human skulls.
    Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
    Killing Haiti: Bukele and Prince join the US and the UN on Mission to Murder
    28 Oct 2026
    Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, joins Erik Prince, the US, and the UN to kill more Haitians.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us