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


  • Man carrying Iranian flag
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Navid Zarrinnal’s Perspectives From Iran
    13 Mar 2026
    Navid Zarrinnal is an Iranian journalist and host of The Colony Archive podcast. He joins us from Tehran to discuss the US and Israeli aggression and explains why the left must be in solidarity with…
  • Bombing of Iran
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the U.S. War on Iran
    13 Mar 2026
    The United States attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran began on February 28. Our guest provides analysis on this U.S. aggression from an anti-imperialist and Black left perspective. Erica Caines is…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Urgent Need for the Black Radical Tradition
    11 Mar 2026
    The U.S. is careening towards economic and military disaster, a moment when the Black radical tradition is missing but badly needed.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SONG: International Organizations/Oganizasyon Mondyal, Manno Charlemagne, 1986
    11 Mar 2026
    “We salute all peoples who are fighting/We honor all those who have died/For the cause of freedom.”
  • Shirley Graham DuBois, and Kwame Nkrumah
    Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor
    Africa and the Pan-African History of Black Studies
    11 Mar 2026
    This lecture was delivered on February 3, 2026, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada) for the monthly series “Black History and the Project of Black Studies.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us