By Larry Khumalo-MacArthur, Managing Director: Africa at Weber Shandwick
In a world where a speech at Davos can alter a business’s balance sheet in Africa, fostering an informed and empowered citizenry is our most critical socioeconomic defence.
As we near the end of the first quarter of the year, it feels like so much has happened locally and globally that we can’t possibly have been going on for just about three months. There was a time when global tectonic shifts felt distant, the domain of high-level discussions for diplomats and multinational CEOs. That time is over – we are compelled to operate under a new assumption. There is no longer any meaningful distance between a conference room in Davos and a marketplace in Bulawayo, Lagos or Nairobi. The threads that link us are now immediate, electronic, with direct consequences.
Consider, for instance, the well-regarded speech at Davos from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. He declared the end of the nice story – the rules-based global order, announcing our entry into a “brutal reality” where great powers are unconstrained. This is the kind of earth-shattering pronouncement that, in today’s world, is more than a headline. Poignant as it was, its direct impact both shocked and prepared the farmer in Pongola, whose access to international markets was reshaped overnight. Most recently, the essence of Carney’s words can be seen in this new global reality where unrest in the Gulf Region boldly flags the merge of geopolitics and the global economy.
The Local Cost of a Globalised World
This inextricable link is visible everywhere. A shift in U.S. trade policy around an agreement like the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) can mean the difference between viability and bankruptcy for a textile manufacturer in Maseru. A debate in a European capital over pharmaceutical patents, driven by domestic politics, can directly determine whether a citizen in Kampala has access to life-saving medication through programs like PEPFAR. A new favourable tariff regime from China for Africa could suddenly open a significant new market for African wine exporters operating on the thinnest margins. The world has changed. Economic interdependence is now a blatant tool of strategic influence. And for any African business and economy, navigating this landscape has become about tracking and anticipating geopolitical currents that can buoy or sink your enterprise.
The Information Paradox
If intelligence is the first line of defence, then we face a critical paradox on the continent. Like everyone else, we are struggling to find the right signal in the overwhelming noise of the global information age. The deluge of misinformation and shallow commentary makes it difficult to single out what truly matters. Yet this universal challenge is compounded by our own unique structural hurdles. For millions of entrepreneurs, students, and citizens, the high cost of data and inconsistent digital infrastructure pose barriers to entry. And that’s just the access part of it. Knowing what to do with this vast amount of available information is another concern. Access to the kind of deep, credible analysis needed to understand these complex global shifts and draw meaningful insights from them to help us navigate the world today is often further, if not a luxury. We have so much, yet so little. This “knowledge inequality” puts us on the back foot, limiting our ability to react, adapt, and seize opportunities in a world that moves at the speed of light.
The New Social Contract is Real
How, then, do we empower Africa’s citizens to know and to act? If an informed populace is our best defence, who is responsible for fostering it? The answer cannot rest with any single sector. It requires a new social contract around information, a shared responsibility between our most powerful actors.
Businesses have a profound strategic interest in operating within a stable, informed society. The urgent charge for the private sector is that, beyond their immediate commercial goals, they should facilitate a vibrant, independent, and credible media ecosystem, whether through direct funding, advertising, or partnerships. Informed citizens make great consumers, and informed consumers make great citizens.
Government has a fundamental duty to empower citizens. This means treating digital infrastructure as the critical public utility it is, working to make data access universal and affordable, and further building citizens’ capacity to meaningfully engage with the vast amount of information available. It means championing media literacy in our schools and protecting the freedom of the press, which serves as a vital check on power and a conduit for truth. And civil society, from community-based organisations to think tanks to organised labour, has a crucial role to play in grassroots education, translating this complex global reality for every citizen, and in demanding accountability from both the public and private sectors.
The era of splendid isolation is dangerous and contrary to this connected world. The task ahead is to build a continent of informed and engaged citizens who understand the global forces that shape their local lives. In this new reality of “value-based realism,” knowledge is not just power—it is our primary tool for survival, resilience, and ultimately, prosperity.
Larry Khumalo-MacArthur is the Managing Director in charge of Weber Shandwick’s Africa operations. An award-winning practitioner, he has nearly two decades of experience in reputation management, providing senior counsel to clients on strategy, communication, executive engagement, issues and crisis management, and public affairs. He judged the PRISM Awards, the PRCA Awards and the SABRE Awards, lending his voice to determine the PR industry’s best work across Africa and beyond. Larry is a Monash University alumnus, and outside of work, he reads and writes fiction, plays tennis, and, years later, is still ‘learning’ to play the guitar.
