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Country foCus Marketing channels The entire education the bay is impressive, you see expensive being revised and teachers are receiving infrastructure is luxury cars on the streets and people are high-quality training. This couldn’t happen sooner as those being rehabilitated beautifully dressed,” she said. businesses operating in the country cite a Out with the old; Education is where lack of skills as a major obstacle to doing it starts business. The country’s labour force has medium countrywide is radio, according After 27 years of conflict shattered the limited technical skills, English language in with the new? to a BBC country report. country’s education infrastructure, the ability and managerial expertise. More than half of Angola’s population government has identified education as Many companies setting up in Angola of 21-million is estimated to live on less a priority, according to the independent have to invest heavily in educating and than US$1,25 a day, according to figures news website, Angola Today. About 89% training their Angolan staff. “Only the really It’s easy to be seduced by the allure of the African digital released by the World Bank. Despite of the population is totally illiterate and wealthy have had proper schooling, very PHOTOS: istock photo, getty/gallo images/supplied growth story as a continent-wide revolution that is exciting this, Luanda is becoming a playground of five percent are functionally illiterate. often in SA or Europe, otherwise there’s consumers and helping marketers to build brands. But conspicuous consumption, with upmarket With the backing of international not a lot of education,” says Daniel John restaurants changing over US$50 institutions, foreign investment and local of Daniel John Consulting, which helps while ‘new school’ digital marketing is all the rage, is it wise for a burger, said Jennifer Coplyn, an and international NGOs, the government companies to enter the Angolan market. to neglect tried-and-trusted ‘old school’ channels? international business visitor who was in is now rehabilitating the entire education “Even basic skills are quite hard to find. the capital recently to assess its potential infrastructure. Thousands of schools are For most of your projects you need skills for a fast-food outlet. “The skyline along being rebuilt countrywide, curriculums are from elsewhere.” Young, urbanised aurav Singh, Chief Digital audiences embrace Officer at Scan group, a Kenya- 44 strategicmarketingafrica Second quarter 2014 digital strategies g based marketing services group, noted recently that traditional agencies remain heavily focused on old-school media. “We call them the dinosaurs and the time will come when these dinosaurs will roll over and start realising that, in a country like Kenya, there is 44% connectivity to digital devices and the cost of bandwidth has gone down … yet we are only getting 2 to 3% of total ad spend [going] towards digital.” Singh said he believed it would still be some time before traditional advertising and marketing ‘agencies adopted digital strategies on a large scale. in an interview with Smart Monkey tv, an african-based Web television channel, he predicted it would take “maybe two years” to double the current rate of spend. Second quarter 2014 strategicmarketingafrica 45 42-44_Country_focus2 .indd 44 2014/04/25 10:14 AM 45-47_Communication_channels 2.indd 45 2014/04/25 10:15 AM