Soweto in a nutshell

South Africa’s black urban areas are still the biggest untapped market in with most of the black buying power still largely located within townships. Just as Paris, London and New York the trendsetters in the west are, so are Lagos, Cairo and Soweto the trendsetters in Africa. Your focus should be first on Soweto and if the product or the brand gets traction then you can move to other townships. As the saying goes – if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, so is the truth about establishing a product in Soweto. Soweto is more than a township, it’s already more than a suburb as well, it is a city on its own. Up to 4.5 m people are residing in Soweto, that’s 10% of South Africa’s population – there is more people living in Soweto that there is white people in Soweto or people living in Soweto than New Zeeland or Ireland or closer to home than in Botswana or Namibia or. It is small country on its own with its own way of doing things. Sowetans are spending up to R10.5 Billion annually outside Soweto. Various organisations estimate that there is up to R18Billion unbanked money in Soweto due to the lack of banks.
Soweto love new products and it does not mean you can used it as a dumping ground for your brands or products because they are sophisticated, critical, sassy and are not easily fooled. When township people are taking up international products people are very patronising by saying that they are Westernizing – not so – they take the product or brand and adopt it by their way of living and calling the process ‘they are Sowetonising the product’ and through this action they influence black consumer patterns en shapes black urban lifestyles.