How did the soda giant from America come to be seen as"local" in Africa? And what has the impact been on the continent for worse and for better?Author-historian Sara Byala had an epiphany about Coca-Cola's role in African life and culture in 2003. She and a group of fellow graduate students had found their way across Mali's Saharan Desert via an arduous journey that involved a broken-down jeep followed by bouts of hiking and hitchhiking.
"The blog is aptly named," Byala affirmed in a telephone conversation about how Coca-Cola and Africa became so intertwined — and the pluses and minuses of their shared history.Byala also explained how the American multinational company made its soda seem"local" in even the most out-of-the-way areas in Africa; how the company dealt with divestment and apartheid; and how the company is addressing health and environmental challenges.It's huge.
According to official Coca-Cola history, the beverage itself didn't appear on the continent until 1928, but I found records of it being sold as early as 1909 at a soda fountain in Cape Town. Coca-Cola bottles get repurposed all over Africa in all sorts of ways. In this case, they were used to sell small amounts of petrol, presumably because that quantity is all people either needed or could afford.
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