Corporate Brand, Hegemony and the Performing Arts: An Insight Into Underdevelopment, Neo-Liberalism and Entertainment in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The modern digital world has engendered a lot of innovations in terms of exchange of ideas and culture. This is coupled with the fact that globalization has accelerated the way goods and services move around the world thus ushering in an age of liberalism. Within this mix, developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan African have had to contend with the intricacies and complexity of global neo-liberalism foisted on its young citizens, most of whom find themselves immersed in the vortex of unemployment, bad political leadership, conflict and collapse of basic infrastructure. In an attempt to find other means of realizing their life’s ambitions, most of them have embraced the method of using their talent and ingenuity to appropriate wealth and fame; ideals denied them as a result of the pall of underdevelopment. It in this regard that individuals and corporate bodies have thrust up the idea of reality Tv as a quick solution to socio-economic empowerment in the continent. This paper examines the phenomenon of reality television in Africa and concludes that it is a product of neo-liberalism whose quick ascendancy in the continent has been propelled by the challenging vagaries of underdevelopment.

Key words: Corporate Brand, Underdevelopment, Neo-liberalism and Entertainment