It is clear that in changing the brand of Africa, or the brand of individual African countries, we have to face the current reality with honesty, says Miller Matola, CEO of the International Marketing Council of South Africa.

This was one of the core insights to emerge from the Brand Africa summit hosted by the International Marketing Council of South Africa last week and attended by some 300 delegates including global thought leaders on country branding and African development.

If we are not doing well, we have to fix what is wrong. That is the task of our governments and we, as citizens, have to hold them accountable for that. Without an improvement of the reality, the perceptions will not change fundamentally.

Secondly, we need to bring government, civil society and the private sector together and use the synergy between them to leverage our collective efforts.

The activities of our big companies are visible internationally. They are globally active as they trade on foreign stock exchanges, invest in foreign markets and employ staff in those countries. Their actions and activities contribute towards the perception of our countries.

Governments need to work with them, learn from them and support them. Public private partnerships need to begin with the core task of marketing the country and its national corporate champions simultaneously.

Governments and the private sector are locked in an inextricable relationship of inter-dependence. And we need to bring civil society and make it a three-way relationship. Civil society provides our ears on the ground, our anchor to the people of the country and the continent.

Those in civil society listen on our behalf to the concerns of the people, who make up the most valuable part of our brand. Clearly, we need to monitor and measure more.

The reality we must face is that despite the hosting of a hugely successful World Cup, South Africa slipped nine rankings on the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness index for 2011, released last week. While this is largely due to strides made by other countries; we need to focus on continuous improvement to stay abreast or ahead of the pack.

Anholt's nation-branding index will be released in a few weeks. And so will be the World Bank's Doing Business index. We have to evaluate the results, not by discrediting methodologies or looking for hidden agendas, as is often done by some of our leaders, but in facing the underlying causes of shifts.

We need to scrutinise what practical measures can be taken to change these results and what we have put in place to tackle the challenges.

To quote Anholt: "Countries have to produce continuous dramatic evidence that it deserves the reputation it desires." To do that, we need to showcase what we have done to improve the living conditions of our people.

We need to demonstrate how we intend to create jobs and how we are going to attract more investment. It is not good enough to speak about our intentions — we need to show actual proof of delivery and achievement.

There seems to be agreement that something needs to be done beyond blaming each other or others for the fact that Africa is still synonymous with crisis, war and poverty. Blame is not the solution to Africa's brand.

For Brand South Africa, this open and honest approach to building a reputation (brand) has begun to bear fruit. Our work at forums such as the World Economic Forum is but one example of where this robust and direct form of engagement was able to shift agendas and lift SA's profile as a market.

A brand is essentially comprised of many components. Reputation, particularly by stakeholders, is critical. So is culture, or — in the case of a country brand — the way the people represent the brand through their behaviour, actions and conversations.

One of the common refrains of the summit was about the importance of the quality of leadership in determining perceptions of the brand. I could not agree more with Jay Naidoo's assertion that we need the kind of leadership in which performance and accountability are the key ingredients.

Economist and author Dambisa Moyo is right when she says "we don't have a strategy, we let others do it". She was referring to Africa's permanent challenge of asking for aid while trying to convince foreign companies to invest.

Her particularly harsh criticism of African leaders was echoed by almost every single speaker. As Simon Anholt, global authority on nation branding, said, the image of a country that receives aid is fundamentally different from a country that has the attributes required to lure investors.

Anholt was vocal in criticising the way governments communicate about their countries: "People instinctively ignore governmental propaganda, because it has no relevance for them."

Many of the speakers at the summit called for African presidents to stop bragging about their government s' self-defined achievements at international gatherings, but instead to focus on how Africa can be more relevant in a global economy, in a global discourse.

The key word here is relevance. We know Africa matters, now we just need to work on making it relevant to us and for others. To do that, we have to listen more, engage more, and build more and better networking opportunities within Africa.

What is clear is that this cannot be achieved in a vacuum. The environments created by governments to deliver on these issues are critical to the successes we will be able to achieve.

Removing the labels of famine, disease and poverty from Africa requires a proactive, committed and well- defined approach by the continent's leaders to create an environment with the policies, systems and processes that deliver on the overall investment case.

Much has been said and written about the miraculous and sustained growth of China since it opened to the global economy in 1980.

China is now South Africa's biggest trading partner. China and South Africa are now acknowledged as the key countries driving Africa's development. South Africa has the experience and local knowledge and China has the development assistance, infrastructure experience and know-how.

Africa is seen increasingly as the last frontier of the global economy and has moved closer to the centre of the global investment radar. It represents the world's third largest market after China and India. It is now down to how we are going to do things and what is going to unlock the African miracle as China's was unlocked 30 years ago.

Unisa's Prof Hellicy Ngambi captured the African continent's immediate priority in improving our brand reputation: "We need to stop rewarding mediocrity and start defining, and then rewarding, excellence."