Why IPMSA exists

IPMSA is an educational research centre working at the intersection of politics, communication, and marketing. Political marketing — how political actors research, position, and communicate with the public — is a well-established field of study elsewhere in the world. On the African continent, it remains underdeveloped as an academic discipline, even as campaigns, parties, and public institutions practise it every election cycle. IPMSA exists to close that gap.

We do this in three ways. Our research arm produces scholarship grounded in African political and cultural realities, rather than importing frameworks wholesale from elsewhere. Our policy work turns that research into guidance that parties, campaign teams, and public bodies can actually use. And our advocacy pushes for political marketing to be recognised and taught as its own discipline within African universities and research institutions.

IPMSA is intentionally pan-African in outlook: our interest is the continent’s political marketing landscape as a whole, not any single country or election.