The list is dominated by American firms that took the top seven slots of the 10 best brands

Entrance of the troubled Nakumatt Supermarket at the Westside Mall in Nakuru on July 05, 2017. Photo/Suleiman Mbatiah/Standard

African brands missed out in the latest ranking of 100 best brands globally.

It is a shame for a continent which, however, prides of having some of the best investors in the world with Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, just five positions shy of getting into Forbes’ top 100 billionaires in the world.

The latest Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2017 Ranking, saw American companies dominate the list with technology firm Apple, valued at $184.1 billion (Sh18.4 trillion) topping the list.

It was followed by other Silicon Valley players Google and Microsoft which came second and third respectively.

Out of the top 10 best brands in the world, seven were American, with only Samsung (South Korea), Toyota (Japan) and Mercedes Benz (Germany) spoiling what should otherwise have been an American-only party.

Other American brands that featured among the top 10 best brands were CocaCola, Amazon, Facebook and IBM.

 In total there were 50 American companies in the ranking, with brands from France, Germany, United Kingdom and Italy sharing a good chunk of the remaining half.

“The ranking was based on brand value, with the last brand in the ranking being Lenovo, worth Sh4trillion,” noted the survey

Kenya’s top brand, Safaricom, was recently valued at Sh1 trillion after a rally in its share price which hit Sh25.

This means the telecommunications provider majority-owned by United Kingdom’s Vodafone is yet to qualify for a place on the global stage. 

It is also interesting that most of the big brands such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Toyota, Samsung, and CocaCola are popular in most African countries, particularly Kenya.

Attempts to introduce local competing brands, for example, Kuguru’s soft drinks to rival CocaCola have not been successful.  

 A recent ranking of popular brands in Africa also showed a grim picture where non-African brands dominated.

All-time high

California-based Apple, once again, was ranked the best brand, followed by Google and then Microsoft.

Non-African brands now represent an all-time high of 84 per cent of the Top 100 most Admired Brands and account for 99.25 per cent of the value of the Top 100 Most Valuable Brands in Africa.

 Superbrand has been ranking Kenya’s best brands, and in 2016 the top ten brands in the country were Safaricom’s money transfer service M-Pesa, Emergency medical service provider Kenya Red Cross Society, newspaper Daily Nation. Other popular brands among Kenyans were social media network Facebook, search engine Google, Microsoft, Nakumatt, Citizen TV and Mumias Sugar.

Some of the top ten brands in Kenya, according to Super Brands, are in financial crisis.

Nakumatt is battling closure and has since teamed up with Tuskys in a deal that will see the latter manage its supplies. There is currently no Mumias Sugar on the shelves of most retail stores.

Only M-Pesa, the best performer and which is strongly welded to United Kingdom’s majority shareholder at Vodafone, is still going strong as well as Red Cross Society.

This brings to question the posterity of our homegrown brands.