African Stories Need African Visuals
There are objects that become so familiar that people stop noticing how much they say about the society around them. In Zambia, the Chibuku carton is one of those objects. It can sit quietly on a shop shelf or on a table at a gathering, looking like an ordinary package, yet for many Zambians its distinctive appearance, its familiar instructions and the ritual of shaking it before opening can immediately bring back memories of people, places and conversations. Chibuku is therefore more than something contained inside a carton; it has become part of a visual landscape that many people recognise from everyday life.
That is what makes its story particularly interesting at a time when artificial intelligence is changing the way images are produced. A designer anywhere in the world can now type a few words into an image generator and receive a remarkably detailed picture representing "Africa" within seconds. The technology is impressive, but it raises a difficult question for anyone concerned about African storytelling: if the person creating the image does not understand the place, the people or the history behind the story, how accurately can the picture represent them?
The story inside a Chibuku carton
The history of Chibuku in Zambia goes back to the 1950s, when Max Heinrich developed a commercial version of traditional opaque beer. National Breweries says the brand grew from this tradition and became one of its best-known products. The company describes Chibuku Shake Shake as an opaque beer made from ingredients including maize, sorghum malt, yeast and water, with the traditional carton requiring shaking before opening.
That instruction might appear insignificant, but it became one of the most memorable characteristics of the product. Unlike a conventional beverage that can simply be opened and poured, Chibuku asks the consumer to participate in the experience. The carton is picked up, shaken and opened, turning an ordinary act of consumption into a small ritual that has been repeated countless times.
Good visual design often works in exactly this way. It does not simply tell people what a product is; it gives them something they can remember. The shape of a package, the typography, the colours, the sound associated with it and even the way people interact with it can become part of a brand's identity. In Chibuku's case, the product became closely connected with social occasions and sharing, helping it occupy a familiar place in the everyday lives of its consumers.
When "African" becomes too general
Now imagine asking someone who has never lived in Zambia to create an image representing a typical Zambian drinking experience. They might search through stock photography, look at popular advertising campaigns or ask an AI system to generate an image of "African people enjoying traditional beer". The resulting picture might contain attractive people, warm lighting, traditional clothing and an impressive landscape, and technically it might look convincing.
The problem is that convincing is not the same as authentic.
Africa is not a single visual identity. Zambia has its own landscapes, languages, architecture, clothing, music, food, humour, social habits and history, just as Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal and South Africa have their own distinctive identities. Even within Zambia, the visual character of Lusaka is different from Kabwe, Livingstone or a rural community in another province.
When these differences disappear, African people can end up looking at images that claim to represent them but do not actually resemble the world they know.
This is one of the great challenges facing contemporary visual storytelling. An image can contain all the expected symbols of Africa while still feeling strangely disconnected from African life. A market does not become authentic simply because it contains colourful fabrics, and a village does not become Zambian simply because someone has added a few traditional objects to the scene.
Authenticity often lives in much smaller details.
The beauty of ordinary Zambian life
A Zambian visual story does not always need Victoria Falls, wildlife or a spectacular sunset to make it interesting. It might be a photograph of a crowded minibus station early in the morning, a group of schoolchildren walking home, an old shop sign that has survived for decades or a musician recording a song in a modest home studio.
It might even be a Chibuku carton resting on a table while several people talk about football, music, family and the day's events.
These scenes may appear ordinary to the people who experience them every day, but that ordinariness is exactly what gives them cultural value. Everyday life is rarely preserved carefully while it is happening, yet decades later those ordinary photographs can become some of the most valuable records of a society.
A photograph of an old Zambian street may tell future generations what the buildings looked like. A picture of a local barber shop may reveal hairstyles and fashion trends. An old concert poster can show how musicians promoted their work before social media transformed the industry. Even the packaging of familiar products can reveal how consumer culture changed over time.
The ordinary is often history in disguise.
Then artificial intelligence arrived
Generative AI has introduced a completely new dimension to this conversation because it has dramatically reduced the time required to produce images. A young designer with a laptop or smartphone can now explore dozens of concepts without having to create every element manually. A musician can experiment with album artwork, a small business can visualise an advertising campaign and a blogger can develop an image for a story without hiring an entire production team.
For African creatives who have historically worked with limited resources, that can be enormously empowering.
But AI also has limitations. It does not walk through Zambia's streets, attend a traditional ceremony or grow up surrounded by the visual references that shape a person's understanding of home. It generates images from patterns and information, while the human creator brings personal experience and cultural understanding to the process.
That distinction becomes particularly important when an AI system produces something that looks plausible but contains subtle cultural mistakes. A garment may be wrong, an architectural feature may belong to another region, a traditional object may be used in the wrong context or a supposedly African environment may actually be an imaginary mixture of several countries.
The image can be technically impressive while culturally confused.
The designer's role is changing
This does not mean African designers should reject AI. In fact, the technology could become one of the most useful tools available to them if it is treated as an assistant rather than an authority.
A designer who understands Zambia can use AI to generate ideas and then apply human judgement to those ideas. They can correct the details, replace inaccurate elements, introduce authentic photographs, adjust the colours and typography, and make sure the final composition communicates something meaningful to the intended audience.
In that kind of workflow, the machine provides speed while the designer provides context.
That may become one of the most important creative skills of the coming years. Knowing how to generate an image will become increasingly common, but knowing whether the image actually tells the right story will remain a human responsibility.
Africa must become the author of its own visual archive
There is also a much larger opportunity waiting beyond advertising and commercial design. African photographers, designers, filmmakers, musicians and digital creators are documenting a continent undergoing enormous social and technological change, and much of what they capture today will eventually become part of the historical record.
A young photographer taking pictures of Kabwe today may unknowingly be documenting buildings that will disappear. A designer recreating an old Zambian television programme may be preserving memories that are slowly fading. A musician creating artwork around the streets where they grew up may be recording a visual history of a community that future generations will never experience in exactly the same way.
This is why African creatives should not underestimate the importance of documenting ordinary life. The visual archive of a country should not consist only of official ceremonies, famous personalities and tourist attractions; it should also contain the streets, businesses, schools, homes, fashions, advertisements and everyday objects that give a society its character.
The world does not need another generic Africa
The global creative industry does not need another image in which Africa is reduced to a collection of familiar stereotypes. What it needs is greater variety, greater specificity and more stories told from within the communities where those stories originate.
A Zambian designer should be able to use the same AI tools, editing software and digital platforms available to creators in London, New York or Tokyo while producing work that carries unmistakable traces of Zambia. The objective is not to isolate African creativity from the rest of the world, but to ensure that global technology does not erase local identity.
Chibuku provides a surprisingly powerful lesson here. Its identity became memorable not because it tried to pretend to be something else, but because it grew from a product and tradition that already meant something to the people who encountered it. The carton, the shaking ritual and the social experience around the drink became part of a recognisable cultural picture.
African designers have an opportunity to do something similar with the stories they tell.
They can photograph what others overlook, preserve what might otherwise disappear and turn familiar places and objects into powerful visual narratives. They can use AI without allowing AI to decide what Africa should look like.
And perhaps that is the real message hidden in that familiar carton sitting on a Zambian table: the most powerful African images may not be the ones that look the most exotic, but the ones that make an African viewer stop and say, "I know this place. I have been there."
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