The New Pour Summit ’26 has named Pop Culture Varsity (POKV), the cultural strategy, marketing and innovation school founded by Franklin Ozekhome, as a Knowledge Partner for its July 25 gathering, bringing cultural intelligence into discussions about the future of Africa’s beverage industry.
The partnership will strengthen the summit’s focus on how changing consumer behaviour, cultural shifts and emerging trends are influencing brand strategy, innovation and growth across African beverage markets.
POKV positions itself as Africa’s school of cultural strategy, marketing and innovation, preparing strategists, marketers and creators to understand culture as a commercial and strategic resource. Its programmes span behavioural insights, trendspotting, cultural foresight, brand strategy and platform thinking, with an emphasis on Africa’s diverse cultural landscape.
For beverage companies, those capabilities are becoming increasingly relevant. Consumer decisions across African markets are being shaped by more than price, product availability and traditional demographic categories. Music, nightlife, digital communities, wellness, creators, changing social identities and evolving ideas of status and belonging are increasingly influencing what people drink, where they drink and the brands with which they identify.
These shifts have implications beyond advertising. They can affect product development, flavour innovation, packaging, drinking occasions, brand positioning and route-to-market decisions.
As Knowledge Partner, POKV will support The New Pour Summit’s commitment to culture-led thinking as beverage businesses confront increasingly complex and volatile operating environments.
The partnership also reflects the wider theme of The New Pour Summit ’26, “Liquid Resilience: Africa Future-Proofing Beverage Brands in Africa’s VUCA Market.” The summit is designed to examine how beverage companies can respond to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity across the continent.Understanding cultural change is increasingly part of that challenge.
Africa is not a single consumer market, and strategies built around broad assumptions about an “African consumer” can overlook significant differences between countries, cities, generations and communities. For beverage businesses, the ability to identify emerging cultural signals before they become established market behaviours can influence decisions about which products to develop, how brands communicate and where future growth may emerge.
Founded by global strategy consultant and foresight leader Franklin Ozekhome, POKV builds on the legacy of Bschool, an earlier strategy education platform that trained hundreds of strategists and developed an alumni network spanning Africa, Europe and North America. Its work has also extended into corporate programmes across FMCG, finance, entertainment and technology.
The New Pour Summit ’26 will bring together more than 20 speakers from across African markets for discussions covering market intelligence, channels and distribution, product innovation, capital and investment, advertising, brand and marketing, culture and consumer trends, and business turnaround strategies.
The summit will take place on July 25 in a hybrid format, combining an in-person gathering in Nairobi with online participation. Through the POKV partnership, cultural intelligence will form part of the summit’s wider examination of how African beverage companies can build brands and strategies capable of responding to rapidly changing markets. For an industry accustomed to measuring what consumers buy, the next competitive advantage may increasingly depend on understanding the cultural forces shaping why they buy it.
Africa’s beverage future is being shaped now. Be in the room where the ideas, people and strategies driving what comes next converge.
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Read More:
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