teaching, and enabling. A product that makes people feel smarter, stronger, and more capable will always outlast one that leaves them feeling confused or inadequate.
The challenge is to ask: does our brand make customers feel smarter, stronger, more capable? Or do we overwhelm them with complexity?
Relatedness: Belonging and Connection
Perhaps the most powerful pillar in today’ s fast-growing consumer markets is relatedness; the need to feel part of something larger.
Remember the " Share a Coke " initiative that replaced the iconic logo on bottles with popular names, nicknames, and phrases like " Friend " or " Soulmate." This simple twist transformed a solo drink into a social ritual, urging people to find bottles for loved ones and share them during gatherings. Through this action, customers were creating and sharing moments that strengthened relationships.
Dairyland also achieves this at a more intimate scale. By connecting their ice cream with joyful social occasions, birthdays, brunches, and family moments, the brand becomes part of shared rituals. It is less about the tub in your freezer and more about the people gathered around it.
Relatedness is built by embedding the brand in people’ s stories. Beyond this, relatedness is also shaping sustainability initiatives across the region. When a brand’ s purpose, such as reforestation, water stewardship, or even energy management, is authentically tied to the customer’ s values, loyalty grows not from discounts to alignment of identity.
For executives everywhere, the implications are clear: autonomy, competence, and relatedness are not academic abstractions; they are practical levers for strategy. And this is not a theory in isolation. A strong example of SDT in action can be found in the Schneider Electric Sustainability School, which equips students, professionals, and executives with practical skills in energy efficiency and carbon management.
By building knowledge and confidence, the program nurtures competence, enabling participants to take meaningful action on sustainability within their organisations. At the same time, it fosters relatedness by connecting learners to a global community of peers and experts, while also supporting autonomy by providing decision-makers with the tools to design their own sustainability strategies.
SDT in this case simply moves from being a marketing tool to becoming a strategic framework for shaping corporate purpose, stakeholder ecosystems, and societal impact. And its impact can be expanded to shape employee and partner interactions too.
Autonomy in the workplace can mean flexible models that allow people to innovate. Competence is reinforced through ongoing training, mentorship, and reskilling. Relatedness is built when organisations align with causes employees and stakeholders believe in, whether sustainability, inclusion, or national pride.
SDT can guide not only customer engagement, but leadership, culture, and innovation.
The C-Suite Imperative
Africa’ s demographic trajectory makes SDT more urgent than ever. By 2050, the continent will be home to one in four of the world’ s people, the majority under 25. This generation craves autonomy through self-expression and personalization, values competence in products and services that make life easier, and builds relatedness in digital communities that transcend borders.
Brands that understand this will thrive. A telco that empowers choice through flexible data packages, a fintech that makes saving and investing simple, or a fashion brand that ties heritage to contemporary style, all are tapping into the same psychological drivers.
The future of African marketing will not be defined by the next viral campaign or product launch. It will be defined by how well brands meet these timeless human needs. Because in the end, customers don’ t just buy products. They buy into how those products make them feel, and the brands that understand this will not only own the market share, but mindshare and heart-share too.
While discounts and clever advertising have their place in the marketing playbook, customers will choose to stay loyal to brands that make them feel free to choose, confident in their abilities, and connected to a community.
Self-Determination Theory gives leaders a framework to deliver on that promise. For executives navigating fastchanging markets, this may just be the most valuable strategy of all.
Alice Ngatia is a Senior Marketing Executive & Sustainability Specialist with 18 + years of experience in helping brands WIN in the hearts & minds of customers. You can commune with her via email at: Alice. Ngatia @ gmail. com.