Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African
Sara Byala, Hurst, £30
In ‘Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African’, Sara Byala examines the ubiquity of Coke’s products across the continent and what it reveals about development and capitalism.
Coca-Cola is available pretty much everywhere. What intrigued you about its presence in Africa?
I’m originally from South Africa and an Africanist historian by training. When I travelled in Africa as a child, I would collect upcycled items made from Coke cans and bottles. Also, I am not the first person to go somewhere remote in Africa and wonder how there is a cold Coke on sale there. Then, in 2014, I saw a BBC article about how Coca-Cola marketers in South Africa celebrated the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid by making rainbows above downtown Johannesburg using clean water, and a light bulb went off in my head.
