The “African” Font That Isn’t African at All

You’ve seen it before — bold, jagged lettering used on movie posters, safari tours, charity campaigns, and restaurant signs. The so-called “African” font: earthy tones, tribal patterns, uneven strokes. It’s meant to evoke the continent’s “vibe” — wild, raw, authentic.

But here’s the catch: most of those fonts weren’t designed in Africa at all.
They were designed in America, by designers who’ve often never set foot on the continent.

And that simple fact says a lot about how Western media continues to shape — and stereotype — African identity through design.

When Aesthetic Becomes Assumption

The “African-style” font as we know it didn’t emerge from African typographic traditions. It emerged from Hollywood.

Think of posters for films like The Lion King, Out of Africa, or Madagascar. Each one uses typefaces that share a certain look — irregular strokes, uneven letterforms, and earthy, ochre tones. The design shorthand says “Africa”, but what it’s really saying is “a Western fantasy of Africa”.

These fonts are often bundled on stock websites or in font libraries under names like Safari, Tribal, or Zebrawood. They’re built to communicate exoticism, wilderness, or adventure — not the diverse, contemporary realities of 54 different countries.

In short, they’re not cultural representation. They’re branding.

The Problem With Design Shortcuts

Typography is storytelling. It carries history, emotion, and identity — whether you realise it or not.

So when a single “African” font becomes the go-to design choice for anything related to the entire continent, it flattens centuries of culture into a cartoon aesthetic. It tells audiences that Africa is one monolithic “vibe”, not a tapestry of languages, scripts, and design traditions.

Even worse, it continues the colonial-era habit of defining Africa through an outsider’s lens — one that’s exotic, primitive, or untamed.

The irony? While American studios were designing these “tribal” fonts, African designers were already creating contemporary typefaces inspired by Akan symbols, Amharic script, Nsibidi, Ge’ez, N’Ko, and Arabic calligraphy — fonts that rarely make it into Western media kits or corporate brand decks.

Designing Without Context

To be clear, the issue isn’t just about who designs a font — it’s how it’s used.
A font inspired by traditional patterns or shapes isn’t inherently offensive. But when it’s applied carelessly — slapped onto film titles, travel brochures, or charity posters — it becomes a shorthand for “otherness”.

It’s the design equivalent of using a drumbeat to signal “Africa” in a movie soundtrack.
It’s lazy, outdated, and reductive.

Good design requires context. It requires understanding. And if a font is being used to “represent Africa”, that understanding should come from African designers, artists, and typographers themselves.

Reclaiming the Narrative

The good news is that this is already changing.
Across Africa, designers are reclaiming their visual identities — not through imitation of Western styles, but by drawing from their own heritage in new, innovative ways.

Studios in Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town and Accra are creating fonts rooted in local languages and aesthetics. Projects like African Typeface Design and TypeFoundry ZA are reshaping what African design looks like in the global space.

It’s design by Africans, for everyone — not design by Americans, for Western expectations of what “Africa” should feel like.

Why It Matters

Fonts aren’t neutral. They communicate ideas long before you read the words they spell out.
When the same visual clichés are used again and again, they reinforce the same narrow story — one where Africa is exotic, undeveloped, or “wild”.

Designers hold power in shaping perception. And that means questioning where our fonts, colour palettes and “themes” really come from — and whose story they tell.

Because cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation often look the same on the surface — it’s the intention and understanding beneath that makes all the difference.

So next time you see a “tribal” font used to represent Africa, ask yourself — is this really African design, or just another American interpretation of it?