Hosted by Brand South Africa and the Brand Leadership Academy and featuring several high-profile local and international speakers... "Africa is richer than you think, and it is certainly not a 'media dark' continent.."

Today, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy released a Media Monitor Report on "Expo Shanghai 2010 - Flaunting Nations' Beauty through the Practice of Nation Branding".

"One of the messages we want to spread through the forum is that corporate brands are very important in developing nation brands and nations' economies," says Miller, adding that it is through telling these stories that Africa can be "positioned as the next growth frontier in terms of investment and business".

Sanctions are a hard form of economic power that Joseph Nye discusses in chapter three of his new book, The Future of Power, and a topic that is discussed widely today in relation to Syria. Many policy makers are pondering whether sanctions will be useful in convincing President al-Assad to stop killing his people.

Deputy Minister Fransman and I have used the chief instruments of Public Diplomacy such as lectures, electronic media, publications etc. to put across and make known South Africa's engagements and thoughts on the Libyan crisis....I believe ours tonight is to make some reflections on and around the developments in relation to the crisis in Libya.

Yet, it is this role that allowed her [Michelle Obama] to come to South Africa as the president’s proxy on the ‘soft power’ pilgrimage that was surely intended to bring her country closer to South Africa.

The government should have used the white paper to hone "smart power", the term coined by Joseph Nye Jnr. in his book, The Future of Power. Nye says that countries using smart power have "the ability to combine hard and soft power resources into effective strategies". South Africa's foreign policy should be calculated to produce desired outcomes and benefits for the country, especially on the continent.

Our public diplomacy was a failure. Public diplomacy is about winning hearts and minds and is therefore an important tool of diplomatic influence. SA's conviction that the AU roadmap is the best blueprint for engaging Libya, and Gaddafi, suffered at the hands of poor public diplomacy.