Few weeks ago, Africa was constantly under the spotlight as the soccer world cup kicked off for the first time in an African country. And that might be just the beginning. In the not-so-far future, the cradle of humanity will likely steal the spotlight from Asia as an emerging economic power. As businesses are spawning everywhere, the challenge for designers to come with ever original and fresh logos will be getting harder and harder.

Here is a roundup of logos I managed to dig from Logopond and other sources for inspirational purposes.

Undoubtedly the most popular of the lot. A dynamic logo that, save its redundancy, embodies perfectly the African spirit. Lightyears better than this horror.

The amount of details will definitely be lost in smaller versions of the logo. Still it is a solid concept with a good execution.

No bells, no whistles. Lacking originality but getting the job done.

While the concept is quite similar to the second logo in the list, the swing makes all the difference.

It’s corn, and it looks like Africa. I am not a big fan of bold design directions, but this one looks rather fine to me.

The color choice is brilliant and the iconic minimalism wins me. I don’t quite get the central icon though…

The dots make perfect sense: they represent network nodes and scream ‘web’ all over.

Now that I have seen this one, I can’t help seeing a foot every time I look at Africa.

A perfect logo for a diamond excavating firm… if they have enough time to care about logos, that is…

The map that doubles as a head (look at the upper right side) makes this logo a winner!

PS: I have a tendency to lament the current state of design blogs, particularly the daily flood of inspirational list posts. I admit that I failed resisting the temptation, again.