Strategic Communications Outlook for 2026 By Sola Abulu

January 2, 2026 – On behalf of the team at Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A), I would like to say a big Happy New Year and Welcome to 2026!! 2025 was a good year for us because we were able to develop a unique brand voice for our training work and also for the consulting arm, which is our core business activity. During the year we worked on communications strategy framework development projects, communications competence capacity building and brand communications initiatives. Our Training arm continued with our monthly live online ZOOM courses and consolidated our learning offerings available via our e-learning platform learn.solaabuluassociates.com

• In 2026, we hope to consolidate the gains of our operations by expanding our consulting work into the heart of the organized private sector of Nigeria (with a strong focus on the energy and related industries) to position actively as the partner of choice – for world class strategic communications advisory and consulting expertise; audience and stakeholder management problem solving initiatives, communications competence development, capacity building; brand strategy and amplification initiatives.

• We also aim to strengthen capacity in crisis and reputation management by working with corporate communications teams in private and public sector and leveraging opportunities for knowledge sharing and thought-partnering on strategic projects that require a high-level understanding in terms of managing external risk and delivering results that matter to the business and the organization

Having managed SA&A for the past 5 years and working actively through last year in particular, there are a number of opportunity areas that professionals, employers and recruiters need to watch out for in 2026.

2026 Opportunity Areas

1. Recruitment: HR recruiters need to seek out a clearer understanding of the spectrum of the profession to ensure that they are recruiting into roles appropriately. The balance between strategic roles and tactical operations needs to be understood and well-managed. Getting the right level of expertise into communications leadership roles is absolutely necessary for communications excellence in 2026
2. Skills and Competence: Communications professionals need to ensure they have the right level of skills and expertise to manage complexity and handle whatever comes their way in 2026. The pattern of 2025 has shown that communications will be more sensitive, reputation risk for major brands is more unpredictable and issues can pop out of nowhere and snowball into a crisis within hours. The ability to manage this risk depends on the capacity at hand before the problem arises.
3. Crisis Response: Old-school PR approach does not help in contemporary issues or crisis management. Understanding social media complexity, the behaviour of online communities; the nature of social media activism; the evolving nature of the media landscape and how to leverage the nexus of social and traditional media is key for success and effective risk management.
4. Leadership: There are many communications professionals out there but not enough leaders. Leadership training needs to be embedded in the development plan for all communications professionals -especially those operating as one-man teams in their organizations.
5. Professionalism: The need for professionalism and a better understanding of the spectrum of the Communications profession is urgently needed in the public and private sector in Nigeria. The lack of understanding of the wide spectrum and competence levels of the specialist and generalist areas of the profession results in a situation where apples are recruited where oranges are needed. It also means that Communications professionals take on roles without fully understanding their skills fit or required expertise levels – or even if they have passion or interest to learn and develop new skills. The belief that anything can be learnt on the job is also a fallacy. Especially when the environment for learning new skills and competencies is absent and there is no one to bridge the knowledge and expertise gap.

SA&A Role in 2026

With all this in consideration, we continue to see a role for ourselves in 2026, in terms of helping communications professionals to learn about the concepts and principles of communication and develop global standard competencies for local adaptation and application. We also see a role for us in 2026 in helping to build strong communications teams within organizations and we will be offering our services to clients in public and private sector who are keen to develop this capacity internally with measurable results.

SA&A focus areas for our consulting work in 2026 will therefore primarily be in the following areas:

1. Brand/Rebranding Strategy
2. Crisis and Reputation Management Strategy and capacity building/training
3. Communications Skills, Talent & Competence Development Programs
4. Change Communications Strategy
5. Communications Risk Managment Strategies for Corporate Clients & Institutions
6. Policy and Public Sector Communications Strategy, Change Management, Implementation and Misinformation & Trust building strategies.
7. Advocacy & Influencing Campaign Strategies & Plans

We also plan to begin to develop more material on NGO/Development Communications for our learning community via our training arms.

Conclusion

Overall, we see a big role and opportunity for Communications to play an even bigger role in corporate business, institutions and public sector governance. The need to maintain share of voice, amplify brand messaging, cut through the noise, own your narrative, protect your reputation, differentiate your brand etc has never been bigger.

We will therefore continue in 2026, to focus on our niche area of expertise – which is helping organizations figure out what they need to do to be more effective in their communications, more visible and differentiated in their business; more trusted by their key stakeholders and  more positively differentiated in the market place and society.

Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A) is a strategy and communications consulting and training firm focused on enabling businesses, brands and organizations to achieve their desired objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation risk management.