A friendly reminder that Africa is a continent not a country. Language used is so important when talking about place and space, a subtle change within a sentence can be much more respectful and change the meaning of a sentence. For example, cultural issue and cultural difference, consider what is implied by each. The word issue may have negative connotations where as 'difference' may be neutral.
We are going to discuss, what we believe is a problem many don't recognise, and one that you may be unknowingly perpetuating. However, we also want to point out as much as language is important, context is also important. It is sometimes appropriate to summarise and to address Africa as Africa but consider these;
Does your statement undermine the continent's diversity?
Maps
Did you know the maps you see almost everywhere, and the ones you've grown up looking at are distorted? The most widely used world map is known as the 'Mercator Map'. Created by cartographer Geradus Mercator over 400 years ago. This map would have you believe Africa is a lot smaller than reality. This is because it depicted the navigation of colonial trade route, with an imperialist motive. As a result the Mercator Map distorts the continents size, yet not the ocean distances/longitudinal lines, aiding the navigation of ocean travel, some would say, to the advantage of the 'Global North'. Quite frankly that means all our geography lessons had an ingrained racial bias, even if you did have one lesson on maps.
To put this into a bit of perspective, Africa is depicted as smaller than Greenland, when it is actually 14 times larger. If you put the US, China, India and Japan together, you still wouldn't cover the land mass. Add a chunk of Europe and you'd finally be there, get the picture yet? It's sheer size is comprised of 54 countries and over 3000 languages, how many can you name?
If you are having trouble picturing this or want to be more interactive then head on over to google maps. In 2D it uses the Mercator projection, Zoom all the way out and you can see each countries size, study this, take in what you can see. Then, click at the bottom right the globe icon (Enable globe view). This 3D map shows no distortions. The size alterations of some countries and continents are astonishing.
(Source; Visual Capitalist)
Landscapes and Cultures
Within these 54 countries, the landscape changes very dramatically. There is an assumption that much of it looks like the stereotypical savannah safari pic.
Not only does the landscape differ but it is home to many unique cultures. Some of these culture transcend country borders. This is because these borders were drawn as a result of colonialism. As we said context is key, sometimes an area may be appropriate to label such as West Africa, depending on the topic of discussion.
Africa isn’t all impoverished, that’s not saying that poverty doesn’t exist, just that it isn’t how we should summarise a picture of Africa. Did you know it's home to some of the fastest growing economies?
The Media and People
Let's consider press headlines, ‘famine in Africa’ ‘civil war breaks out in Africa‘ etc but you’d probably never see ‘disaster in Europe’ ‘attack in Europe’, instead it would name the country. The entire continent here is implicated. The whole African continent may then be perceived negatively, when in fact it may just be 1 or 2 countries within, thus enforcing stereotypes on countries that are untrue. In contrast, how often do you see positive images and news portrayed by the press of a country in Africa.
Now you may think, but we call the USA, America. Let's make this clear, this is NOT the same. Here's why, the US, is a country, we wouldn't say we've been to America if we've been to Mexico or Canada. The US, generally isn't ridiculed, generalised and stereotyped to the same level as African countries are. Consider this, Mali and Botswana are a similar distance apart to the USA and Panama, but would you ever summarise the latter 2 and generalise them together? Would you call both someone from Mali and Botswana both African? Why not Malian and Botswanan? As surely, you wouldn't call someone from Panama America? (It’s key to note it’s worth asking what a person wants to identify as). Africa also has the highest level of genetic diversity of all the continents!
A survey done on guardian articles from 2012-13, (given, this is now a while ago,) showed the inaccurate reporting of articles which only included the word 'Africa' compared to those who only used the word 'Asia' you can probably predict which was higher.
It's not just the press. Have you heard the words 'Sponsor a child in Africa', the question is where?, especially concerning if a charity exclusively works in one African country. We remember being shocked when at university level, someone had referred to countries such as 'Africa and India' in an International Development assignment, potentially showing how ingrained it is to call Africa a country along side the likes of India or China, when Africa, clearly is not. This depicts how little thought is sometimes given to the language we use.
Travelling
Consider the language you use when you're talking about travelling, where are you visiting? As we said context is important, so if you're travelling through Africa or a large proportion of it, the use may be appropriate, just as it may if you were to say travelling through South America. It's about considering what we have mentioned and educating yourself, are you making a fair comparison? are you oversimplifying?
Now, let's make sure we're considering context and using the correct language and educating people, and let's stop lumping together a continent of more than 1 billion people!
This is an education post, designed for learning, not to ridicule.
Socks and Sandals
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