Ah, Africa, the butt of every non-African’s joke. Not eating your vegetables? Well, you should be — there are starving children in Africa. Going through a tragedy? Get over it, people in Africa have it much worse.
All these generalizations are not only dehumanizing but also almost always inaccurate. Saying everyone in Africa has no modern technology, is starving or is suffering from AIDS is directly associating the entire continent (bear in mind, that’s 54 countries) with famine, backwardness, and disease which is not the case. It also negatively impacts each country’s tourism, economy and how the world views them. There is misfortune worldwide, even in developed or first world countries. Granted, the “if you’re from Africa, why are you white?” type of jokes were funny back in 2004 when everyone was a Mean Girl, but making constant negative stereotypes about Africa is extremely ignorant, offensive and mostly boring. Africa is not inferior to any other continent.
Here are a few actual facts about the continent everyone keeps talking about:
- 7 African countries make up the top 20 countries in the world with the most women representatives in parliament, the first of the 20 being Rwanda.
- 5 African countries make up the 13 fastest growing economies in the world, the first of the 13 being Ethiopia.
- Of the first countries to legalize same-sex marriage, South Africa places 5th.
- The world’s first miners originate from Swaziland.
- Almost half of the gold mined on Earth is from South Africa.
- Africa is estimated to have the world’s largest labor force by 2035.
- The world’s first human heart transplant and the world’s first penis transplant was done in South Africa, both by different South African surgeons.
- The invention of Mathematics originates in ancient Africa.
That being said and on behalf of all the countries in Africa: non-Africans, stop worrying so much about how our continent works and what our children are eating, we are fine. Worry about your own continent.
