Surprising reasons why Africa should accept being called a country

The world outside Africa considers the ‘dark’ continent as 'one country'. Every now and then, we watch videos or read articles whereby people living outside Africa have made rather politically ignorant statements about Africa. This is a group that somehow includes world renowned public figures and even celebrities of color as well. In 2013, African American rapper ‘Rick Ross’ posted on twitter, “Just landed in the beautiful country of Africa…”, a tweet that sparked immense ridicule from internet users who mirrored the rapper's then body to the size of a country.

Ruling governments outside Africa have also sensationalized the stereotype so much by issuing travel advisories on the African continent based on activities ongoing in a single country out of a land of 52 countries. The Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and Liberia provides a strong testament to this. I recently learnt that allegedly, during the crisis a plane in Norway was not allowed to take off because a Kenyan on board had a fever. The distance between Kenya and Liberia exceeds 5000 Kilometres. Just think of the condemnation if an African country issued travel advisories against the United States due to its extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes. But it is not in the DNA of an African to be hostile towards prospective guests. We know this from our parents and they knew the same from their parents. That hospitality is what has gotten us into this situation we find ourselves currently.

The ball then comes to our court in terms of the response we issue and how we rather interestingly, go about the situation. As Africans, we usually if not always get offended and bombarded with hard facts about how many countries lie between East Africa and Nigeria or about how we harbor 2,000 different languages and the size of the continent. This is fine but according to me, I don't think we should be angry at all in the first place. Responding angrily with insulting messages as we usually do only opens up a window for more ignorance to come in. A boxer who has lost a match does not blame his hands for not being strong enough or his feet for not being stable enough. He goes back to training and works hard to be better for the next fight.

I am urging African people to emulate this and make each other's problems our own. Ethiopians are facing drought related problems, what can the African community do to help? Ebola is ravaging West Africa, what can the rest of the African community do about it? The people of Burundi are facing a civil war, what can the African community do to make sure no blood is shed as we have certainly spilled more blood than is enough.

Amnesia if not ignorance seems to not only plague Kenya but largely the whole continent as well. We seem to downplay the fact that heads of European countries actually assembled in Europe and divided the land as you would a loaf of bread to little school children in a dining hall. Just as so, the children eventually would evacuate the hall having made a mess with half eaten tattered slices of bread dispersed all over the area. These people had very little information about our land, animals or the culture of its people and so approached the situation with very minimal regard to its aspects that defined them and still do today.

The land that Kenya and Uganda occupy today was never as it is called today. Before it was ‘British East Africa’, and it is the same with most African countries before the ill-fated conference of Berlin in 1884; a conference, that initiated colonization of the continent. This process was famously spearheaded by England, France, Germany and Portugal who grabbed most of the continent that divided Africa. This resulted in fictional boundaries that from then until today, has given us nationality labels that are nonexistent. Division is the simplest form of conquest.

However, let us not allow the strings balancing our hearts to break when they ask us if we know a Thandiwe from Malawi or Didier from Zaire. Let us not lash out when they say we brood malaria and HIV. Didier is our brother and Thandiwe is our sister and we are also their brothers and sisters. In a circus, both the spectating audience and the one training the lion with the whip in his hand know that the circus lion can end his oppressor with a single strike, only the lion does not know this.

The world view of Africa is that we are all one people. Unfortunately as Africans we are the only ones that do not seem to share the idea so why do we not see ourselves as one? We saw the white man breaking our body down with a hammer; a hammer of capitalism. When we couldn't withstand the pain any longer we wrestled the white man for that hammer and victorious we eventually became. Some countries were able to liberate themselves as early as 1920s while some went through to the final decade of the 20th century. Instead of using that hammer we fought so fervently with to sculpt ourselves, we are now using it to break ourselves even further apart.

For how much longer will we continue to blame Europeans for damage we inflict upon ourselves and did our Pan-African forebears fight for independence so we can colonize ourselves? We need to go back to the drawing board, probably not as a continent but as a country.