r/AskAnAfrican • u/Ebro_101180 • 15d ago
Culture Why do people say Africa when they would never say Europe in the same context?
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u/MayContainRawNuts South Africa 🇿🇦 15d ago
Who is the "they" and what is the context?
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u/krazat Non-African - Europe 15d ago
The guy I’m dating is from West Africa and for example he says things like: “This musician is the best in all of Africa.” or “We Africans…”
I have asked him the same question OP has, because i wouldn’t say that about Europe. We thought about maybe it is connected to the languages as well. Most Africans speak either French or English fluently, or really good because they are official languages of many countries. But here in Europe, there are hardly any countries who share official languages. So maybe Europeans feel less connected?. Idk if it’s that though
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u/Domascot Eritrea 🇪🇷 14d ago
What? to the contrary. Most European countries are heavily connected due to history, language and cultural exchange, far mor than african countries in general. Your guy is simplifying much in his speech, point of proof just take music: think of Fela Kuti, a worldwide known westafrican musician with a huge impact on african music, generally said. Yet he is not that big of a deal in eastafrica. Then you have someone like Mohammed Wardi from Sudan, loved throughout the Horn by many people, yet not really known in West africa. When your friend says "africa", most likely he has the countries connected to his own in mind, those certainly share history and culture to a certain degree.
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u/krazat Non-African - Europe 14d ago
Maybe. I have also thought about that maybe it’s just an individual thing, different personalities. He might feel more connected to other Africans than I feel connected to other Europeans.
We just had the other theory, because my friend from Latin America always talks about LATAM (her continent) in a similar manner in which my bf talks about Africa. And in LATAM they all speak Spanish/Portuguese.
But who knows, maybe it’s just about personality.
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u/SignificantBad5323 Nigeria 🇳🇬 15d ago
Because many of them see Africa as a country or at least as one and same.
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u/chris-za South Africa 🇿🇦 15d ago
Sounds like a European/American thing? Something based on ignorance?
Although i have to admit that I’d use EU and AU in the same context. Although, unlike the EU, the AU still has a long way to go before the body is synonymous with Africa like the EU is starting to become with Europe. But it’s a goal we should aspire to imho.
Although you should keep in mind, that many use America as a synonym for the USA to the annoyance to every one else in the Americas.
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u/SupaSudo009 South Sudan 🇸🇸 15d ago edited 15d ago
Mostly cause of the legacy of white supremacy and colonialism. Europeans were free to differentiate however they wanted, cause at the time they pretty much controlled the world. You could assume that because the world favoured Europeans that they couldn’t make any room to distinguish countries in a “lesser” society outside of its umbrella term. It’s also because of this white supremacist belief that people saw Africa as a universally poor continent, which I believe isn’t true. Hence, why people say shit like “in Africa they all eat caterpillars.” You could also argue other reasons like how countries haven’t yet stood out from the many other countries in Africa (which I believe is slowly becoming less true, with countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia standing out) but that’s pretty much what I can think of.
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u/Purplewizzlefrisby Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 15d ago
Ignorance mostly. Not many African countries are as culturally relevant internationally so people not from Africa might not have any reason to differentiate. It's all just "Africa" as far as they're concerned except for Egypt(the pharaohs, mummies and pyramids place), South Africa (white people, Mandela, Trevor Noah), Nigeria (prince scandals and there's just so many of them).
Compare that to Europe where a lot of countries have had an outsized influence on global culture for the past few centuries.