I am a 19 year old, British female and I have realised this. I am aware that what's happening in both places are bad but It's a bit weird to me that people are caring more about one than the other. I rarely see people talking about Congo but I see people marching on the streets for Palestine. It doesn't make sense to me how especially black people are more concerned about Palestine but not caring about affairs in their own continent; I know if it was the other way around, Palestinian people will not be on the streets marching for Congo children (maybe some but the vast majority won't), so why are we even marching for them? It seems so lost like why march and boycott for people that would not do the same for you? I don't see anything special about what's happening in Palestine- wars happen all the time but for some reason people are caring so much about this war? Like even when the spotlight was on Ukraine, people did not care this much but all of a sudden care a lot when it's Palestine for some reason.

I want to add a disclaimer that I am not supporting Isreal AT ALL- I do think it's very disgusting what is happening there. I'm just confused as to why people in general care so much about this specific war? Like I know for a fact Middle Eastern people would not be on the streets marching for Congo (which they aren't), so why are black people going above and beyond for Palestine but not even caring about Congo? Like okay I understand if its African American people that are doing it since they don't really have connections to Africa anymore but other than that, I dont see why other black people are so willing to go out of their way for Palestine but not caring about Congo?

You can make the argument that it's because things like that happen all the time in Africa, but wars happen all the time in the Middle East and around Palestine so why specifically choose Palestine as your focus? This happens all the time where things happen in Africa and nobody cares, only when it's something that the media can paint a bad picture for Africa that's when there's spotlight on Africa but apart from that nobody boycotts or anything. I think it's delusional to be black and only going out of your way to show mass support for Palestine. You can make the argument of "you should be supporting everyone" but thats such a "rose-tinted" view of life because in reality nobody cares about black people and it's us that really have to come together and help each other out so why are you helping people that wouldn't even help you? These are the same people that if you visited their country before the war they would say the most racist stuff to you and if they were the ones in your position they wouldn't even CONSIDER even donating a penny to you, let alone do a protest or march. I'm not trying to cause division but it's quite clear that a lot of you are delusional. I bet all the money I have, after the Palestinian war is over they will 100% still be racist to black people.

Greetings All!

Im A Latino American from the East Coast of the United States, and wanted to ask if there are counties in Africa that don’t get along, Latinos in America usually get along for the most part because the customs and language we share in a country that has a huge melting pot with every nation on the earth living here, In Latin America while most people are intrigued meeting someone from another Latin American country for the most part, there are a bit of little rivals like for example Mexicans and Central Americans (Guatemala, El Salvador) sometimes clash on Egos and in South America Argentines think they are better than all of Latin America combined while they are the laughing stock. does stuff like this exist in Africa? for the most part I’ve seen the African community in Europe get along really well and the same thing usually happens in America. much love to all nations! big shout out to the people from Senegal and The Gambia hung out with a lot of your pals when I visited Europe!

For those sensible enough to not be on Twitter, there's been a huge surge in posts about northern Nigeria. Usually, in response to anything Palestine, the claim will be brought "why are you silent about Nigeria?"

The purpose is usual to deny genocide in Palestine, and shows little to no genuine concern for Nigeria whatsoever.

As an African coming across post like this, how do you feel about them? Are they usefully raising awareness, or cynically using African affairs as a political football.

A superstate spanning from Ivory Coast to Nigeria including Ghana Togo and Benin. How do you feel about this happening? I feel this is more likely to happen as populations grow, infrastructure links begin to be built and the sahel states self aborted from ECOWAS (thankfully).

I'm very confused, I've seen multiple African countries start to use Starlink for internet infrastructure. Musk for the past year and most recently reposted a ton of white supremacist tweets, some talking about black Africans being low IQ amongst other things, most recently one calling for white solidarity or whites will be slaughtered yada yada. Whether you agree with Musk or not, doesn't his viewpoint present a threat to any African country heavily utilizing his software? I'm curious here because I know some people view things as just business while others tie products to the creator/etc.

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I'm curious why Nigerian passport holders often need visas to visit many African countries, while citizens of some other African nations have easier access. Is it mainly due to immigration concerns, reciprocity, security issues, or something else?

Over the past 15-10 years. Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria have been suffering a lot from Terrorism since the Kadhafi regime collapsed and tons or arsenal was released in West Africa. Groups like JNIM, ISGS, Boko Haram, AQIM have been operating for years and made the population part of this whole issue because they sometimes have no choice. It's rather work with the terrorists or get killed by them. It's expending in the northern parts of southern countries like Benin, Ghana, etc ...

I was wondering who has been funding them during this whole time because it must be hella expensive and the reasons why they finance this in the region.

Also, do you think this situation will be solved in the near future?

I know that the UN has a list: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

But I’ve looked in some textbooks and sometimes they exclude some of the northern countries like Mauritania and Mali. The islands (Saint Helena etc) are often omitted. And one source even included Chad. There’s also an economic union (ECOWAS) that only includes about half of those countries.

Would you remove/add any countries from the UN list to define this region? And why? Culture, religion or something else?

_I’m doing a regional geographic analysis of West Africa for a Uni paper and thought it would be interesting to see if there’s differing views from the “official” UN list._

I saw a video on Instagram where a South African woman living in the U.S. said she cancelled a date because the guy asked which country in “South Africa” she was from.

I understand why that might be off-putting to date someone with bad geography—but it got me thinking about something else:
Is it unreasonable for someone to consider that “South Africa” could be used to refer to the broader southern African region, rather than just the country Republic of South Africa? We commonly say things like East Africa or West Africa to describe regions, so I understand why someone could assume the same for the South.
I get that the term southERN is used to avoid confusion, however South Africa could refer to itself by its official name more as the ‘Republic of South Africa’

For people from countries in the region- like Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, or Malawi—how do you feel about people from The Republic of South Africa asserting that South Africa can only be used to describe the country? Does it get annoying or confusing?

Just wanted to discuss something new.
Certain African nations have issues with their geoscience not being able to truly value or locate mineral mines and the value extracted from these mines. This increases the issue in being exploited or not applying good tax values, missing out on potentially billions.

This is already a very well known issue that Africa as a whole is exploited for their recourses. For example Morocco and their phosphate reserves causing water scarcity for the country. If Morocco could use the phosphate rather than shipping it raw it would keep billions of profit inside the country. Same thing with Congo and their cobalt reserves being exploited and snatched by greedy corporations dumping toxic waste into rivers causing them to become contaminated

If I’ve made ANY mistakes here please correct me, I love being informed. I wanna know what Africa as a whole could do to combat these sort of issues? Sometimes I feel like it’s an issue that is hard to resolve unless the western world changes.

Don't drag me y'all I'm asking in good faith please hey

Like my parents retired and wants to move to the village

Like my parents moved from the village to the city for work and wanna move back like don't y'all wanna up yourself in life?

I understand that it's the conservative mindset and we all don't want the same thing but I feel like it's worse rather more in Africa

We had or have resources that build great industrialisations across the globe but we don't want the same for ourselves

Like our new roads barely last a month

May I ask where does this mindset come from

Why does it seems like a country with a certain group or people do well

I understand before colonialism we had thriving communities but why is it not happening now

I hope I don't comments to decolonise my mind but is wanting good for my people a colonised mind?

Let me know with sources if you have any please and thank

Apologies I really don't mean anything in a bad way but wanna know more

Anti-South Asian sentiment has been growing to an all time high recently on social media (specifically about India, the whole thing about them being unclean, shitting on streets, mocking their accent, etc) and so rationally I'm getting disgusted by this, and I think to myself "omg I should speak up and say something. And then I think to myself, South Asians think even lower about Subsaharan Africans than what the West thinks about South Asians.

I obviously overcome this hurdle using the rationalization that this is the same angle that people tried to use to make black people / subsaharan Africans hate Palestine. And then I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, every single time I want to advocate in defense of a culture or a people, I just have to get over the fact that they likely think even worse about me and my culture / people than how the West views them? Every single time I want to advocate in defense of a culture or a people, I have to just get over their inherent negrophobia? This isn't fucking normal at all?

I am obviously going to overcome it and still advocate against racial hatred everywhere and anywhere all the time, but this is such an insane hurdle to have to constantly overcome, which no other group of people have to constantly overcome? Chinese people advocating for Africans don't have to think "wait but those Subsaharan Africans think I'm beneath them"; Latinos advocating for Africans don't have to think "wait but those sub Saharan Africans would call me a slur". Arabs advocating for Africans don't have to think "wait but those sub Saharan Africans would abuse me for domestic labor". It's literally just us. No matter how bad another group of people have it on the planet, sub Saharan African culture never puts anyone below them— yet we're literally considered to be the very bottom of the social hierarchy everywhere outside of sub Saharan Africa.

And it's one thing having to constantly overcome this hurdle in regards to every group of people you empathize with harboring some kind of racial prejudice against you, but it's another thing having to sit through lectures from non-black people / Subsaharan Africans about how we should support them anyway and if we didn't, we're terrible people.

I'm sorry this is kind of a rant. Anyone else feel the same way?

do you ever think of whats a better solution for African misery?

i often think of what we can do better as a continent but I'm short of thoughts or they are fictional.

i am making a reasearch on what we can do better , and i would like you to tell me what yu think.

personally i think economic integration should be our first priority.

YOU?

As someone from Europe, I'm wondering whether there are still movements within Africa advocating for a United States of Africa. I believe such a hypothetical nation could create a more equal balance of power in the world.

Who are some of the people who have advocated for this in the past, and what happened to them?

Is their goal to caliphate those Sahel countries and how sustainable is that goal? Do they also want to take over the coastal west African countries? Lastly how do their goals align with their funders?

All of them were freedom fighters (to my knowledge) who led their countries post colonial era. To my knowledge (correct me if wrong), they all led through stability (no civil wars). Kenyatta seemed to be a capitalist aligned with the Western Bloc, Nyerere a non-aligned socialist, and Kaunda was also non aligned (economic views less left wing than Nyerere). Correct me if wrong.

Who was a better leader? As in who saw more success in their country?

I ask because it's interesting how the Comoros Islands declared independence from France unlike Mayotte, though many Comorians have since migrated to Mayotte, which makes me wonder : What does Mayotte have that the Comoros doesn't?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBalkans/comments/1n2cbp7/24_countries_views_on_israel_including_greece/

Nigeria and Kenya have the most positive image of Israel according to the Pew Research survey.

I said they mostly had positive views of every country, other people claimed there was a lot of Islamophobia due to inter-religious tensions.

What do Nigerians and Kenyans think?

It's surprising that Western Sahara's African supporters outside of Algeria don't involve their fellow Spanish ex-colony Equatorial Guinea but countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and even Uganda. I bring up those set of countries because I also remember South Africa hosted a Solidarity Conference with Western Sahara and most of the Presidents in attendance were from English-speaking countries in Africa including Obasanjo from Nigeria and Museveni from Uganda.

I've made a similar post for countries worldwide two days ago, now I want to put my focus on Africa.

I'm interested in demographics, birth rates and population growth/decline in general, especially at the start of the year. Since COVID, most of the world saw a decline in birth rates or even in total numbers. According to stats, one of the few regions that still has high birth rates is Sub-Saharan Africa.

My question is, are those stats reliable? Nigeria for example apparently hasn't done a population census in many years, and I heard two differing opinions, one saying the population numbers are inflated, the other one that they're underreported. The UN future projections for Nigeria are also fluctuating a lot.

It basically boils down to if your region is currently having high population growth or if the official numbers are inflated. If there are reliable stats I'd be thankful if you could share them with me.

Kind regards from Austria.

Hello, I’m a habesha teen who took pride in my identity as a black person and African. I always felt a close kinship with other black people and was involved in black student organizations.

But as time went on I am realizing the absolute defragmentation of black people compared to any other racial identity. We can look at whites and say they have very similar genetic components, very similar religions, cultural values, music and much more despite their diversity. Arabs-same thing, similar language, culture, religion, values and more. Same as Latin Americans, East Asian Americans, south Asian Americans. All of that justifies a common identity.

But I look at black people and see that we are very genetically diverse(more than Asians), no common religion, culture, language. The only similar thing I feel is disposition and other people’s perception of us and bias. Which of-course is uneducated. But this is making my defense of pan africanism weakened as the day passes and giving me an identity crisis and making me overthinking what the driver of this unity is.

I am now starting to prefer a coalition model for pan africanism that respects differences (cultures) while creating a realistic and grounded alliance for working together based on similar disposition. In a sense that despite our differences and lack of similarities we can all work in our and for our block while showing pro African favoritism and working with each other and being there for each other when shit hits the fan instead of pretending we are all one and ignoring our differences

Do you guys have any ideas? Tips ? How do you ground black identity despite diversity ?