Nambia and Wakanda are still better than that country called Africa

In the recent days we have been treated to those annual photos of our leaders posing alongside the occupants of the White House in the US thanks to the fact that the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York bringing together so many world leaders. Every year at this event, we tend to look out for the great speeches, the endless (largely unheeded) calls to reform the UN Security Council and a few bizarre moments like when Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe was walking to the podium and we silently prayed for him to stay on his feet. Often times the focus at such meetings is an ongoing world crisis but with the US led by none other than President Donald Trump there was no need to look elsewhere and he didn’t disappoint. He hosted leaders from Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Senegal, Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa to a luncheon. During the luncheon he made an interesting speech where in reference to the economic development on the African continent, he congratulated the leaders by saying, Africa has tremendous business potential. I’ve so many friends going to your countries, trying to get rich.” He added, “I congratulate you. They’re spending a lot of money.” It was certainly a fact but it also got me thinking. What if one of those leaders also stood up and said, “America is a great country, I have so many of my people coming here, trying to get rich.” They too spend a lot of money in non refundable US Visas or whatever means they use to get to the land of the free hoping to live the American dream. Anyway I digress. What caught the attention of the world most was when Trump appeared to refer to Namibia as Nambia. He mentioned Nambia more than once thus cementing its place on his list of new words just below Covfefe. Personally I am happy that he was making an effort to mention individual African nations instead of going the lazy way of referring to the whole continent of 54 countries (56 if we add Nambia and Wakanda) as though it were one country. Trump’s Nambia saw Namibia getting a lot of press coverage and now many who did not know about it before. After Google has reminded you that you meant Namibia not Nambia, you are likely to see among the search results, a listicle by Time.com on “4 Things to know about the country Trump called Nambia.” It is one of the main producers of diamonds; it has conservation in its environmental protection as part of its constitution, one of the world’s least densely populated countries and one of the last places in Africa to get independence in 1990. This kind of clean publicity is what almost all African countries would love to see in publications that often only feature African countries under the themes of death, poverty and disease. And thanks to Donald Trump the world now knows that Nambia has “an increasingly self sufficient health system.” A few days back, the British Airways in-flight magazine listed the famous Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong’o as someone from Wakanda. Wakanda appears in American comic books as the home of an African superhero, the Black Panther. Isn’t it interesting that Wakanda beat Kenya to the pages of such a high profile magazine read by well travelled (it is an in-flight magazine after all) people. Such ignorance and negative stereotypes are something Africans have gotten used to but shouldn’t. The only way people can stop thinking about Africa as a country is by individual countries creating their individual narratives even if these narratives arrive out of gaffes like Nambia for the world to know about Namibia. We are living in what has been branded the information age. There is a deficiency when it comes to information about the diverse African countries and the diversity in those countries. I don’t want to hear people lazily referring to everything in this part of the world as merely African. African writers, African music, African tea, African sandals, African cinema, African food, and so many African tags are just proof of lazy branding and ignorance. People visiting one or two African countries should be able to mention those places by name instead of saying they are visiting Africa. I would actually prefer to hear someone say they are visiting Nambia than Africa. At least Google will direct you to Namibia when you ask.

Opinions

Nambia and Wakanda are still better than that country called Africa