Africa Is Not a Country

Dipo Faloyin, a Nigerian journalist of Yoruba and Igbo heritage, two of Nigeria's largest ethnic groups, opens with a personal reflection on his identity to establish the book's central thesis: Africa, a continent of 54 countries, over 2,000 languages, and 1.4 billion people, is persistently treated as a singular monolith defined by poverty, safari imagery, and strife. Real challenges exist, he concedes, but when colonialism's legacy is factored in, a fuller picture emerges. He previews the book's structure, noting his perspective is specifically Nigerian.

In Part One, Faloyin grounds the reader in Lagos, a city of roughly 21 million people characterized by extreme traffic, unshakeable confidence, and deep inequality. He catalogs the city's sensory details, from Suya (spiced grilled meat) as a social equalizer to persistent power cuts, then pivots to the book's historical argument: These complex cities are products of European powers conspiring to divide and devour the continent.

Part Two traces how modern Africa's borders were created. In 1884, representatives of 14 nations gathered at German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's residence in Berlin to establish rules for partitioning the continent. No African representative was invited. The delegates devised the "principle of effective occupation," requiring only that a European power inform rivals of a claim and establish some governance. The resulting General Act accelerated the rush to colonize. Faloyin details how King Leopold II of Belgium acquired the Congo Free State as his personal property, where an estimated 10 million people died in 20 years under forced rubber extraction. He traces how France and Britain carved up West Africa through bilateral agreements, creating nations like Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal from nothing, while Britain relied on private companies such as the Royal Niger Company to conquer territory.

Faloyin provides case studies of the damage caused by poorly drawn borders, including the Bakassi Peninsula dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon and the forced splitting of roughly 200 ethnic groups across multiple countries. He includes a personal narrative of Nigerian independence through the eyes of his father, Femi, a seven-year-old boy celebrating on October 1, 1960, with flag-waving and Jollof rice, a beloved West African rice dish. He explains why, at the Organization of African Unity's 1964 Cairo conference, the continent's post-independence political body, newly independent nations chose to keep colonial borders, fearing that redrawing them would spark worse conflict. He contrasts Somaliland, which declared independence from Somalia in 1991 and operates as a stable but internationally unrecognized state, with South Sudan, which gained recognized independence in 2011 but quickly descended into civil war.

Part Three analyzes how Western charity campaigns perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Faloyin examines Kony 2012, a viral film by the charity Invisible Children that garnered over 70 million views but provoked a backlash led by Ugandans and diaspora Africans, including Nigerian American author Teju Cole, who coined the term "White Savior Industrial Complex." He traces this dynamic to the 1980s, when the Ethiopian famine inspired campaigns such as Bob Geldof's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (1984), "We Are the World" (1985), and Live Aid (1985). He reserves particular criticism for "Do They Know It's Christmas?," which condensed negative stereotypes into a four-minute jingle without mentioning Ethiopia, famine, or the military government that deliberately exacerbated the crisis. Donations were partly siphoned by the Ethiopian government to fund forced relocations that killed an estimated 100,000 people. He examines the broader white savior phenomenon and profiles the Uganda-based advocacy group No White Saviors, which works to combat harmful development practices.

Part Four argues that Africa's history of authoritarian rule stems from specific forces rather than inherent ungovernability. Faloyin examines Somalia's Siad Barre as a Cold War proxy who switched allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, which continued supporting his regime even during a genocide against the Isaaq people. He details how Britain's divide-and-rule policies in Nigeria empowered corrupt leaders along ethnic lines, seeding decades of coups and civil war. He traces Robert Mugabe's transformation from liberation hero to tyrant in Zimbabwe and contrasts Mugabe's path with that of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's anti-apartheid leader and first Black president, who chose truth and reconciliation. He presents Rwanda's Paul Kagame as a case study in authoritarianism and development: Kagame oversaw dramatic economic growth after ending the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi but also suppresses political opponents. He examines Algeria's ruling party, which has held power since the 1962 revolution, Equatorial Guinea's Nguema family dynasty, and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who held power for 42 years before being killed during the 2011 Arab Spring.

Part Five critiques Africa's portrayal in popular culture. Faloyin examines the legacy of Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, whose satirical essay "How to Write About Africa" remains the most shared piece in Granta's history. He surveys Hollywood's record of stereotyping and presents Black Panther (2018) as a landmark counter-example, detailing actor Chadwick Boseman's fight against Marvel's plan to give the character a British accent and the creative team's use of Xhosa, a real South African language. He reflects on considering changing his name to "Emmanuel" when moving from Lagos to the UK at age 10, and his parents' insistence that he would learn to value being different.

Part Six documents how 90 percent of Africa's material cultural heritage was looted during the colonial era. Faloyin provides case studies from the Kingdom of Benin, the Kingdom of Dahomey, Emperor Tewodros II's Abyssinia (the historical empire corresponding to modern Ethiopia and Eritrea), and the Herero and Nama genocide in German South West Africa (now Namibia). He dismantles museums' justifications for keeping stolen items, citing British Prime Minister William Gladstone's 1871 condemnation of the British looting at Maqdala, an Ethiopian fortress, to prove the theft was considered wrong even at the time. He surveys restitution efforts, including Belgium's promise to return 2,000 items, France's government-commissioned Savoy-Sarr report (2018) that has yielded only 27 returned artefacts, and Germany's commitment to return thousands of items including human remains.

Part Seven uses the rivalry over Jollof rice to illustrate how food serves as a proxy for national identity. Faloyin traces the dish's origins to the 14th-century Wolof Empire in modern-day Senegal and connects African foodways to the broader diaspora, documenting how enslaved Africans carried staples to the American South that transformed the region's cuisine and economy.

Part Eight surveys contemporary forces shaping the continent. Faloyin profiles Nigeria's #EndSARS movement (2020), a leaderless protest against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit responsible for extrajudicial killings, organized in part by the Feminist Coalition, 13 young women who built a civil rights infrastructure overnight. The movement ended when the military opened fire on peaceful protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate. He covers Algeria's Hirak movement, Namibia's #ShutItDown campaign against gender-based violence, and Ugandan musician Bobi Wine's challenge to President Yoweri Museveni. He examines Tanzania's transition after President John Magufuli's death, when Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan reversed COVID-19 denial and expanded democratic freedoms, and highlights Botswana as a model of stability. He addresses climate change as an existential threat to a continent contributing only about 3 percent of global emissions and surveys cultural dynamism from Nollywood, Nigeria's film industry, to Afrobeats, a contemporary West African pop music genre. He concludes with Ghana's 2019 Year of Return, in which President Nana Akufo-Addo invited descendants of enslaved Africans to come home. Faloyin frames the initiative as a realization of Pan-Africanism, the political vision of solidarity among African peoples, and argues that African countries should determine their own futures while respecting each nation's distinct identity.