Where Countries and Nations Aren't the Same Thing

By Benny Dembitzer

In 2001, US President George W. Bush proclaimed, "Africa is a nation that suffers from terrible disease."

In 2022, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, "Life expectancy in Africa has risen astonishingly as that country has entered the global economic system."

A US journalist based in London, Dipo Faloyin, replied to both four years ago with a book entitled Africa is Not a Country. Eight years before that, there was an app with the same name that tracked media references to Africa as a country and campaigned for better reporting.

And yet, here we are. Two of the most powerful leaders in the Western world, decades apart, making the same basic error.

There are 54 countries in Africa (according to the UN, which doesn't recognise Western Sahara or Somaliland). That's more than any other continent. Africa is also more diverse than its peers, with 2,000 distinct ethno-linguistic groups and a vast array of cultures, climates and landscapes.

Why is it that people in the West don't appreciate how different countries in Africa are, not only from each other, but also from countries in Europe or North America?

The answer lies in how countries were created in the first place.

Countries Made by War

In Europe, the word "country" usually refers to a nation-state and its government. The name of the country, the territory, the people, and the political power all line up more or less neatly.

This didn't happen by accident. Since the time of the Roman Empire, all states across Europe emerged from powerful leaders establishing monarchies and similar entities to govern their territories from the top. They developed highly centralised systems of property ownership (supporting clientelism, patronage and loyalty) and taxation. Usually, they had the backing of the Catholic Church.

This is the origin story of the UK, France, Spain, Italy, and, most complex of all, the Federal Republic of Germany.

The borders we see today are the result of centuries of conflict. The United Kingdom in its current form was created a little more than a century ago when the Irish republic was established. Norway and Sweden were one country until 1905 (this is why Norway, not Sweden, awards the Nobel Peace Prize).

Germany was reshaped after the Second World War, as was Italy, which lost some of its territory to what became Yugoslavia. We all know the desperate results of the internecine wars between the different parts of Yugoslavia, which split into seven different nations.

In Europe, with the exception of Switzerland (independent and republican more or less since the 13th century), all countries emerged as a result of wars.

Countries Made by Lines on a Map

Africa's story is entirely different.

There is only one country in sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia) that has emerged physically in the way that European nations have emerged. The reason is simple: every single other part of Africa has been colonised in some form or other.

It was colonisers who decided where country borders were drawn. They cut across ethnic groups and created artificial barriers.

The borders of not one of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa have ever been stable. The concept of what a state even is was something that Europeans brought to the continent through successive waves of invasion.

The Dutch were probably the first, establishing a coaling station at the Cape. The Dutch East Indies Company brought with them a large number of landless Huguenots from what is now the Flanders region, offering them free land and free passage.

They were followed by the Portuguese, who colonised long stretches of the West African coast. Cameroon is the Portuguese word for shrimps. The city of Lagos is named after a Portuguese city in the Algarve. San Pedro, the second port in Ivory Coast, was named by the Portuguese.

These colonial powers drew lines on maps with no regard for who actually lived there.

In Malawi, the Chewa, the largest ethnic group in the country, are also found on the other side of the border with Mozambique. Sudan was divided by both French and British colonists, with some ethnic groups split artificially between Christian and Muslim.

This difference goes some way to explaining why aid projects designed in Europe so often fail when applied to countries in Africa. The very concept of "country" means something fundamentally different.

The Scale We Don't Appreciate

The primary challenge to applying the European concept of a country as the territory of a nation is the sheer multitude of groups that exist within African borders.

In a 2003 report on cultures and societies in Africa, UNESCO estimated that there were at least 3,200 ethnic and culturally distinct groups across the continent.

Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent, comprises about 275 different ethnic groups. Ethiopia has 82 clearly different groups. They have very little in common, and their "loyalty" to what Westerners have been calling "their nation" means absolutely nothing.

Another mistake Europeans and Americans make is assuming that countries in Africa are comparable in size to those on our own continents.

They are not.

Africa is 3.5 times bigger than the United States. It is 3 times bigger than Europe.

African nations' challenges are totally different to those of Europe or the Americas. And until we understand that, we will keep designing solutions that don't work.

Why This Matters

If we don't understand what an African country actually is, how can we design aid that works?

How can we build partnerships that respect local realities?

How can we stop treating 54 vastly different nations as a single entity?

The quotes from Bush and Johnson aren't just embarrassing slips. They reveal a deeper failure of understanding that runs through Western policy, media coverage, and aid programmes.

Africa is not a country. And until we truly grasp what that means, we will keep getting it wrong.

Benny Dembitzer spent fifty years working on the ground in developing countries. His book, The Global Famine Game, examines why the West keeps misunderstanding Africa, and what that means for the millions left behind by aid systems built on false assumptions.

Available now on Amazon.