You raise a good point – we (as a species) do tend to generalize and essentialize all the time, not just in regard to Africa. It’s the fallacy of assuming that some country/group/etc. is internally undifferentiated, which is never the case!

We also write about The West, Europe, and America the same way, not to mention “the OECD” when we mean the people in those countries rather than the organization, or “Donors” to mean anything from charitable givers, field workers, government organization, NGOs, or the IMF President. Then there’s the omnipresent confusion between a country and its government, or its government and its people. There is more to New York state than the city or the inhabitants of the city, but it is remarkably difficult to convince people I live more than 4 hours from Broadway. Yes, we should do better (and who is we?). It’s not just Africa.

I think we would agree that perhaps the biggest tragedy of Africa is that very few people actually take the time to get to know Africans — and I don’t mean working in some development project to help Africans, I mean just spending time to get to know them. This means getting past the sometimes mystifying superficial differences — there’s a need, I think, to “demystify” Africa. Africa of course has many many cultures and I don’t mean to infer a universal homogenous African culture. But in my experience being married to and living with Africans, I find that the more time I spend, the more I see Africans as just another variety of human beings, with all the good and bad potentiality that comes along with human nature — including the innate potential and ability to solve their own political, economic, and social issues. In my experience, this is one generalization that is accurate enough to make.

I think we’ll add this as required reading in our Field Staff trainings. Thanks for capturing it so brilliantly!