It’s time to drop ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ from our vocabulary

The term has a racist and colonial foundation that still impacts our thinking to this day

Cartoon drawing by Joseph Keppler titled ‘From The Cape To Cairo’. It depicts the late 19th-century conflict of the British reconquest of Sudan and the Sudanese struggle for freedom.

Since reading about this particular issue on Quora and researching into it, it dawned on me how problematic the term Sub-Saharan Africa is. Something I previously didn’t think much of.

The term ‘Sub-Saharan’ Africa is a colonial language that was used to belittle African nations south of the Sahara and to separate the other countries from North Africa– Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Sudan due to them being Arab states. It also adds to the false illusion that Africa is a monolithic country, not a large and diverse continent.

This screenshot is taken from Tatenda Mashanda’s article for The herald. Read the story here- https://www.herald.co.zw/rethinking-the-term-sub-saharan-africa/

First created by European colonialists to describe African countries south of the Sahara as inferior, they believed that North Africa was more developed and considered them to be ‘white’ enough to have their achievements celebrated, but still not white enough to be fully accepted in Western society. The rest of Africa– West, Central, East, and Southern Africa, and one country in the North– Sudan (see how confusing and counterproductive this is), were ‘too Black’ to be worth mentioning.

Think of the Nubian pyramids in Sudan. 20th-century white archaeologists (many of whom were Egyptologists), refused to acknowledge that another Black kingdom had such powerful and advanced societies with their own pyramids. They believed that it was the work of Egyptians even though Egypt is in Africa.

Map showing the rest of African countries, excluding Northern parts.

This racial hierarchy was the product of pseudo-race scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries. They coined ‘Sub-Saharan’ to appear less racist. This created divides which is still a massive issue in the continent today. I come across discourse saying that Somalis aren’t Black or that Egypt isn’t African and so on.

All of this falls into the ideas of race. A construct that came about from European…