Africa Is a Country

On the Journalistic Value of Internet Map Memes

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

On the Journalistic Value of Internet Map Memes

By
Africa is a Country

At the Washington Post, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a complex issue, when color-coded in a way that reassured Americans of their innate Superiority over inferior Peoples, could always be relied upon to get way more Hits than any actual Reporting.

Before long, the Washington Post announced that it had abandoned Journalism forever. The following Generations, who liked Reporting but were not so fond of the Study of Supremacist Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that these Maps were Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered them up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of those Maps, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Discipline of The Cartography of Bullshit.

* With sincere apologies to Jorge Luis Borges.

Further Reading

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?