All of us with privilege need to stop referring to the place as just 'Africa'. It's an incredibly diverse place, and just smacking that label on it to refer to

All of us with privilege need to stop referring to the place as just 'Africa'. It's an incredibly diverse place, and just smacking that label on it to refer to every place on the continent trivializes the population. Exactly, Africa is a continent of 50+ countries, many of which are even incredibly diverse countries of tens of ethnic groups. There are many reasons why this is problematic one of which is that by lumping all countries into one bucket, you diminish the positive aspects of individual countries. How many people know, for instance, that Botswana had the highest average growth rate in the world over a period of three decades [1]? How many people, even on HN, know that Botswana is a country in Africa? There are other, better-reasoned arguments out there [2] [3]. If you want to debate mtalantikite, debate the points he has made, don't just attack him for referring to a 'Europe'. But note that there is a difference in context here. Bill Gates is referring to a particular place he visited in 1993. Was he in Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa? Who knows? mtalantikite is referring to a group of countries. He's referred to them as "colonists in Europe", not "Europe". There's no ambiguity here, we know this group of countries, in fact here's the list [4]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Botswana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Botswana [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_... [3] http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/08/confusing-country-continent-how-we-talk-about-africa/68870/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/08/confusing-coun... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_European_colonies#Africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_European_colonie...