Although President Barack Obama’s first trip to Sub-Saharan Africa will take him to Ghana, his current trip to Egypt marks his first official visit to the continent as President.
There are myriad reasons why, when talking about Africa, people will exclude Egypt. Certainly this blog is overwhelmongly (and largely unapologetically) about Africa South of the Sahara. Some of the reasons are logical — Egypt’s geopolitical place surely lies more in the miasma of Middle East politics than it does with affairs to its south. Most professional Africanists work on the sub-Saharan region, excluding not only Egypt, but also much of North Africa (this, I think, helps explain why Sudan is so tough for most people, even many Africanists, and I include myself here, to grasp — it stands astride North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa and so does not necessarily fot comfortably in the narratives of either).
But there is also a more nefarious reason some exclude Africa. Arch-conservatives, Afro-Pessimists, and, yes, not a few racists, exclude Egypt from Africa because to do so allows them to carry on one of their favored tropes about how Africa is uncivilized and uncultured. This nonsense, of course, should have been settled long ago not least because it is demonstrably untrue. But because these clowns tend to be yammering to people who know even less about Africa than they do, and who thus know nothing about African history or culture, excluding North Africa and especially Egypt, makes it easier for them to press their case.
