It is easy to wonder if I am being overly sensitive about this, especially if Africa has never really been on your radar. But in my response to the author of that piece on Medium Intl, I made a point to lay out why this grates on every African you speak to about this:

You also have readers and writers from Africa…I thought your opening line excluding that part of the world does say a lot about what the word “International” means for many so called global platforms such as Medium. Somehow the people of the 54 countries of Africa and their diaspora seem to get lost in conversations about International, and my disapppointment is that Medium carries the same narrative in the very first line of a public announcement.

The beef here is that there is a consistent and sustained narrative on the global stage that always seems to neglect to include Africa. It is done in many cases without a thought or necessary malice, which is actually more nefarious than a willing and overt omission. I say that because it propagates that myth of the “dark continent”, so dark it remains unseen and forgotten. Africans don’t even roll their eyes anymore at this, our eyes light up with a fierce pride and anger that conveys that we are no longer interested in making or hearing excuses for a western mindset that doesn’t care to do the work it takes to legitmately use the word “global”.

I am part of a smart and scrappy team that is actively working on this problem. aKoma was created to shift the narrative, counter the myths, and give Africa its voice. Prior to starting aKoma with my co-founder, former CNN anchor Zain Verjee, I was in the corporate world. Way before it became fashionable, I pitched a mobile only digital business for the continent, a way to tap into the burgeoning mobile and youthful audience there. That didn’t go well, even with industry cohorts like MTV making a killing in Africa. And of course, like every other conglomerate, Africa was bundled into the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) group. Based in London. Like every other EMEA group on this planet. And yes, the priority is in that order, with Africa a distant third.

Think about this. You take a continent that is vast in its land mass, fifty four countries, over a billion people, thousands of cultures and languages — and you subsume it under the European team, with close to ninety eight percent of that team living in London? Take a guess how that works out for Africa. That EMEA acronym is one of the most detested acronyms for Africans and African diaspora in the corporate world, as it implies a lowly place with whiffs of an after-thought to boot.