North African Ethnicity

“How can you be African?” a Swazi acquaintance asked once, asking me to defend my claim to the continent. It did not come as a surprise. We have been taught – by schools and universities, by media, by governments across the world, even in North Africa – that ‘Africa’ really means ‘sub-Saharan Africa,’ and that the North does not belong to the rest of the continent. I previously wrote about this issue of the false separation of “Arab” North and Black South and would like to continue this discussion. The very word “Africa” comes from Tamazight, the indigenous language of North Africa. Read More