Africa Is a Country

The #BullshitFiles: KLM offers flights to ‘the Dark Continent’

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

The #BullshitFiles: KLM offers flights to ‘the Dark Continent’

By
Africa is a Country

We’re not making this up. It turns out Royal Dutch flagship carrier’s KLM decision to hire the Dutch East India Company as its PR firm was a bad plan. According to their website, KLM will fly you to ‘the Dark Continent’ (their original inverted commas) to visit Lusaka, Zambia, a city of two million that they’re still selling as the “undiscovered, unspoiled Africa”, or Nairobi, Kenya to get “a real sense of Africa” (using a detail of the stock photo above), etc:

Dodgy advertisement agency? Most definitely.

Asked about it via Twitter…

…KLM responded:

klm tweet 1
klm tweet 2
klm tweet 3

…and then changed it to this:

klm 2

Yeh, “unspoiled” Zambia: after colonialism, independence, one-party rule, and an economy crippled by Structural Adjustment.

We’re glad KLM have changed their description of Africa as “the dark continent”. They told us they didn’t want people to misinterpret it. Apparently we misinterpreted it as racist Bullshit.

Further Reading

On Safari

On our year-end publishing break, we reflect on how 2024’s contradictions reveal a fractured world grappling with inequality, digital activism, and the blurred lines between action and spectacle.

Rebuilding Algeria’s oceans

Grassroots activists and marine scientists in Algeria are building artificial reefs to restore biodiversity and sustain fishing communities, but scaling up requires more than passion—it needs institutional support and political will.

Ibaaku’s space race

Through Afro-futurist soundscapes blending tradition and innovation, Ibaaku’s new album, ‘Joola Jazz,’ reshapes Dakar’s cultural rhythm and challenges the legacy of Négritude.

An allegiance to abusers

This weekend, Chris Brown will perform two sold-out concerts in South Africa. His relationship to the country reveals the twisted dynamic between a black American artist with a track record of violence and a country happy to receive him.

Shell’s exit scam

Shell’s so-called divestment from Nigeria’s Niger Delta is a calculated move to evade accountability, leaving behind both environmental and economic devastation.

Africa’s sibling rivalry

Nigeria and South Africa have a fraught relationship marked by xenophobia, economic competition, and cultural exchange. The Nigerian Scam are joined by Khanya Mtshali to discuss the dynamics shaping these tensions on the AIAC podcast.

The price of power

Ghana’s election has brought another handover between the country’s two main parties. Yet behind the scenes lies a flawed system where wealth can buy political office.

Beats of defiance

From the streets of Khartoum to exile abroad, Sudanese hip-hop artists have turned music into a powerful tool for protest, resilience, and the preservation of collective memory.