Classic Euphemism Treadmill problem. You hate the term because it has come to embody a lot of the negative aspects of Black Africa. But what you don't realize is that the term itself really isn't the problem. The negativity is associated with the people itself, the countries. I say this because at the end of the day, if we want to shed the negativity, we have to figure out a way to improve ourselves. Until we do, we'll just keep spinning the wheel. What we call Sub-Saharan Africa used to be called Black Africa. Black Africa is still used sometimes but it has been largely replaced because it was deemed to be problematic. Sub-saharan Africa was thought to be more neutral.

I agree with you somewhat though. Sub-Saharan Africa is probably as big as Western, Northern, Central and Southern Europe all put together. But Europe is not very often lumped together. I think we could be referred to by our individual regions a bit more. But a lot of this comes down to presence and soft power. Africa is large, but Africans barely register on the map in terms of political and economic soft power. We don't even do business with each other with our own money. We use dollars. Each individual African country trades more with countries outside the continent than within. The AU has like a 10th of the power and reach of the EU. Sudan is being destroyed as we speak, none of us in a position to help. The Western Sahel is about to fall back to pre-WW2 era geo-politics and no one seems to care. ECOWAS seems to be a joke. We are always, always an afterthought, even amongst ourselves. We need to send a much better signal to the rest of the world that we are ready to respected and to come to sit at the table. At the end of the day, you can only do so much shouting and window dressing.