Re-Mapping Africa

Abstract

The National Geographic reported on November 20, 2002, that 11% of a sample of Americans aged 18-24 (that is, high school graduates, undergraduates, graduates, or working adults) could not find their own country on a map of the world. Is that embarrassment of geographic illiteracy behind the recent rash of Mapping reports from the National Intelligence Council of the US, in which largely unnamed experts avoid locating any country on the map but proceed without shame to offer what they admitted are fictional scenarios of the future? The only difference is that the authors pretended that what they wrote about Africa had no fictional scenarios but was completely factual. What do you make of a document that was issued by the National Intelligence Council with a disclaimer on every page Discussion paper does not represent the views of the US Government (a disclaimer that was not present in the Mapping Global Futures report)? Perhaps, the authors were just kidding around but after some African leaders took the report seriously and rushed to the national legislative assembly with a request for a national response to the document we cannot but weigh in on the discussion of the paper.