Germany Accused of Stereotyping Africa While Taking Aim at Russia

The Deputy Chair of the African Union Commission, Monique Nsanzabaganwa, left, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, right, talk during a meeting as part of the G7 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Muenster, Germany, Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.InternationalIndiaAfricaRussia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov has been touring Africa for the past four days. So far, he has visited South Africa, the Kingdom of Eswatini and Angola, with one more destination yet to be announced.Germany’s Foreign Ministry has been caught red-handed in a post that social media users describe as “hidden racism” and “stereotyping” of Africa.The criticisms come in response to a FM Twitter post in which Berlin tried to troll Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Africa.In the post, the Germany’s FM wrote: “The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is in Africa, not to see [leopard emoji], but to bluntly claim that Ukraine’s partners ‘want to destroy everything Russian’.”© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotMany Twitter users were angered by the suggestion that leopards (a supposed reference to German tanks of the same name en route to Ukraine) or Africa’s wildlife in general is the only thing Lavrov might have come to Africa for.Spokesperson to the African Union chairperson Ebba Kalondo questioned the German Foreign Ministry: “Continent of Africa, its people & wildlife just a joke to you?” Berlin later emitted an apology, claiming that the post “was in no way intended to mean offense,” but rather aimed to “call out Russia’s lies” related to the special military operation in Ukraine to de-Nazify the Kiev regime and protect the people of the Donbass region.“A foreign ministry rolling out disgusting colonial tropes to illustrate a Continent to score cheap geopolitical points is a serious matter,” Kalondo argued in response to the German embassy’s spokesperson in South Africa, who tried to whitewash the tweet. She also pointed out that the faux pas comes “a day before @BMZ_Bund launches its Africa Strategy. Or is the @BMZ_Bund Africa strategy also tongue in cheek?”© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotMany netizens have also picked up on the “interesting image of Africa” exploited by the German Foreign Office, with some arguing that that tweet was nothing less than “racism disguised in diplomacy.” Others have pointed out that “using terrible stereotypes of Africa (‘Africa is a vast landscape of wild animals in the bush’) to score a geopolitical upper cut to an adversary in a European war will not win you any African friends.”© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshot© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshot© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshot© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshot© Photo : Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotA Twitter screenshotThe online exchange comes on the back of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s African tour, during which he has already visited South Africa, Eswatini and Angola.During the tour, Lavrov addressed the issue of the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine on several occasions.AfricaLavrov: Russia Respects Partners Refusing to Follow ‘Orders From Former Colonial Empires’24 January, 12:47 GMTOn Wednesday, during a press conference after negotiations with the Angolan president, Joao Lourenco, Lavrov revealed that one of the topics discussed during the meeting was the “hybrid warfare” the West is waging against Russia.“There was a lot of talk about the current situation in the world, primarily in the context of the West’s course to use Ukraine to plant the theory and practice of Nazism and to wage a hybrid war against our country,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.

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