Actually one does not need French to live in Geneva. I know people who have been here for centuries and all they can say is " je ne parle pas français".

if they can say *je ne parle pas français*, they speak French.... lol

But I agree. Know some expats here who doesn't speak French and seem not willing to do that effort.

Well, if they prefer to stay within their community...

You mean the UN canteen is self service?

Alright, the canteen employs some personnel, and the UN folks do not do plumbing, cleaning and electricians work themselves. But if counted that way, a single one of the bigger hotels employs more such people than the U.N.

andthere isn't much Italiano spoken in Mogadishu.

The map is very bad in that it doesn't represent what people actually speak, which is in large part none of those languages.

You mean the
Socialist Arab Republic of Geneva

The map is of 1910 and so is correct. Those who did the map could not foresee later developments.

The development of Rwanda (more will follow) is mentioned in one of my posts above. Kamerun and Deutsch-Südwest and Deutsch Ostafrika (Tanganyika) in 1910 were "fest in Deutscher Hand".

In case of maps, you always have to try to find out WHEN a map was drawn. Look at newly independent countries like Eritrea or name changes like the Belgian Congo / Congo Léopoldville / Congo Kinshasa / Zaïre / Congo Kinshasa and Gold Coast / Ghana and Upper Volta into Burkina Faso, or cities who changed names like Bathurst into Banjul, Lourenço Marques into Maputo etc. Older maps show older names, and in case of doubt older borders as well.

Most such maps and even lexica, up to this day, do NOT show the languages actually spoken by people. But very often, the "official languages" of African countries only are really spoken by the local elite.

As an African, I have never heard of the term 'Black Africa'...Please do enlighten me as to what this means exactly?

Used synonymously as Sub-Saharan Africa.

You learn something new everyday... Africans definitely do not use this terminology..

There also is the term "Sub-Saharan Africa" which means the major part of the African continent outside the Arab World (Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt .... and also Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti ) . Just to give an example, that you describe yourself as an African shows that you are NOT Arab, as Arabs do not regard themselves as "Africans".

And please, such geographical and cultural criteria do not refer to quality, or to be truthful should not do so !

At the other hand, the point that the whole Arab north of your continent in reality is not oriented to the continent, and that much of their declarations in the "African Union" are empty rethorics without meaning. The Arab World, of which most in fact is on the African continent, is oriented first to the area between Casablanca and Baghdad, second to the Mediterranean and third to Europe.

Furthermore, if you see Africa on a correct-sizing world-map, you will see that it is, just behind Asia, the second largest continent on earth, and so not to be compared to sizewise small but heavily overpopulated Europe.

I still remember a lengthy discussion I by sheer chance had at London Heathrow Airport with a Bishop of the Anglican church in Nigeria. Our planes were heavily delayed and so had a lot of time to discuss. And the topic of course was the development of Africa. I learnt a lot. Many things I knew were confirmed, some things I corrected and lots of aspects I had never considered became common to me. The wise old man knew so much, I was most deeply impressed.

He for example told me, when I said that I thought that his country had much potential but a development which was a bit disappointing, that I, just as many of his countrymen, had to realize that full scale development cannot be mastered in a "big jump forward à la Mao" but needs time. He said that he expected Nigeria to get up in 30 years from then, in other words in the 2020ies, that I was young enough to see those times, but that he was too old for that. He told me about European economic history (amazing that a Nigerian can tell you about European history ) and the comparisons and the lessons to be drawn.

We both were united in laughing about European countries using development aid to develop themselves (by developing international relations and their foreign trade).

Back to Black Africa. You may DISlike the term, but there is no reason for that, none at all.

While I think the "Black Africans" better would ! For their own advantage.

what about the white africans from SA? They are sub-saharian and yet not black. They do no fit into your terminology.

The whole debate started with the visible minority from sub-saharian africa. If you replaced the same minority in Geneva by white south-africans, no one would have raised the issue probably?

Most of the the north-african culture (rituals, music, popular beliefs) are also influenced by sub-saharian africa. The reasons are islam expansion of course, trade of goods and slaves. In south morocco, algeria, tunisia, lybia, egypt you will not be able to see a difference between a sub-saharian african and local black people. You'll make it once they start speaking arabic (or a dialect). I think most north-africans see themselves as arabs because of the footprint of arabo-islamic civilization. There is no equivalent footprint in sub-saharian africa despite the beauty of local cultures like the bambara or dogon.
Economically, I would not underestimate the investment and business ties between the north and sub-saharian countries. The headquarter of the African Development Bank (B.A.D in french) is in Tunisia. Many engineering companies from north africa work in Senegal, Mali, Nigeria etc...

Nice topic anyway.

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The "White South Africans" are in reality a small minority in South Africa. Such comparisons are tricky. I just a year apart happened to be in Washington/DC and Dakar/Senegal, and in a hotel bar in DKR said jokingly "well, there are more whites in Dakar then in Washington. The roaring success was overwhelming and not expected as it just was TRUTH !

In Algiers (Oran, Casa, Rabat, Tunis) and Marseille, there often is no difference between a Southern French native and somebody from Algeria/Morocco/Tunisia. As President Mitterand once explained in a famous speech, European and Arab cultures have enriched and influenced each other over centuries, and that the result overall was supremely positive.

The Fezzan and the Sahara Algérienne are in reality add-ons to these countries, and in case of Algeria it was added by the French who very early realized the economic potential and wanted to have the area inside France and as the Algérie Française then WAS inside France did accordingly. You can be assured that many Sahariens in Algeria are not very lucky about all this. And a Saharoui from Southern Algeria I knew heavily complained about the racism of the "Mainland-Algerians" on the Med coastline. Nubians in Southern Egypt very clearly detest the racist attitudes of Mainland Egyptians.

What you state about Arabs investing in Black Africa is correct, the attitudes shown by many of those Arab managers however are the ones of European managers in the 1940ies ! My worst experience was , after a meeting in Winterthur, when on the train to Zurich, a Senegalese addressed me in French by you racist arrogant typical Arab S.O.B., ignoring us Blacks and sitting together with a local native . It was unbelivable, I however kept calm, while my native colleague concluded looks as if there are some problems about "African" people" !

Its a sort of translation from French, the orginal phrase is "Afrique noire". Type this phrase into French Wikipedia and you'll be redirected to "Afrique_subsaharienne"

Adding to the confusion - "black" i.e. the english word is now used in French to mean dark-skinned people. [trying to dodge potential PC bullets here].

Therefore if a French speaker uses this phrase and it sounds off in english, well, its not, he's just confused..!

They even provide a map:

"L'Afrique subsaharienne, aussi appelée Afrique noire"

This map shows Cameroon as a former German colony?

I've been there. Trust me, it's French.

If you don't believe me, take it from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameroon

From the link you provide:

Depends how you define "African" as the defenition isn't really as clear cut as you might think. Back in the Uk you'd hardly refer to a Jamaican as an African but here in Switzerland that appears to be different.

When I first came to CH in the early 1990s Black Africans were still quite rare in Zürich but common in Geneva. I think many prefered to settle where there already was a community rather than be the only African in the village. So existing communities tend to grow.