Africa Continent Quotes

#1. The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

Bono

#2. Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing to be kicked around all over again?

Arundhati Roy

#3. Africa is the continent that the rest of the world prefers not to think about.

Richard Corliss

#4. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated.

James Shikwati

#5. We will continue to count on your unwavering support and commitment to working with leaders of our continent in bringing about the desired renaissance of Africa.

Thabo Mbeki

#6. We forgot this continent for a long time - and now, finally Africa is being rediscovered.

Fernando Meirelles

#7. George Kimble said, 'The only thing dark about Africa is our ignorance of it.' So let's start shedding light on this amazing eclectic continent that has so much to offer.

Euvin Naidoo

#8. My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn't have any money, because Africa was the 'dark continent', and because I was a girl.

Jane Goodall

#9. And I think that Africa is making progress that the world needs to recognize and assist the continent to continue on that path.

John Dramani Mahama

#10. Those new regions [America] which we found and explored with the fleet ... we may rightly call a New World ... a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us.

Amerigo Vespucci

#11. Far from being hopeless, Africa is full of hope and potential, maybe more so than any other continent. The challenge is to ensure that its potential is utilised.

Mo Ibrahim

#12. Africa has a genious for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. Nowhere is day more vivid or night darker. Nowhere are forests more luxuriant. Nowhere is there a continent more miserable

Lance Morrow

#13. Africa is the most weathered continent in the world; 75 percent of its soil has been degraded. You don't just bring that back. I always like to say it's like putting an oxygen mask on a cadaver; it just isn't going to work.

Howard Graham Buffett

#14. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

James Shikwati

#15. There are people who refuse to say that Africa is a continent, but that doesn't remove the fact that it is a continent.

Angelique Kidjo

#16. Father Jude Nnorom says he hopes the pope's travels in Africa will help end all the wars ravaging the continent.

Sylvia Poggioli

#17. Compared to developed countries, or even to some major emerging countries, burdened by aging populations, financial crises, widening budget deficits, faltering faith in politics and growing social demands, Africa has become the world's last 'New Frontier:' a kind of 'it-continent.'

Mo Ibrahim

#18. Africans are on the front lines of humanitarian efforts, distributing life-saving aid in dangerous environments. Africans comprise the vast majority of peacekeepers in civil conflict on that continent. Africans for the most part lead peace negotiations for the wars being fought in Africa.

John Prendergast

#19. Bringing more large sporting events to Africa would help the continent develop sports policies and at the same time optimize its peoples' chances of achieving competitive success.

Richard Attias

#20. Africa is in fact a more Christian continent than Europe. There are now, for example, more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England.

Niall Ferguson

#21. This is a great continent. I went to primary school on this continent, secondary school, university. I've worked on this continent, and I think that it's a great disservice that, for whatever reason, people have usurped an imagery of Africa that is absolutely incorrect.

Dambisa Moyo

#22. Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

George Ayittey

#23. It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.

Henry Louis Gates

#24. One of the things I find extremely challenging about the continent of Africa is that when the immediate needs and the social needs of people are not met, that kills dreams, and it's all about survival.

Djimon Hounsou

#25. If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape

Maya Angelou

#26. Africa the continent is not just what we see on the news. It's ... not AIDS, and it's not just war and poverty. It's so much more. It's an abundant continent, and Botswana is an abundant place.

Jill Scott

#27. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people ... What [Africa] needs, the West cannot give. ... what Africans need is personal liberty ... [and] guarantees of private property rights and rule of law.

Walter E. Williams

#28. The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa'. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

#29. Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We're standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

Bono

#30. Africa is no more this poor continent. It's on the march.

Claire Denis

#31. Swaziland is a small part of south-east Africa, the last country in the continent to gain its independence.

Richard Grant

#32. Africa does not have an uncle abroad who will come to bail it out of its political and economic woes. It is important that African countries wake up and pool whatever resources they have and jointly deal elements pulling our continent down a death blow.

Bernard Membe

#33. Current estimates are that 38,000 elephants are being slaughtered each year in Africa. At this rate, elephants on that continent will all be gone in less than twenty years.

Jodi Picoult

#34. When I first went to Africa, I thought that I was personally going to save the continent, if not the world.

Jacqueline Novogratz

#35. [Africa] is a continent of many countries, not one country. If we are down to three or four conflicts, it means that there are plenty of opportunities to invest in stable, growing, exciting economies where there's plenty of opportunity.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

#36. It is only by our hands that we can build this continent to the standard that we envy and admire in the advanced countries.

Nana Awere Damoah

#37. I think that Africa has made quite rapid progress and a lot of the conflicts that we saw on the continent have abated.

John Dramani Mahama

#38. Africa is not just about where you are born. For me, Africa is the whole continent; from south to north, to east to west.

Angelique Kidjo

#39. The only continent not in equilibrium is Africa, where a substantial share of capital is owned by foreigners.

Thomas Piketty

#40. According to Okonkwo, the British via its indirect rule system ensured that Africans saw their native leaders as the demons who betrayed their people. He called it a demonocracy and that was the first time I had seen him become so passionate about issues that affect Africa as a people and continent.

S.A. David

#41. For this continent would never suffer itself to be drained of inhabitants, to support the British arms in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.

Thomas Paine

#42. Africa is my continent. It is where I opened my eyes.

Djimon Hounsou

#43. Roger reached the conclusion that the hero of his childhood and youth was one of the most unscrupulous villains the West had excreted onto the continent of Africa.

Mario Vargas-Llosa

#44. Christianity has roughly 20 percent of its followers in Africa, 20 percent in Asia, 20 percent in Europe, 20 percent in North America, and 20 percent in South America. Every other major religion has at least 80 percent of its followers concentrated on one continent.

J.D. Greear

#45. I'm doing a lot of things in Africa. I've formed a company with two friends of mine called Made In Africa and we are doing a lot of important things across the continent.

Ozwald Boateng

#46. I'm not sure what's more worrying. The list of demands or the fact he seems unaware the French stopped using francs in the last century and that Africa is a continent?" - Jerome

Jamie Scallion

#47. African leaders should not turn the continent into a giant collector of donations and loans from wealthy nations - they must find other plausible means to help established their economic security so as to minimize poverty. This incoherent blunder on the mainland must be scrutinized.

Duop Chak Wuol

#48. I don't think Africa gets as much credit as it should have on the world stage. People tend to think of us as coming from The Dark Continent, where nothing good goes on. That's not true. A huge amount of, as I say, entrepreneurship goes on.

Nicky Oppenheimer

#49. We view South Africa as one of our closest strategic partners in the developing world and in the African continent.

Pratibha Patil

#50. Happily, there's a reversal of the brain drain occurring in Ghana now. We're seeing a lot of - actually in Africa - we're seeing a lot of African professionals, you know, returning to the continent to contribute their quota.

John Dramani Mahama

#51. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce ...

Jacqueline Novogratz

#52. To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.

James D. Watson

#53. Africa is rich, and why are we poor then if our continent is rich. It is not right.

Mo Ibrahim

#54. Come to Africa and help! Wherever you may be in the world, there is something you can give back to the continent that gave you a name and an identity, at least.

Nana Awere Damoah

#55. The African continent has always been more queer than generally acknowledged.

Chantal Zabus

#56. Africa is not a country, but it is a continent like none other. It has that which is elegantly vast or awfully little.

Douglas Wilder

#57. I always felt that I had to leave a legacy on the African continent. As I was only the third player to come to the NBA from Africa, I felt I had to do my best to recruit more young Africans to come and play in the NBA - and also find a way to bring the NBA to Africa.

Dikembe Mutombo

#58. The first breath of air of Africa - it felt like you were in another continent - you were, you were - and it was different.

Romeo Dallaire

#59. I always hope for the better for the continent and what I know comes from Africa. Living in the West we feel like we're so removed from the continent that we can somewhat shut off.

Djimon Hounsou

#60. I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

Nelson Mandela

#61. When you leave Africa, as the plane lifts, you feel that more than leaving a continent you're leaving a state of mind. Whatever awaits you at the other end of your journey will be of a different order of existence.

Francesca Marciano

#62. You're still carrying Africa, but it's eroding at the edges.
Great. We're destroying the Dark Continent.

J.D. Robb

#63. I was very conscious of race as I was writing. I was lucky to have spent real time in Portuguese Africa, but I am white and my main characters are white, outsiders at sea in the "Dark Continent."

Jon Weisman

#64. I represent my country, but I also represent the continent of Africa when I play in Europe. That's why it's important to try to achieve something big.

Yaya Toure

#65. Some people talk of Africa being a continent cursed not blessed with minerals, but the real curse is the leaders and politicians of Africa

Peter Mutanda

#66. Africa's agricultural sector has enormous scope for development, which would benefit both the continent's economy and its people.

Richard Attias

#67. I lost a whole continent.
a whole continent from my memory.
unlike all other hyphenated americans
my hyphen is made of blood.
when africa says hello
my mouth is a heartbreak
because i have nothing in my tongue
to answer her.
i don't know how to say hello to my mother.

Nayyirah Waheed

#68. Africa is an article of faith. I believe in this continent.

Sunil Bharti Mittal

#69. The nations of Africa, as is true of every continent of the world, from time to time dispute among themselves. These quarrels must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.

Haile Selassie

#70. Africa is a continent that provides so much for the existence of the rest of the world. We go around the world and cultivate so many things.

Djimon Hounsou

#71. I'd move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack.

Russell Crowe

#72. No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.

Barbara Kingsolver

#73. So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.

Jon Stewart

#74. Obviously, South Africa is our most important market, but we are also gradually increasing our presence throughout East and West as well as North Africa. It is a continent with a lot of potential which we plan to tap into.

Jochen Zeitz