Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty
'Africa Is Not A Country:' Social Media Blasts Apple Music For Its Misclassification
Streaming music platform, Apple Music, recently held its 2021 awards— the third since its creation in 2019. The tech giant gave out several awards to artists across the world, including a trio of Artist of the Year recognitions— a first in the awards’ history.
Artist of the Year recipients were Japan’s Official Hige, France’s Aya Nakamuraa, and Nigeria’s Wizkid. However, rather than mention Wizkid’s homeland of Nigeria, his home ‘country’ was simply listed as Africa.
Let’s just say the African Diaspora as a whole was not having it, and they immediately called Apple Music out on their alleged oversight.
“AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY,” popular Instagram page @moyoafrika pointed out in a post about the awards.
“Apple Music sweetie, France/Japan is not a continent, and Africa is not a country. Wizkid is from Nigeria, and he doesn’t have 54 citizenships,” the page went on to say.
It seems that others of shared this same frustration with the platform, many completely confused at how they could easily classify the other artists’ countries properly, but not an African artist.
Actress and podcast host, Kelechi, had this to say:
“I’m proud of Wizkid but the constant diminutive manner in which the continent of Africa is often referred to is very much giving colonial nostalgia.”
One Twitter user came to the platform’s defense by pointing out it was attempting to be more inclusive and the continent of Africa as a whole wasn’t as advanced when it comes to streaming— so this was Apple’s way of including them overall.
“We need to understand that those awards are not targeted at our demographic. This one was recently added for inclusion stuff. They can’t separate African countries because we’re not that technically advance (streaming wise) that’s why they had to give it to one (the most streams).”
Apple Music has not released a statement as to why Wizkid was selected as African artist of the year versus Nigerian. You can read more reactions to the classification here.
