Africa Quotes

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

How can I explain this? Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotion Africa creates?You are lifted.Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you see it all from above. Your pit, your ties, your fear. you are lifted, you slowly rise like a hot-air balloon, and all you see is the space and the endless possibilities for losing yourself in it.

~ Francesca Marciano

Because of my schooling, my fate would always be a little different from my friends.

~ Daoud Hari

What is more important for the world right now than preserving ways of living in balance with the earth?

~ Daoud Hari

The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.

~ Alexandra Fuller

The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa's major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.

~ Noam Chomsky

Increasing extremism - across Africa and the world - must be understood in the context of the failure of our leaders properly to manage diversity within their borders.

~ Mo Ibrahim

Computers are very expensive and they need power, and that can be a problem in Africa.

~ Mo Ibrahim

I partied in every capital in Europe, basked on all the famous beaches, and good-timed it in South America, the South Seas, the Orient, and the more palatable portions of Africa.

~ Frank Abagnale

We of Africa protest that, in this day and age, we should continue to be treated as lesser human beings than other races.

~ Robert Mugabe

When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet.

~ Ron Eglash

But since independence, Gabon is one of the few countries in Central Africa that enjoys peace and stability.

~ Omar Bongo

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

~ Richard Grant

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

~ Desmond Tutu

I'd say the best is when I was in Africa, I saw a hippo in a house. Someone had a pet hippo. And they're meant to be one of the most dangerous animals on the planet, and they had one that was sort of just wandering in and out of their house, just sort of roaming about.

~ Karl Pilkington

It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their history written by local writers.

~ John Henrik Clarke

God bless Africa, Guard her people, Guide her leaders, And give her peace.

~ Trevor Huddleston

There is a crisis of leadership and governance in Africa, and we must face it.

~ Mo Ibrahim

When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.

~ David Petraeus

Across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault.

~ George Ayittey

We know Africa does not have the same medical treatments as we do.

~ Kevin Mccarthy

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

~ Sydney Brenner

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty.

~ Alexandra Fuller

Without white South Africa realizing what it had done - and on the basis of that realization having the courage to ask for forgiveness - there can really be no significant movement.

~ Athol Fugard

I see courage everywhere I go in Africa.

~ John Prendergast

That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development.

~ Gro Harlem Brundtland

The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States has caused some to call on the United States to ban travel for anyone from the countries in West Africa facing the worst of the Ebola epidemic. That response is understandable. It's only human to want to protect ourselves and our families.

~ Tom Frieden

White sharks and tuna travel for thousands of miles before returning to the same hot spot just as salmon do when they return to the same stream. These journeys are the marine equivalent of wildebeest migrations that take place on the Serengeti plain in Africa.

~ Barbara Block

Improving Africa's farming sector would have multiple positive outcomes for African people.

~ Richard Attias

As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

~ Jackson Browne

My favourite animal is the koala, but his life would be boring. I would rather be a giraffe so that I could contemplate the beauty of Africa.

~ Caterina Murino

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.

~ Nelson Mandela

If China's expansion into Africa and Russia's into Latin America and the former Soviet Union are any indication, Silicon Valley's ability to expand globally will be severely limited, if only because Beijing and Moscow have no qualms about blending politics and business.

~ Evgeny Morozov

The history of apartheid-era South Africa is incredibly sad and at times infuriatingly incomprehensible.

~ Henry Rollins

We have known Hillary Clinton both professionally and personally for close to 20 years, dating back to before President Bill Clinton's first trip to Africa in 1998 - a trip that they both acknowledge changed their lives and gave considerable meaning to their post-White House years and to the activities of the Clinton Foundation.

~ Valerie Plame

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

~ Nelson Mandela

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.

~ Paul Theroux

Many people say I smile more in Africa than in Sweden.

~ Henning Mankell

Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa.

~ Marcus Garvey

Inspiration, in its rich variety, must be present in any discussion about Africa. We need role models - they are essential to the advancement of our society.

~ Richard Attias