No matter how incompetent you think Trump’s minions are, they’re actually worse than that, and his State Department proved it the other day at a global AIDS conference in Brazil. They brought a map of Africa that, beyond getting the shape of the continent right, failed on every other front.
The map highlighted real countries, but placed them hundreds or even thousands of miles from their actual location, and gave them imaginary borders to boot. Nigeria was in the Sahara. Mozambique was near the Horn of Africa. Côte D’Ivoire was landlocked near Zimbabwe.
No human, no matter how ill-informed, would have created it, but the bozos Trump installed at State wouldn’t admit that they entrusted it to AI. The human error came when nobody even checked the result before inserting it into the PowerPoint.
Because artificial intelligence hoovers up text without regard to its accuracy, I think the entire fiasco can be blamed on the Toto hit “Africa.”
Keyboard player David Paich wrote the song without ever having been to Africa. What little he knew about it came from TV documentaries. So the line
I know that I must do what’s right/
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
sounds nice, but it’s geographically impossible – Kilimanjaro can’t be seen from the Serengeti because it’s hundreds of miles east of there (yes, somebody checked). It’s not as egregious as the MAGA map, but it does render the “as sure as” unintentionally ironic.
The lyrics of “Africa” were derided at the time as smacking of colonialism, which did nothing to dampen the public’s approval. Released on 1982’s “Toto IV,” it wasn’t intended as a single, but club DJs in New York started playing it and record company execs took notice. It rose to No. 1 in early 1983, after its video – also criticized for its cringey Indiana Jones vibe – hit MTV.
The band certainly never expected it to be a hit, let alone to have such a long afterlife. Guitarist Steve Lukather has been particularly ambivalent about it over the years. In 2018 he told the Guardian,
“If this is a hit,” I said, “I’ll run naked down Hollywood Boulevard.” I thought the song had a brilliant tune, but I remember listening to the lyrics and going: “Dave, man, Africa? We’re from north Hollywood. What the fuck are you writing about? ‘I bless the rains down in Africa?’ Are you Jesus, Dave?'”
The song has become such a common meme that it sells now better than it ever did – in 2024 it was certified Diamond, meaning sales of 10 million.
