What is something most people don't know about Africa?

That most Africans are poor, not because they really are poor, but because someone decides to describe them as such.

My grandfather is ‘poor’. He certainly lives on “less than a dollar a day”. He is now 95 years old. In his nine and a half decades on earth, he has never lacked, and he has never begged. He only attended one year at a mission school in the 1930s and learnt how to read and write. This is how he pulls it off:

When he wants food, he goes to the banana plantation, looks at tens of bunches of matooke (banana) and decides which to harvest for the day’s dinner. Adjacent to the plantation is a sweet potato garden, cassava garden, yams and finger millet. To the south of the banana plantation are beans, cow peas or peanuts gardens. Down the valley is grazing land with tens of Frisian and cross-breed cattle. They provide him with milk daily, 365 days a year.

He also has about 20 goats. In Uganda, goat milk was generally not considered palatable, possibly due to the abundance of cow milk, so we never milked goats. He would sell a couple of them to supplement income from other produce to send his children to school. He also reared a couple of chickens, more as a hobby.

The farm produces more than he can consume. He sells the surplus to afford