President creates a new country — Nambia
As US President Donald Trump spoke to African leaders at the United Nations on Thursday, he made not one but two references to a country called Nambia.
“Nambia’s health system is increasingly self- sufficient,” Trump said approvingly at one point.
Unfortunately, there’s a problem — good healthcare or not, Nambia doesn’t exist. And so the US President’s laudatory comments about a nonexistent country swiftly invited ridicule online, with many suggesting that Trump had created an entirely new nation by combining two existing ones — Zambia and Namibia.
A White House transcript of Trump’s comments corrected his error, making clear that the President had not intended to invent a new nation and had, in fact, been referring to the very real country of Namibia, which is in southern Africa.
So how did Namibians react to “Nambia”?
Namibia isn’t often the subject of Western attention. The country of just 2 million was granted independence in 1990 after a long civil war with neighbouring South Africa. It is perhaps best known internationally for its long- standing diamond mining industry.
Hage Geingob, Namibia’s USeducated President, was in the room with Trump as he made his speech. In public at least, he offered no reaction to the suggestion that he was the leader of “Nambia”. Graham Hopwood, executive director of Namibia’s independent Institute for Public Policy Research, said this might be because of diplomatic protocol but also suggested that the gaffe was likely to have been overlooked by Geingob anyway for the sake of good ties between Namibia and the United States.