This separation of the North from the rest of Africa is done partly on the justification that the people in the region are Arab, and thus not African. It is true that Arabs invaded northern Africa in the 7th century C.E., and colonized parts of the continent, and those Arabs were not indigenous Africans, but the north of Africa is not, however, Arab, and speaking Arabic does not make a North African an Arab. As one commenter put it, to call North Africans Arabs “… would be like calling people from Hong Kong British, or Peruvians Spanish. You wouldn’t class the Greeks as Turks would you? By Arab North and Black South: the False Separation that damages our identity as African by Nuunja Kahina (via dynamicafrica)