Windhoek — The proliferation of holidays from Good Friday to Africa Day obviously is not good for most businesses.

Those that depend on a number of productive hours, like a bank or an accounting firm, see the gap in their revenue immediately. Those that depend on number of selling days, like car dealers, feel the pinch even more. Yet there are some businesses whose revenues actually improve when their customers, usually the public at large, have more leisure time. Here, cellphone companies, recreation venues and shebeens jump to mind.

Africa Day, in my opinion, provides an opportunity for reflection and re-invention. When one hears rhetoric about a united Africa, or an African Union, or references to the continent as a whole, I always smile, knowing that sayer of the said notion is definitely not African. Or worse, assumes the African label for reasons other than existential or practical. Africa as a unified concept exists only on a map as the outline of an iconic continent, or in the minds of foreigners who really do not know their elbows from their kneecaps where it concerns the continent.

Africa is a paradox, an anomaly, a non-existent chimera that parades a charade of unity based on genetic similarity but even this is false.

Because the continent has such an eye-catching shape and because, unfortunately we sit in the middle of all conventional world maps, the idea of a one Africa is reinforced in the mind of every single person, except Africans, when they look at a map of the world.

I know it sounds harsh when I say Africa does not exist but sadly, it is the truth and I stick to my point. There is no Africa in the sense that uprooted so-called "African Americans" would want it to exist, or that mining companies that foster and thrive on conflict, like to hop from one hotspot on the continent to another. Or in the way white ex-soldiers turned mercenaries now travel from one war to the other to sell their highly valuable skills in killing, to the highest bidder, be it a security company, a dictator, or a dictator-in-waiting.

The continent can be divided into four distinct regions: north, east, south and west. Starting with North Africa, it is safe to say it is the most un-African of the four regions. It is Arabic in culture, often in language, and certainly in allegiance and religion. It is also fragmented, and many enclaves have closer links to Europe and the Middle East than to Africa. East Africa is an entity that is only now emerging between Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania with Rwanda and Burundi trying their utmost to link in. But it is a region whose infrastructure has gone to ruins and its people are largely rural, certainly still rural in mentality.

West Africa constitute a conglomeration of sorts but going by the way they have excelled in decimating one another over the past twenty years, I would not, at this stage, give it much of chance to emerge as a integrated, functional region. Even in individual countries notably Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria there is no common national identity or sense of belonging.

The big exception, of course is southern Africa, ironically the region with the strongest colonial, - read British -, influence, and the longest under either colonial or minority domination. Another paradox that presents itself in the southern African scenario is that each individual country has a very strong national identity but an equally strong commitment to work towards integration of the region under the label of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Of course, the big exception of southern Africa to the other three regions is that it is anchored by the South African powerhouse. None of the other three has a remotely comparable heavyweight in its stable.

I am not in a position to say whether southern Africa is growing into a success story because of South Africa or despite having it. But what I do observe is that countries like Angola that are de iure part of SADC but battling to find a strong national identity does not show the same convergence in its development as the other member countries.

And countries like the not-so-DRC, Gabon and the Central African Republic, basically lost causes to produce prosperity for their own citizens, have no national identity, no strong allegiance to any region, and no real future under their current leaders.

So when we celebrate Africa Day, let's keep the realities in mind, work on strengthening our regional structures and maybe, fifty years from now, our children will be citizens of the continent instead of just sons and daughters of the soil.