I moved to Australia and when one person found out I was South African they asked if I knew such and such in Kenya…. Also when they find out my mother was born in Zimbabwe ( Rhodesia in those days) I get the response “…….. but your not black”

Indeed, I considered making the comment that many of us (in the US) believe that Africa I’d a village of mud huts.

There have been times when I tried to explain to other Americans that parts of Africa are culturally aligned with the Middle East, and the looks on their faces. Dear lord, I’ve seen it when I say Egypt is located in Africa.

Obviously this isn’t everyone, and in my experience it’s not even the majority (take that with a cup of salt, the US is huge), but it really makes you want to slam your face into a tree when you run into someone that’s a walking stereotype of what people from other countries think of Americans.

Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, her bio says she's from Kenya. Which is, you know, in Africa. So she certainly doesn't represent "The West" here, and it's quite possible English isn't her first language.

Many languages don't really have a distinction between "South X" and "Southern X". And in English we do use "West Africa", "East Africa", and "North Africa" to refer to entire regions with multiple countries. So it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that "South Africa" refers to the whole region.

South America is a continent, South Asia is a region, South Africa is a country, and South Australia is a state. That's not necessarily easy to keep straight.