This video perfectly sums up what’s wrong with people who want to ‘save Africa’

Let's say it together:

Africa is NOT a country.

That's easy to forget when reading news reports about the "Ebola outbreak in Africa." Yes, there's an Ebola crisis ravaging several West African countries, here's a map that puts it in better context.

The problem is that the people and nations of the African continent are too often lumped together as a single, imaginary "Africa" that's a natural and seemingly inevitable site of disease, conflict, and famine. That imaginary, flat version of Africa is the one that serves as the backdrop for some of the patronizing and eyeroll-worthy charity initiatives that attempt to "save" it. 

There are real, complicated problems affecting some African countries, but most of the problems aren't "African" problems, but rather, problems created by the wealth nations that stole its people and bonded them into slavery, colonized its land, seized (and continue to seize) its natural resources, and created oppressive and corrupt power structures that persist in various forms till this day.

More from GlobalPost: These attempts to help Africa are really offensive

That's more or less the perspective of a development organization in Norway called SAIH, which, among other projects, works to break down stereotypical ideas about "Africa" in order to solve real problems in African nations. 

Part of breaking down those stereotypes means calling them out wherever they appear, including among mostly well-meaning, often white volunteers who don't see how their own impulses to help are rooted in and perpetuate the very stereotypes that do such harm.

And so we get this incredible video from SAIH, "Who Wants to Be A Volunteer":

If the biting satire seems familiar, it's might be because you say SAIH's hilarious "Africa for Norway" video in 2012: