In a time when Holland’s most prolific Africaphobes have a ball revisiting their most horrendous statements about sub-Sahara Africa, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam’s University of Applied Sciences) gave them all a run for their euros. Until further notice the institute that has close ties with the University of Amsterdam prohibits all college and internship trips to Africa. Not the ones to Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Chonakry, Sierra Leone or Liberia because of the Ebola outbreak or Burkina Faso because of the current political uproars. No, no… the entire continent of Africa. Why? Because the school’s Executive Board came to the conclusion that the continent suffers from “Ebola and political instability.”

Suzanne Okkes, HvA’s spokesperson, tried to smother the first breaths of discontent by publically guessing that “it would probably still be possible for a student to go to Cape Town, for example.” It’s no surprise why historically (dare I say, colonially) the Dutch will always love South Africa. Well, that and the fact that on a blank map of Africa the majority of Dutch folks don’t know their Ghanas and Somalias from their Mozambiques and Sudans but a countryname like South Africa doesn’t leave much to the imagination so one can always figure out where it is.

The HvA has seven faculties, including Health Professions and Media Creation & Information. Indeed, the jokes will wrote themselves.

Here’s a link to one of the Dutch articles about HvA’s Africaphobia.