Boris Johnson calls Africa a country instead of a continent in massive slip-up at Tory conference while reflecting on his three months as foreign secretary
In a speech laden with characteristic jokes, the Foreign Secretary made the gaffe to the party
BORIS Johnson mistakenly called Africa a country instead of a continent as he spoke while reflecting on his three months as Foreign Secretary.
In his speech at the Tory party conference in Birmingham, Boris made the gaffe when he suggested countries across Africa were becoming more authoritarian before calling the continent a country.
He said: "For all its difficulties, life expectancy in Africa has risen astonishingly as that country has entered the global economic system.
"In 2000, the average Ethiopian lived to only 47 - it is now 64 and climbing; in Zambia the increase has been from 44 years to 60 years.
"In 1990, 37 per cent of the world's population lived in poverty - that is now down to only 9.6 per cent today.
"I think we, with our commitment to 0.7 per cent of our GDP going on development aid, can take the large share of the credit for that achievement."
And his mistake didn't go unnoticed with many viewers taking to Twitter to question his education in light of the gaffe.
Boris said it was our "economic ideas, our beliefs in freedom, our values that continue to lift the world out of poverty".
A written copy of his speech showed he planned to say "continent" and not "country".
Related Stories
On a more serious note, the Foreign Secretary claimed the world is "less safe, more dangerous and more worrying" than it was 10 years ago - partly because of a "lack of western self-confidence" in the region's political, military and economic ideals.
But the former Tory leadership-hopeful also painted a grim picture of the state of the world as he accused Russia of being "complicit" in carrying out war crimes in Syria.
Boris said the UK "must be humble and realistic enough to accept that in many eyes the notion that we could endlessly expand the realm of liberal democracy was badly damaged" by the Iraq war.
Meanwhile, he said free market capitalism was "seriously discredited by the crash of 2008, and the global suspicion of bankers".
He likened those two issues to "punches" which had led to a lack of confidence.
"If you look at the course of events in the last 10 years, I am afraid you can make the case that it is partly as a result of that lack of western self-confidence - political, military, economic - that in some material ways the world has got less safe, more dangerous and more worrying," he said.
"After a long post-war period in which the world was getting broadly more peaceful, the number of deaths in conflict has risen from 49,000 in 2010 to 167,000 last year.
"The global number of refugees is up by 30% on 2013 to 46 million last year."
Boris said "much of that crisis" with refugees could be attributed to the war in Syria and the "wider arc of instability" across the region.
He said: "This matters profoundly to our country because it is the continuing savagery of the Asad regime against the people of Aleppo and the complicity of the Russians in committing what are patently war crimes - bombing hospitals, when they know they are hospitals and nothing but hospitals - that is making it impossible for peace negotiations to resume and that is prolonging a migration crisis that last year overwhelmed Europe's ability to cope."