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ike many Indonesian businessmen '€” or any Indonesian for that matter '€” there is precious little that helps me relate to Africa or make me think of Africa in terms of doing business. It seems so far away, although distance-wise, it is actually as near as Europe, unlike the Americas, which really require an effort to get to.

Nonetheless, when I found out that trade volume between Indonesia and the African continent came out to a measly US$11 billion, it registered as a shock.

To compare, bilateral trade volume between Indonesia and Australia amounts to $14 billion and with China almost $60 billion. These are individual countries, not whole continents. Australia is arguably a continent, but it is made up of a single country.

Of course, China is the world'€™s second-largest economy, but $11 billion for a continent of 1 billion people spread across 54 independent nations does not look right. China'€™s trade volume with Africa is a whopping $200 billion, and India'€™s, while much lower, is still a respectable $70 billion a year.

What is it that causes Indonesia to compare so poorly to the two other great nations in Asia? Surely, one factor is the well-known reluctance of Indonesians to do business outside the nation'€™s borders. The standard answer to questions of doing business overseas is, '€œit is too complicated to do business overseas, and besides, we have a huge market at home, so why bother?'€

Another reason may be prejudice. We call Africa Benua Hitam or '€œBlack Continent'€, and in Indonesian the term has a negative connotation. We also refer to the underworld as Dunia Hitam, or literally, '€œBlack World'€. In the early 2000s, following the Asian financial crisis, businesspeople with questionable ethics or morals were referred to as Konglomerat Hitam or '€œBlack Conglomerates'€.

As the first step toward eliminating prejudice, we may well start by getting rid of the pejorative name. It is true that most of the publicity about Africa has negative overtones, like the outbreak of Ebola (which followed AIDS a few decades prior), for  which there is no cure at the moment. And then we have Boko Haram and the pirates of Somalia. Combined with the pejorative '€œBlack Continent'€ term, all these factors do not make for a strong appeal of the African continent to the average Indonesian.

There must be a concerted effort to set the image straight. No news is good news, so we rarely hear anything about South Africa. Or take Ghana, which was called Gold Coast when it was a British colony. These are countries with high gross domestic products (GDPs) and economic growth. Even Nigeria, the site of Boko Haram, is a land of great opportunity. It is the largest economy in Africa, with a GDP of more than $500 billion in nominal terms, growing at 6 percent per annum, and a population of 175 million.

That China and India can do such good business with Africa should open our eyes to the potential of this '€œIvory Continent'€. Yes, let'€™s call this land mass just to the South of Europe the Ivory Continent, so that it has a more positive connotation than the one we are used to hearing in Indonesia. True, the magnificent creatures whose tusks are so sought after are threatened because humans like them for their ornamental purposes '€” and it may be a bit late to save the African elephant from extinction '€” but for us in Indonesia it is important to create a positive image in order to change our perception of this neglected continent. The more so because of our penchant to find nicknames by which we remember something or somebody.

The previous administration was keen to explore '€œalternative markets'€ to boost exports; the current one is also as keen to find ways and means to get out of the current account deficit '€” obviously, trading partners must be expanded. Here is one continent of a billion people whose potential many of our neighbors have recognized. For whatever reason, apart from a small number of conglomerates that reportedly have been doing good business in Africa, many of us have been blind for so long to the tremendous opportunities that are on offer there.