German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, speaking in English during her recent visit to South Africa, mistakenly said "bacon of hope" instead of an idiomatic phrase "beacon of hope," a German media outlet reported.
"South Africa’s path to freedom has been a bacon of hope inspiring men and women around the world," she said.
Baerbock's statement prompted a stream of ironic comments on social networks in Germany, the newspaper noted.
This is not the first time that the German Foreign Ministry has made unsuccessful remarks in communication with its African partners.
In January, the German ministry posted a message on social media in which it tried to ridicule the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Africa.
An African Union (AU) official, though, responded to how the continent was depicted as being exclusively home to untamed animals.
While responding to the German Foreign Ministry, Ebba Kalondo, spokesperson for AU Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, asked whether Africa, its people, and its wildlife were "just a joke to you?"
"Foreign policy is not a joke nor should it be used to score cheap geopolitical points by illustrating an entire Continent with colonial tropes," she further stated.
Later, the German Foreign Ministry apologized to its African partners, assuring them that the ministry’s message was not intended as an insult.