The McDonalds McAfrika burger was very similar to a normal burger except that for the bread. It was released in Norway — and only Norway, thankfully — as part of the company’s celebration of the Olympics. McDonald’s introduced a few limited-time-only recipes featuring regionally-themed burgers, and the McAfrika was supposed to represent an entire continent. The burger, per Mashed, was “an ‘authentic African recipe’ of beef, cheese, and tomatoes inside pita bread,” citing McDonald’s own description vis-à-vis the recipe’s local authenticity.
But there were two major problems with the product. First, there is no such “authentic African recipe” that looks anything like the burger looked. While you’ll find beef-stuffed pitas in Egypt and in Lebanon, they’re not as common (to say the least) in the rest of Africa (and Lebanon isn’t even in Africa). In general, pitas are common in North Africa and the Middle East, but you won’t find them across the continent, and certainly not in southern Africa. McDonald’s, it seemed, just kind of made up a recipe and called it African.