I don't follow your logic. If it was a nation that would be nationality since it's a continent it must logically refer to the continent of origin. How you infer a reference to race is unfathomable. Absurd really with so many races living on the continent of Africa.
In the United States they were commonly called "negro". But Hawaii had just become a state before Obama was born and they may have been carrying over old cultural terms.
What Hawaiian cultural terms would lend themselves to using the word "African" for race? Negro or negroid were common terms the world over for centuries.
My point was (to whoever I was responding to) that just because it says African next to race it does not mean the father was born in Africa.
And my example to him (whoever it was) is that if they were meaning "African" to be their nationality that there is no nation called Africa.
So, I told them they should compare to other documents from Hawaii during the same year with another Birth Certificate of another black person born in Hawaii and see if they also use "African" as the race.