That would be 'as well as', not 'instead of'. There is in fact quite a list of non-African countries that use the lion as their national animal:Why does Britain get to use the lion as its symbol? That seems entirely unfair to all the African countries who have a legitimate right to claim the lion.
* England/UK
* Belgium
* Bulgaria
* Luxembourg
* Macedonia
* Netherlands
* Sweden
The fact that it's the UK that most often gets depicted as the lion is due to the fact that most of pictures that contain national animals were drawn in the UK.