The cover picture has written the story, all by itself. It is a pleasurable, even if risky response to the stressful and incomplete modernisation across Africa. There are no roads, especially in the rural areas across the continent, with few exceptions. So, this ‘innovation’ cam up in the Cameroons. But it could have been anywhere on the continent, from Malawi to DRC to Nigeria.
International news agencies have been reporting on this particular ‘innovation’. Intervention merely decided to remind our readers of this dimension, particularly for those who might not be reading quixotic narrativisation of Africa’s resilience in international news agencies.
The point is how well the picture teaches everything African undergraduates ought to learn in courses such as ‘Modernisation Theory’; ‘Marxism and the Developing World’; ‘Development and Under-development’; ‘The Politics of International Economic Relations’ and ‘Neo-liberal Globalisation’
That is whether you are talking about why Africa is poor, (the giant bike, the zinc house, the environment and certainly the water supply at the background of the picture) in spite of the natural wealth, (the natural endowment, the food, the vegetation or the rural idyllic, etc); child right, (look at the picture again); the girl-child, insecurity and what have you!
It is probably not for nothing that Africa is said to be a scar on the conscience of the world because it is such an unequal world for the Africans! Who bells the cat?
