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There’s no escaping
Africa, no matter how far from it you are. From England’s supermarket
shelves bottled water leaps at you, chanting, “buy me and save a
continent!” You blink, once, twice, to be sure you’re not
hallucinating. You’re not. The voices are as real as they are earnest:
by buying a bottle of water you can help build a borehole in the
remotest jungles of Africa. And so you hearken to the plea; a black
person taking on guilt once monopolised by whites.

There’s even more
fascinating stuff in print. I’ve been coming across a
call-for-donations insert in UK magazines, in which a circular hole
sits in the middle of the page, accompanied by the chilling line: “The
upper arm of a child who has severe acute malnutrition would fit
through this hole.”

Talk about shock
therapy. But let it not sound as if I’m complaining, I‘m not. Hey
world, Africa is indeed grateful for the aid, and even more so for the
headlines and media mentions. (Father of ‘em all: the May 13 – 19, 2000
issue of The Economist which paid tribute, on its cover, to “The
Hopeless Continent”).

Bono and Bob Geldof
also have a place in my Hall of Fame; celebrities who could have busied
themselves checking in and out of rehab, but have instead chosen to
work tirelessly saving Africa and its citizens. Unlike

fad-hunters Madonna
and Angelina Jolie who simply want to parachute in for a quickie
adoption (“Err, jus’ gimme the baby and keep the change darling…”) –
with a photo-shoot to boot – Bono and Bob Gee are commendable
long-distance ‘activists’.

If like me you are
worried about who will take the baton from them, worry no more. We have
Britain’s Prince William to thank for making plans to order the
over-sized shoes of the Irishmen.

Sky1 has just aired
a documentary titled ‘Prince William’s Africa.’ In it TV presenter Ben
Fogle follows the prince to ‘Africa’, to celebrate the 20th anniversary
of the Tusk Trust (a UK charity devoted to the protection and
conservation of wildlife in Africa), of which the prince is patron
saint.

Prince William’s Africa… never mind that Botswana is the only African ‘province’ they visit.

I recently realised
that of my many foolish (random) assumptions, the biggest has been this
– thinking that Africa is what the atlas says it is. No, Africa is what
tourists say it is: the jungle and its gorillas/guerrillas (same
difference!) the game park and its sunsets, elephants, lions and zebras.

Kabisa! Lagos’s concrete jungles are not “Africa;” they are “Nigeria”. Ibadan’s “running splash of rust and

gold” is not
Africa, it belongs to the “predominantly Christian South” (as opposed
to a “largely Muslim North”) of “oil-rich Nigeria”.

Unless we can
convince Prince William that ‘observing’ our politicians – especially
caged in their convoys – will provide as much entertainment as a
Southern Africa safari; unless we can convince him that what we lack in
real pachyderms we more than make up for in (cashnivorous) ‘White
Elephant’ projects; we should give up any hopes of seeing His Royal
Highness’ Africa extend in the direction of Nigeria.

The prince’s
interest in Africa is clearly not a mere tweenage fad. He’s been into
this continent since like forever. His twenty-first birthday party,
held seven years ago at Windsor Castle, was, according to the BBC,
“African-themed.”

“As the party
started, outfits spotted arriving at the castle included a furry lion,
Tarzan and a banana. The castle’s ancient rooms were transformed into
scenes from the African bush, which include a life-sized elephant made
out of papier mache,” the BBC tells us. “Other outfits seen on arriving
guests included a lion suit topped with a gold crown, a full foreign
legion uniform, a Biggles-esque pilot, a banana and a top-hatted
witch-doctor.”

I’m hoping the
future king will choose to have his coronation staged in his beloved
Africa. Dignitaries – faces painted of course – will arrive at Africa’s
International Airport (named after none other than the most famous
living citizen of Africa, Nelson Mandela), waving ‘iSpears’ (trust
Steve Jobs to cash in on this) and singing ‘God save the king’ in
‘African’.

It’ll be like the
2010 World Cup all over again! All we’d need to do in terms of security
would be to prevent the Swazi King Mswati III from coming near the new
king – we don’t want anyone extolling the virtues of royal polygamy to
the head of the Church of England do we?

The Africa that the
prince will be ‘inheriting’ when he becomes king will f course be
vastly different from the one his grandmother inherited when she became
queen almost sixty years ago. But who cares? Prince William’s Africa –
full as it will be of elephants, witch-doctors, Tarzans, vast farms and
BBC and SkyTV cameras – will be, for most of Europe and America, a
vastly recognisable Africa. I’m betting The Economist will want to atone for past sins. Atop an image of frenzied crowds
lining the streets of Africa to hail the brand new King William V, our
beloved newsmagazine will plaster these words (a marked improvement on
a decade ago): “Africa: The Hopeless BUT Happy Continent!”