I've been searching for the right term to describe the phenomenon I see across the developing world but haven't found it yet... We point to the skyscrapers and luxury malls of the various capital cities as proof of progress in Africa, forgetting that these places are where banks, government institutions, foreign capital, international aid agencies, NGOs, and the wealthiest citizens, are concentrated all in just one small area. The real test is what happens when you leave that small bubble. In Japan or much of Western Europe, for example, development and modernity doesn't vanish 10 kilometers out of the capital city. The roads, water, schools, and hospitals continue almost across the country. In much of Africa, on the other hand, the infrastructure drop off is DRASTIC. One minute you're in Acacia Mall and the next minute you're back in the stone age after just a 5 minute drive away from the city centre. That's why gleaming snapshots such as this photo are so misleading. A country isn't developed because modernity exists in some small pocket of affluence and wealth in ita capital city. Development is about how widely that modernity is distributed. Africa fails in that regard.