ON THE surface it would seem Africa is changing fast, but there is one nagging inconvenience when you travel through the continent by plane

A simple trip from South Africa to any other country on the mother continent - which should realistically take a few hours - can easily become a nightmare.

Take for instance my recent trip to Burkina Faso. Simply put, it turned out to be a mission impossible. Instead of flying directly to the country, you might instead be forced to travel to Benin, Mali or Senegal.

Worse still, you might be forced to go to Europe to come back to your African destination.

How nauseating! But then again, for someone like me it did not matter because I love seeing places but my heart goes out to those pressed for time and in a hurry to make it to a conference, seminar or workshop.

But for itchy-feet individuals like me, it's always an opportunity to set foot on unfamiliar territory if only for a few hours.

In this day and age, when there are so many airlines, why are we still struggling to travel to the continent and back?

You spend not only a lot of money but time on the road. Going to the UK, for instance, takes about 10 hours, while travelling to Burkina will rob you of more than 21 hours.

Horrible.

And then there is the issue of airports. Most of them are just mud huts in the sticks. We appreciate the financial constraints faced by these countries but how do they feel when they land at stunning airports like OR Tambo, Heathrow or Charles de Gaulle?

Are they not envious, even if only a little?

The 8 millenium goals pressing on Africa is to make the 2015 deadline for the development of the continent.

I am sure this includes infrastructure - which is horrible in some countries - to say the least.

We understand that education for women, the reduction of child-mortality and health care is just as important as taking care of the environment.

We have repeatedly said this is the African millenium - we should not just pay lip service to it.

Let us make sure that, brick by brick, we all help to build our continent.

Once we're started, there will be no stopping us and before we know it, we would have captured the exquisite beauty of our individual countries that seems trapped in the squalor and abject poverty of under-development.

The time has come for us to be patriotic and stop running from challenges in our countries otherwise who is going to remain behind to make a difference?

Idealism aside, we have gotten used to doing without. We have accepted our lot as poor people and until we stand and fight to reclaim the glory of Africa from our corrupt leaders who are only interested in lining their already bulging pockets, we will remain a backward people or kanjani...