Looking at the author's work for West Africa, when is it a travel guide and not just a diary in travel guide format?

Though it's a bit frustrating to read how close he gets to some genuine understanding of how things really work in West Africa, and misses it in preference of expecting everything from a Western perspective. Noting a lack of tourists then bemoaning the difficulty of accessing few and lackluster tourist sites? OK, well, supply and demand work both ways.

Tourist sites and national parks across West Africa, where wildlife is very, very rarely the draw, are typically organized as jobs programs for whoever happens to be stuck in the area forbidden to be used for normal farming and village-life purposes. You don't pay a guide to guide you on an easy hike, you pay a guide to legitimize your presence in the community, to keep other people from bothering you, and to make sure that if you get bit by a snake or something, that you're not alone. That guide might simply be the young guy that speaks the best English in the village nearby and 99.9% of their time is spent living normal life doing things that have nothing to do with tourism.

All the friction the author notes is specifically employed as personal income generation, and it's odd how rarely does the author recognize that. Then they pay the universal "expedited visa" bribe in every country because they have mighty plans that no nation shall change.