Mavhunga looks at the professoriate of the hunt in Zimbabwe, defined as “a spiritually guided institution and practice that educated boys in the chase through doing” (20). This is also against the contemporary phenomenon of “cynide poachers” (7). He frames the African villagers as the designers using cyanide as a resource to turn a large mammal into ivory for sale to markets and users in Asia and the rest of the world rather than to trace the journey of cyanide and firearms from their “designers” overseas to their “users” in Zimbabwe. Seeking to reveal the “everyday innovation” in Africa and counter the narratives about the continent, Mavhunga chooses a site from which to explore technology where the concept might “tell us something we do not hear often in prevailing narratives—the site of ordinary people and their innovations or creativities, things that few would consider technological.” (16)
He is keen to focus on a history of African technologies—and not just technology in Africa.
