Sango Malo offers American viewers an intimate and engaging portrait of the complex social dynamic underlying economic and political change in a typical African village. It argues passionately that a populist education must be a key component of any democratic, human-centered development paradigm for Africa. Bassek ba Kobhio explains why his first feature focuses on education: "It is education which can form a new people...It is hard to think about changing African society without envisioning an appropriate form of education."