More than three decades after most African nations became independent, there is no consensus on the legacy of colonialism. With most African countries still only tottering on their feet and many close to collapse, some people ask whether the problem is due to Africa's colonial experience or inherent adequacies of the African? For apologists of colonialism the answer is simple. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of colonial rule, the overall effect was positive for Africa. Sure, the colonial powers exploited Africa’s natural resources but on the balance, colonialism reduced the economic gap between Africa and the West, the apologists argue. Colonialism laid the seeds of the intellectual and material development in Africans. It brought enlightenment where there was ignorance. It suppressed slavery and other barbaric practices such as pagan worship and cannibalism. Formal education and modern medicine were brought to people who had limited understanding or control of their physical environment. The introduction of modern communications, exportable agricultural crops and some new industries provided a foundation for economic development. Africans received new and more efficient forms of political and economic organisation. Warring communities were united into modern nation-states with greater opportunity of survival in a competitive world than the numerous mini entities that existed before. Africa is in political and economic turmoil today, defenders of imperialism say, because it failed to take advantage of its inheritance from colonial rule. It was, they summarise, Africa’s inadequacies that made colonisation necessary and the outcome of post-independence self-rule suggests that the withdrawal by the colonial powers was premature.
Critics of colonialism dismiss such arguments as racists. They maintain that colonial rule left Africans poorer than they were before it began. Not only were African labour and resources super-exploited, the continent’s capacity to develop was undermined. Guyanese historian Walter Rodney in his book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ contends that under colonialism "the only thing that developed were dependency and underdevelopment." As far as Rodney and other critics was concerned "The only positive development in colonialism was when it ended." Under imperial rule African economies were structured to be permanently dependent on Western nations. They were consigned the role of producers of primary products for processing in the West. The terms of trade in the western controlled international market discriminated against African nations who are unable to earn enough to develop their economies.
Read Full Article »