Since they first arrived in Africa, missionaries of Christianity and Islam have
encouraged Africans to ridicule and abandon their traditional religions and cultures as
primitive and evil. Today, less than a third of Africans are neither Christian nor Muslim.
Historically, in most invasions of foreign peoples, the invader has assimilated with the
culture of the invaded, but Europeans believed that their race, religion and culture was
superior.
Slave Trade
The slave trade lasted about three centuries, roughly 1550 to 1850. It was a blow to
African physical and mental freedom. It reduced Africa's population by tens of millions
(mostly through death), tore apart families, and demoralised the remaining Africans. It
ended less because of abolitionists than because of industrialisation, reduced need for
labour and increased need for markets.
Colonialism
From the 1880s until 1960, most Africans were part of a European colonial empire.
Europeans invaded and divided up the continent. Vehement African resistance was crushed
because of underdeveloped military technology and not acquiescence. Under the colonial
system, Europeans lived in luxury and took away the raw materials. Africans lived in
poverty, performed forced labour and were virtually slaves in some countries. They were
used as cannon fodder in the world wars. Colonists largely deprived them of education as a
means of keeping power, treated them like children and used racial claims of African
intellectual inferiority. Rural development was ignored, industrialisation was
discouraged, and the only development was the infrastructure necessary to remove goods
from the country, such as highways and railroads leading to ports. By contrast, the
colonists created a demand in the colonies for manufactured goods which was a catalyst for
European industrialisation. In acts of spite, many Europeans destroyed whatever they could
not take with them when evacuating on the eve of independence.
Borders
Nearly all present borders of African countries were established by colonial rulers.
They are often drawn on latitude and longitude lines rather than geographical features.
They often cut across ethnic groups, causing border conflicts and refugee problems. Many
countries include more than one ethnic group, and in some cases like Nigeria, hundreds of
groups that speak different languages. Many countries contain groups that would have
preferred autonomy. The reverse argument is that there are too many small countries that
do not co-operate economically. Their markets are too small for industrialisation to
succeed.
Cold War
From about 1960 to 1990, Africa was a battleground for the Cold War between the United
States and its capitalist Western allies, and the Soviet Union and its socialist allies.
The casualties were mostly Africans, but the worst part of the wars was the economic
damage to African countries and the effective revocation of Africa's newly gained
independence.
Arms
Western countries supply arms to competing African factions and encourage strife to
increase profits from arms sales.
Aid
Despite Africa's greater need, aid is much less to Africa than to other continents.
Often "aid" comes with strings attached and costs more than it is worth, or
causes more harm than good. The majority of aid money is used to pay high salaries to
foreign aid workers and overseas offices, and Africans never see it. Much of the aid is
handouts that encourage dependency instead of teaching self-reliance. Many aid projects
are public relations schemes that cost the West very little and look good in the media but
benefit only a small number of people.
Technology
Many aid workers impose inappropriate high-tech Western solutions to problems in
projects that have a high failure rate. Often they require large amounts of capital, which
is too expensive for individual investment, requires long-term loans, and makes failure
catastrophic. Often they rely on expensive imported machines and equipment that need
electricity or imported fuel, spare parts, technicians to repair and operate, and foreign
money to purchase. Because of government bureaucracies, importing is often expensive,
time-consuming and unreliable. Machine-dependent production displaces existing
labour-dependent production. There is no need to save labour since unemployment is high
and labour costs are relatively small. Foreigners often fail to consider how outside
technologies like dams, irrigation, chemical fertilizer and farm machinery might transform
the environment and disrupt the existing economy.
Participation
Foreigners often fail to work and communicate effectively with the local people and
treat them with adequate respect. If they are not given any responsibility for project
decisions or taught to manage the project themselves, the local people do not feel that
the project is to their benefit, and they abandon it when the foreigners leave.
Loans
Western countries and agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) loan money to desperate African countries at high interest rates and with strict
penalties and unfair conditions. In the long run, the loaning agencies make huge profits
at the expense of Africa. African countries pay more money in interest on their loans than
they receive in aid.
Trade
Western corporations make large profits by obtaining cheap raw materials from Africa in
exchange for manufactured goods and encouraging the production of export crops instead of
local food. They sell destructive products like low-quality medicines, alcohol, tobacco
and violent videos at elevated prices. They also sell high-tech machines at high prices
that break down because Africans do not have the facilities to repair them. They encourage
corruption and make secret trade deals with corrupt leaders.
Advertisement
Western products and western advertisements control the markets, and western television
and film gives prestige to western products and values at the expense of African ones,
creating a needlessly high demand for foreign imports.
Tourism
The presence of Western tourists makes the local people work for tourism instead of
their own needs; they must pander to Western comforts and consumerism. They produce hotels
instead of local housing, souvenirs instead of furnishings, and Western food instead of
food for the community. Tourism also destroys local values in favour of Western ones and
encourages theft and prostitution.
Negative Journalism
Western journalists and organisations like CNN, Voice of America (VOA) and US
Information Service (USIS) often encourage dependency and justify neocolonialism by
depicting Westerners as generous volunteers and aid-giving benefactors whose help is
necessary to rescue a hopeless continent. They rarely show African success stories; they
focus on war, famine, disease, poverty, natural disasters, coups, corruption and
devastation.
Propaganda
Western journalists ignore or discount Western economic exploitation of Africa as a
major cause of Africa's problems. They instead blame the incompetence of its leaders and
their failure to "open up its markets" to Western corporations. They love using
meaningless, mind-closing, stereotyped expressions and labels like weapons of mass
destruction, communism, terrorism, extremism, humanitarian aid, independent election
observers, experts, free and fair elections, free world, free trade, democracy, and God
bless America in order to bias the audience toward or against a particular ruler or
country without presenting concrete facts. They encourage competition, individualism and
capitalism; they discourage traditional co-operative ownership and work. They give lip
service to democracy, but what Western leaders really want is African leaders who will
dictate to their people to do whatever the West wants.
Obfuscation
Often people throw up their hands in resignation and say that Africa's problems are too
complex to be reduced to a few important causes. But the conservatives that are making the
money often make gray areas out of black-and-white issues. Just as oil companies deny the
man-made causes of global warming, and tobacco companies deny the addictive,
cancer-causing properties of cigarettes, Western governments deny the neo-colonialist
nature of their involvement in Africa.
