Colonialism As A System For Underdevelopment in

Africa
INTRODUCTION
Africa is blessed with a rich bounty of natural resources. The continent holds around 30% of the
world's known mineral reserves. These include cobalt, uranium, diamonds and gold, as well as
significant oil and gas reserves.24 Jun 2015

Colonialism started in Africa in the 1880s, European nations focused on taking over African
lands, racing one another to coveted natural resources and establishing colonies they would
hold until an international period of decolonization began around 1914, challenging European
colonial empires up to 1975.19 Feb 2019

The reasons for African colonisation were mainly economic, political and religious. During this
time of colonisation, an economic depression was occurring in Europe, and powerful countries
such as Germany, France, and Great Britain, were losing money.

Africa seemed to be out of harm’s way and had an abundance of raw materials from which
Europe could make money from. Due to cheap labour of Africans, Europeans easily acquired
products like oil, ivory, rubber, palm oil, wood, cotton and gum. These products became of
greater significance due to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. Africa’s colonisation was
also as a result of European rivalries, where Britain and France had beenin a dispute since the
Hundred Year’s War. These countries became involved in a race to acquire more territory on
the African continent, but this race was open to all European countries.

The greatest negative impact of colonization was the exploitation of the natural resources by
foreigners which did not benefit the local communities, but instead the colonizers. To gain
access to the natural resources, there were major landscaping; which destroyed the otherwise
peaceful lifestyle of the locals.

Forests were cleared to get timber for ship-building and construction of houses in Europe. Trees
were also cut down to provide firewood that was needed to power the steam engine trains. In
addition, the trees cut down provided woods which were used to construct rail tracks.

All these activities destroyed huge tracts of forests in the African colonies, the effects were
almost catastrophic. The cutting down of trees resulted to increased soil erosion since most
forest cover was destroyed. Soil erosion led to siltation in rivers that greatly affected fishing
activities. The communities that relied on fishing suffered the consequences of siltation because
fish greatly reduced in numbers in the affected areas.
Colonization also brought about different types of diseases. Some of the diseases were not
common with the local communities. An example of such disease that was introduced by the
settlers is Rinderpest disease which affected the livestock of the Shona ( Zimbabwe)

The Suppose Benefits Of Colonialism to Africa

(a) Socio Economic Service

The European indeed exploited Africa in so many ways eg raw material and many more but the
bourgeois writers will say Colonialism was a system that benefit the metropoles. Another issue
to look at is how much the European did for Africa, a balance sheet was draw which to say the
European did good and bad , the bad was the exploitation and the good was the colonial
government did good by creating basic amenities, this was totally false supposedly there build
rail way , hospital and school in a large number we would have concluded that there did a great
job but there built this thing in a very small amount and there built this things for their selves.

Fothermore the limited social services that was in Africa during colonial times were distributed
in a manner that reflected the pattern of domination and exploitation.the white determine to
have a luxury life in Africa because so many of them were very poor, as at then Europe could
not give them that luxury life and enjoyable life. This imply that what Africa got from the
Colonialism was not up to what there took from us.

In Algeria there were increase in birth and death rate among the white settlers, this made them
build hospital that will take good care of them , this simply means that medical facilities was
geared towards the well being of the settlers. Most of this basic amenities was foreign at the
colonial end, it was not meant for the people staying in the rural area, even the scanty social
services was only to facilitate exploitation, this facilities were not given to Africans who's labour
does not generate exploit.their primary reason for building roads and rail way was for
exploitation and to make oppression easy.

NEGATIVE CHARACTER OF THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
The argument so far has shown that the benefit from Colonialism were small, there were not
gift but rather it was Africans fruit of labour.colonialism lasted for 70 years in Africa. During the
time of Colonialism Africans lost power and power is one of the basic thing in a man's life, there
lost the power to act independently, another negative impact was that the political partie
traditional rulers lost their power.

Women was not allowed to participate in politics, the process of their husband leaving them to
work in the city, made them to start doing hard work and there were limited to so many things.

Another negative effect Colonialism has created was religious and ethnic crisis, of course there
were wars before the colonial master came but there have a rational basis of trade rivalry,
religious contentions.

Education for underdevelopment

Education is a very important aspect of the society, education can not be rule out of a man's
life. Education has already been existing before the colonial master came and it was known as
formal education. The colonizers did not introduce education into Africa: there introduce a new
set of formal education institution which partly replace does which were there before. The
mojor purpose of colonial education system was to train Africans to help man the local
administration at the lowest and to private capitalist firms owned by Europeans. For the past 40
years of Colonialism education did not come into the picture it was the missionaries that was
educating their Christian convert to aid communication among them selves. In the colonial
society, education is such that it serves the colonialist. In a regime of slavery, education was but
one institution for forming slaves.