A Short History of Colonialism: Part 2
Micheal Awala, Nigeria, 2020
Disclaimer: As a white person, I can only do my best to honor the indigenous people who have been brave and vulnerable in sharing their stories, experiences, and opinions by learning as much as I can and sharing what I’ve learned for the education and empathy of us all. I’m grateful to all the indigenous people I have had the opportunity to learn from, and I’m grateful to all our readers who take the time to understand the realities of colonialism and how it has impacted the children and communities we serve.
In my previous post, I wrote about how European colonialism came to be and briefly discussed its poignant impact on indigenous peoples still to this day. Now I want to do a bit of a deeper dive into the economic impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples, specifically Africans.
Our work right now is in Ivory Coast, Africa, a country once colonized by the French. And when I’m there, I can vividly see the wake of colonialism while walking down the streets. The people are so gracious, charitable, and altogether beautiful in spirit, but they live in a shadow of poverty. People in the city live with so many to a lean-to, it would be impressive if it wasn’t simply necessary. In some areas, more buildings are left unfinished than not. The World Bank always trends sobering figures about Ivorians.1 Nearly 30% of the people live in poverty with only $1.90 a day to meet all their needs. An incredible 80% of the people live in poverty with only $5.50 or less a day to meet all their needs. The people are only expected to live until 57 years old.
I want to be careful not to say that the way they live is wrong or unpreferable but that myriad studies show that even if they didn’t want to live the way they do, they would struggle to do so. So I want to discuss one of the roots of this struggle.
Before European colonists started colonizing African countries, the peoples of Africa were developing naturally. Scholar Joshua Dwayne Settles of the University of Tennessee - Knoxville says, “Prior to the ‘Scramble for Africa,’ or the official partition of Africa by the major European nations, African economies were advancing in every area, particularly the area of trade. . . . [T]he partition of Africa by the European colonial powers arrested the natural development of the African economic system.”2 Settles emphasizes that the ancient pharaohs of Egypt and the West Africans especially were thriving through trade. With their land’s resources in their own hands, they were able to tax foreign trade and receive what they believed their natural resources and labor were worth.
When colonists—British, French, and Spanish alike—swarmed to “claim” the “unclaimed” lands of Africa, their intentions were to dominate, to exploit. Cross-cultural communication experts Stephen Ocheni and Basil C. Nwankwo explain, “The first objective of colonialism is political domination. Its second objective is to make possible the exploitation of the colonized country.”3 In other words, colonialist ideals and ambitions were never meant to serve the indigenous peoples.
Further, Ocheni and Nwankwo write, “It is usually argued in favour of colonialism that it brought western education and hence western civilization to the shores of Africa. . . . [But] colonial education was not rooted in African culture and therefore could not foster any meaningful development within the African environment because it had no organic linkage.” They describe this education as “hollow”— without African knowledge, without African wisdom, without African spirit—without African heritage.
Colonial education was never meant to empower the African peoples to grow and innovate and thrive. Instead, colonial education revolved around training Africans in European values and etiquette and equipping them to do the work that would “help [the colonists] in the exploitation of the Africa’s [sic] rich resources.” As the ones successfully dominating, the colonists forced the Africans to serve their ideals and desires.
The colonists’ intentions were to extract the raw materials of Africa and then manufacture them in their own countries to sell for a profit. Therefore, Ocheni and Nwankwo explain, “Africans were not allowed or encouraged to go into manufacturing. The only industries Africans were encouraged to build were those that would facilitate in [sic] the processing of the raw materials for export. The African raw materials were bought at a very low price while manufactured goods from abroad were sold at expensive [sic] price. This situation accounted for the impoverishment of most Africans.” This situation of “unfair” trade is still very much a reality today, and it’s one of the major imbalances between Africans and Western economies.
Unfair trade within the cocoa industry is a big issue in Côte d’Ivoire, and this exploitation also tends to coincide with issues of slave labor, especially that of children. Another industry very relevant to Africa is the fishing industry, where again, slave labor is a major issue.4 Perhaps slave labor didn’t start with colonialism, but I think it can be easily argued that widespread unfair trade likely did.
Going forward, it is vital that we advocate for fair trade in order to empower Africans as well as other indigenous peoples. With fair trade, hopefully African peoples will become even more able to develop their education system and innovate technology in ways that synchronize with their peoples’ knowledge, wisdom, and spirit. More and more Africans have started to manufacture their own goods from their own country’s resources, and hopefully, we only see a rise in these entrepreneurial endeavors. In my experience, their creations are aesthetically stunning, others uniquely resourceful.5
Poverty is still an enormous problem in many once-colonized African countries. It seems clear that colonialism stunted their natural development, forcing many African countries to spiral into poverty. Now it’s encouraging to see so many Africans thriving in university, exploring and enjoying the resources of their lands, and creating amazing inventions to share with the world. Many have a ways to go in alleviating country-wide poverty, but wonderful things are happening in Africa, and through its indigenous peoples.
In Part 3 of this series on colonialism, I will write further about the economic impacts of colonialism on African peoples, specifically regarding the environment and the Atlantic slave trade.
References:
The World Bank, “Cote d’Ivoire,” The World Bank (2015), <https://data.worldbank.org/country/cote-divoire>.
Settles, Joshua Dwayne, “The Impact of Colonialism on African Economic Development,” TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange (1996), <https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&context=utk_chanhonoproj>.
Ocheni, Stephen and Basil C. Nwankwo, “Analysis of Colonialism and Its Impact in Africa,” Cross-Cultural Communication (2012), <https://www.tralac.org/images/News/Documents/Analysis_of_Colonialism_and_Its_Impact_in_Africa_Ocheni_and_Nwankwo_CSCanada_2012.pdf>.
Tabrizi, Ali (dir.), Seaspiracy, Kip Anderson (prod.), A. U. M. Films & Disrupt Studios, 2021.
Spenser, Clare, “Five African Inventions to look out for in 2017,” BBC (2017), <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38294998>.
