The Development Of Africa 's Postcolonial Development

Primary sources from Europeans, Amerindians, and Africans had revealed the early modern Atlantic world was developed by colonization, and the experience faced by each civilization. As the Europeans began to colonize the Amerindians land it had been done by war to capture riches and land. Colonization of Africa had been established much early by the Europeans using their land for human-slave and merchant trade. The different civilizations had experienced this processing of developing the modern Atlantic world differently. The Europeans sought these new lands as a way to expand its civilization by gaining wealth and power. As for the Amerindians and Africans they had an experience that was developed through devastation and loss of their humanity.

Globalization did not bring the promised benefits people hoped to have. It brought poverty instead. “ The actual number of people living in poverty has actually increased by almost 100 million,” (Stiglitz 222). Africa has high expectation with colonial independence. The continent is in misery and is falling.

In the second half of the twentieth-century, African countries were able to gain their independence and strive to create unified countries. However, many countries were plagued with civil wars and the issues left behind the colonial era. The adversities faced by these new African nations are at the hands of their old colonial powers and the neo-colonialism that has taken place. These new independent countries were left to unify their people of different backgrounds, create a strong government and economy, and leave the post-colonial legacy behind.

Africa’s persistent poverty interrogates the continent’s past through institutions, government, demography, economics, colonialism, and the impact of the trading. The colonial era affected the variety of Africa’s historical development for it was quite the game changer since it put a halt to the continuous drain of scarce labor and paved the way for the expansion of land concentrated forms of agriculture, and engaging smallholders, estates, and communal farms. The establishment of the colonial rule over the African interior reinforced African commodity growth in export. The colonial control facilitated the construction induced significant inflows of European

In the late nineteenth century the European powers of the world began imperializing Africa. This annexation, occupation, and division of African territory has since led to much strife within the continent and has caused many struggles politically. This period known as the “Scramble for Africa” has led to the many problems that Africa faces today and has been the root of several wars in Africa to assume control. After World War II many European imperialists began to give African nations autonomy. This seemed like a step forward for African nations, but without any plan to transition into self governance many African nations have faced bloody civil wars and corruption. Along with political struggles, numerous African nations face rising debt and other economic problems. Many of these political and economic issues stem from the “Scramble for Africa”. Once the European countries left Africa had very little to support itself. To explain the issues left by imperialism the three African nations of Rwanda, South Africa, and Sierra Leone will be put under the scope.

Poor countries have taken enormous loans from wealthy countries in order to stay afloat. Paying off the compound interest from this debt prevents them from investing resources into their own country. For example, between 1970 and 2002, the continent of Africa received $540 billion in loans from wealthy nations—through the World Bank and IMF. African countries have paid back $550 billion of their debt but they still owe $295 billion. The difference is the result of compound interest. Countries cannot focus on economic or human development when they are constantly paying off debt; these countries will continue to remain undeveloped and the rich powerful nations will continue to extend their

The large cash injection would then create a “greasing the gears effect” and allow for the jumpstart of economic development. Between the years of 1948 and 1952 the U.S. granted $13 billion to revamp the European economy (Dambisa, 2009: 35). This particular method achieved great success in post-World War II Europe and was known as the Marshall Plan. Due to its effective and unquestionable success in this era, the model was applied to economic development in Africa with the confidence that the same outstanding results would ensue. However, the application of the Marshall Plan to Africa is problematic for three reasons. One, the Marshall Plan had a rigid duration period of five years while, the concessional loans and grants to Africa over the last 50 years have been unending (Dambisa, 2009: 36). Two, European institutions were already in place to receive the aid efficiently and effectively. In Africa, however, these same institutions are either non-existent or grossly ineffective due to corruption (Dambisa, 2009: 37). The vast amounts of corruption have been heavily documented. Mobutu Sese Seko, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997, for example, stole an equivalent of U.S. 5 billion dollars from his people (Dambisa, 2009: 48). However, even the less corrupt rulers of many African countries had few options as to what to invest the aid money on. Consequently, the bulk concessional aid goes directly into consumption without a variety of investment outlets. This process does not solve the problem but instead, allows for the cycle to continue. Lastly, three, the money from the Marshal had specific targets to repair physical infrastructure such as, roads, communications, sewage, factories, and electric systems (Dambisa, 2009: 37) In Africa today, the scope of the

The Scramble for Africa, was the occupation, division and colonization of the continent of Africa by European powers. This desire to take claim as much territory as possible stemmed from the need for resources and raw materials in order to keep up production after the industrial revolution, as well as the competitiveness of European countries that dates back for centuries. This rapid extraction of recourses would lead, as well as the previously stated completive nature of European countries would transform Africa into the continent we know today; filled with war, starvation, disease, and a lack of clean drinking water. All these modern day issues date back to the mass expansion by European nations nearly 150 years ago.

Africa has been at the margins of the global economy for much if not all the post-independence period. This is despite having sixty five percent of the worlds diamonds, thirty percent of the world’s oil and in 1976, seventy nine percent of the worlds gold. Africa’s rich mineral basins and numerous tourist attractions left the rest of the world shocked when Africa 's share of world trade has dropped from four percent to one and a half percent over the last forty years and its growth rates were down through the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Some experts averred that all this happened because African countries failed to attract private capital as most investors

Moreover, the infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa is inexpertly perfect, it has the world’s poorest transportation, power, and internet network. The colonial history of Sub-Saharan Africa did not like other colonies bring perfect infrastructure for them.

There is an ongoing debate on how the current political and economic failures in Africa can be traced back to the advent of colonialism. There is a great deal of evidence that illustrates the impact that colonialism and foreign intervention has had a negative effect on the development of present history of Africa. This essay will attempt to examine the geographic, political and ethnic impact European colonialism has played on the development of the African, and how these contributions have put Africa on its current trajectory.

INTRODUCTIONBackground Sub-Saharan Africa continues to present the world with its most formidable developmentchallenge. During the last two decades the number of the poor in Africa has doubled from150 million to 300 million, more than 40 percent of the region’s population. About one thirdof the region’s population lives in countries affected by or emerging from conflict. Moreover,HIV/AIDS continues to threaten African lives and livelihoods. Africa is the only region thatremains behind on most of the MDGs. On current trends it will fall far short of meeting the2015 targets, (The World Bank, 2005).Africa has come a long way in its efforts to achieve sustainable development. Lessons of thecontinent’s development over the last two decades consistently highlighted the need for moreintensive efforts to effectively address some of its major development constraints. Acombination of ineffective policies, outright mismanagement (in some countries), heavyexternal debt burden, poor governance, and conflicts precipitated the massive economicdecline in the early 1980s. The recovery in the latter half of the decade was partly due tomajor economic policy reforms as well as growing socio-political pluralism and economicstability, which were consolidated in the decade of the 1990s. Yet, much still remains to bedone, as the African continent entered the 21st century faced with numerous developmentchallenges. Some of these challenges

Modern African states have several problems ranging from corruption, to armed conflict, to stunted structural development. The effects of colonialism have been offered as a starting point for much of the analysis on African states, but the question of why African states are particularly dysfunctional needs to be examined, given the extent to which they have lagged behind other former European colonies in many aspects. In the first section, I will consider the problems with African states from the level of the state. That is, the nature of the states' inceptions and the underlying flaws may explain some of the issues that have been associated with African states today. Next I examine the development of, or lack of, civil

Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah depicts a Postcolonial society under African dictatorship. However, the dictator, known as his Excellency, has far more fear in upholding colonial rule than first meets the eye. In wanting to up to, and even conform to previous colonial rule, his power as a leader is repressed. This leads us to understand that post-colonialism is far beyond living in a society without colonial government. Instead, it can be understood as living in a society that has its own form of governing, one that is not dependant or in want of satisfying previous colonisers. Like Anthills of the Savannah, those with the most power, ironically suffer from the most repression of power, which is also a theme that will be highlighted in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. Lessing is writing in essentially a rural slave society, with masters and servants clearly knowing their place within it. It is the social discourse, the voice of Rhodesia, which guides everyone in how they should, or should not behave. These behaviours had to conform to the understanding that the white colonisers are superior to the black population. However, a character that was supposed to be liberated and empowered by this social discourse is repressed by it. Mary cannot uphold the social discourse because she does not know how too. Consequently, she becomes a threat to the myth of white cultural superiority. Thus, using these two novels, the term ‘Postcolonial’ will be explored through the

Africa is a continent which is endowed with rich, vast and varying natural resources, it’s people have talents, intellects and expertise to propel the continent into development in the fields of Science, technology, economic, social welfare systems, health, education and environmental conservation measures which are a catalyst for progress both at an individual, national, regional and continental level that would have transformed the face of Africa for the better. However, despite these rich heritage and diversity Africa is retarded by corruption which adversely impacted on all the facts of life, ranging from Governance, finance, politics, employment opportunities, distribution of resources, contract awarding, promotion and scholarship. In Africa being born into specific communities and ethnic groups zeal your fate and it is like getting life time condemnation to poverty, despair and hopelessness whose only ray of hope lies in getting out of Africa to America or Europe where people are considered not on the basis of their ethnic background,colour and conviction but rather on their merit, talent and field qualification relevancy, this pluralism enriched America and Europe by attracting the best brains from Africa who ran from their native continent because of Corruption, as stated in my opening remarks, In Africa almost all the key sectors are controlled by the ruling class, their tribesmen and foreign cronies who collude with corrupt states agents to loot state resources and deposit in far foreign banks without any regard for the poverty stricken masses , through corruption and shady deals, millions of Africans are chased from their agriculturally and minerally rich ancestral land so that greedy corporations can establish mining and industrial complex ,this further exacerbates the living conditions of the people as that removes their last hope of living in their continent through farming so that they meet their basic household needs, looking in turns, the delivery of basic services such as water, education ,health would be suffice us to crystallize the grim picture of dehumanizing living conditions that exists most of African countries .despite its many sources