The Negative Effects Of Land Grabbinging In Africa

With the beginning of the end of the slave trade fast approaching in Europe and Africa, and too little room for expansion within Europe, powerful advancements by European powers such as Germany, France, Britain, and Belgium were made to expand the empires of each country and develop places of trade and commerce through colonies, and a build in world prestige for each European power. The leaders of these European powers would meet in Berlin from 1884-85 in order to partition and agree upon the division of Africa to each nation, creating spheres of influence to be administered by each nation, and only that nation. This form of forced imperialism would lead to exploitation and atrocity of truly epic proportions in the soon-to-be-developed Congo

The first source that I have chosen demonstrates the long lasting effects Africa endured due to imperialism. The illustration shows the countries that were involved in colonizing Africa and what they contributed to how the continent is prospering currently. Also, the cartoon shows how severely the presence of imperialism affected Africa. For instance, when countries exploited Africa during 1880-1913, the people who inhabited the land experienced poverty and starvation due to countries claiming and controlling their land. During the scramble of Africa, countries saw the great amounts of natural resources they were able to exploit, such as a large quantity of diamonds, gold, salt, iron, etc. The extraction of the continents resources increased poverty in Africa which resulted in their economy to plummet. Imperialism is a major factor to Africa’s lack of development and instability due to the injustice that was exhibited towards the population of Africa. African’s were forced into slavery and cheap labor which as a result destroyed the African community. The citizens are still presently trying to rebuild their government and salvage the damage that was done by the British. In the second source that I have selected explains the benefits that Britain gained through imperializing sections of Africa and the results it has led to presently. Africa’s resources were left mainly untouched by natives and largely accessible for the country to extract. The country’s economy greatly

The Europeans came into African and took control of the Africans and all of their policies and their power and made them feel like second-hand people in their own communities. The Europeans brought in jobs, rules, and their history and language, this caused more resources to be made, the Africans to lost power in their own territory, and African languages and cultures were lost and replaced with European languages and cultures. The positive and negative effects of imperialism on the Africans were caused by the modernization of their communities, the establishment of European rulers, and the religion and education the Europeans brought to Africa.

The age of imperialism was a result of political, economic, ideological, religious and exploratory motives; that led to consequences such as Indirect and direct control, nationalism, and wars of rebellion.

My desire to see the prosperity of sub-Saharan Africa, has always propelled me to speculate how a continent abundant of natural resources, is the poorest inhabited continent in the world. The Millennium Development Goals, further stimulated my interest in international development as I began to ensue this progress during my undergraduate studies. Having made numerous visits to Ethiopia 's capital Addis Ababa, or the "African Tiger", I have witnessed deep socio-economic issues despite the increasing GDP (gross domestic product) due to the economic regeneration. Studying my Bachelors Politics degree, introduced me to inter-governmental institutions and government functions, which has supplied me with a solid background to infiltrate my study of international development. Throughout the course of my undergraduate studies, I discovered the Global Politics and Solidarity, Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice modules to be the most enlightening, heavily focusing on development issues such as poverty and climate change. For this purpose, my undergraduate research topic focused on Global Poverty and the Dependency Model. During this research, I sourced documents relating to dependency theorist, Andre Gunder Frank who argues that the developed states perpetuate the conditions of underdevelopment to promote their own development.

In the 1800’s countries were in search for land to expand their country into, this happened to many places including Africa. Colonialism was a time when countries took control of another land, which they then governed through direct or indirect rule depending on the country. During this time, Africa was most sought after due to its resources and its uninhabited land. Due to this, all colonial powers scrambled to get their hands on a piece of Africa in order to expand their areas of rule. As a result of the scramble for Africa the Berlin Conference was held. At this conference representatives from fourteen countries came together to divide up Africa’s land (Africans had no say in the matter, however). With colonial powers now in control, not everyone was pleased seeing as the governing country was only using them for natural resources and economic gain, which of course caused resistance with people refusing to assimilate to the colonial power. Eventually, anti-colonial movements sprung up and they did whatever they could to try and regain their right to self-rule. This ultimately led to boycotts, strikes, the formation of unions and political parties just to regain independence. Independence was a struggle that happened in many ways, such as violence and agreement as shown in Swaziland’s case. Swaziland has a particularly special story of colonialism, due to the fact that they started out just asking for some support.

In spite of their independence, African nations continue to face serious economic, social, and military challenges. I claim colonialism served as a significant force that had a detrimental impact on African society, economics, and politics. The Oxford dictionary defines colonialism as the “policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” In this essay, I will examine the impact of colonial policies and practices on “colonial” and “post-colonial” Africa. Specifically, I will demonstrate that colonialism should be blamed for its negative influence on Africa 's economic, social and political status.

Effects of colonization on the Africana continent are undisputed. Valuable natural resources were exploited from the countries by the native people for profit in Europe leaving many with minimum means to survive. Lands and families that had torn apart at the hands of the colonists were trying to be rebuilt. Peoples’ culture and traditions, viewed as barbaric and backward by the powerful Europeans, were once again weaving itself into daily lives. Pride was once again among the people. Jomo Kenyatta, known as the Father of the Kenyan Nation, was a man who came from the land he was fighting to reclaim for himself and his people. Land that was simply taken from them, regardless that generations of their family had lived there. Kenyatta

As a result of the fertile soils, hard labour and plentiful water Angola is now going from being a major receiver of global food assistance to a country in which most donors are closing their support for food aid programs. Despite this impressive agriculture recovery, most of Angola’s farmers are still producing at a subsistence level of agriculture. The potential to transform Angola from subsistence farming into commercial entrepreneurs is enormous. In fact Angola has

The most evident colonial impact on Africa is the seemingly nonsensical demarcations between African states. The political boundaries throughout Africa were determined by the pre-existing boarders and administrative divisions of the former colonial territories. This means contemporary African states possess borders which reflect the imperial prerogatives of the former colonial empires, and not the needs of the states as they exist today (Thomson, 2016, p. 13). The post-colonial political boundaries fail to account for different ethnic or identity groups existing on the continent, with the effect of many ethnic groups being lumped into a single state, while others are divided between the borders of two or more states (Thomson, 2016, p. 14). Some African states possess too little territory to be economically viable (Stock, 2015, p. 2), while others struggle to control fast regions with hundreds of distinct ethnic groups (Thomson, 2016, p. 14). The impact of these colonial boundaries left 16 African states landlocked. The economies of most landlocked states remain severely vulnerable due to the reliance on potentially unstable neighbors for trade, in lieu of easy access to international markets through

Africa had its own economic system prior to imperialism, however when there was a strong trade and cultural influence in African societies from surrounding countries in Europe and Asia in the nineteenth century, these nations to developed a dependence for economic growth due to exploitation of the people and land. In most academic writing, Africa’s economic growth was understood to be limited during the period of colonialism, however in Bayart’s writing, it is explained how African societies used “dependence as a mode of action” to reap benefits for themselves. In this effort, it is seen that these African nations were not able to benefit from said terms agreed on the trade of goods.

Have you ever thought about the trees in Brazil and where they were going? The reasoning is because of deforestation, which is the action of clearing a wide area full of trees. The rain forests across the world could disappear in one hundred years at the current rate of deforestation. An increasing proportion of deforestation was driven by industrial activities and large-scale agriculture. More than three-quarters of forest clearing in the Amazon was because of cattle ranching. The transformation for cattle ranching is the biggest single direct driver of deforestation. More than sixty percent of cleared land ends up as a pasture, which most of the time it ends up being land that has not had any activity in a long time. For most of the Amazon, the main purpose for cattle ranching is to claim land, rather than produce beef or leather. Commercial interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources can be held responsible for sixty to seventy percent of deforestation in Brazil to land clearing for pastureland. The driving force behind the ranching business is the real prospect of profit from the activity. This motivates the decisions made by the chain of agents involved, from the primary speculators at the beginning of the process to the capitalized professional entrepreneurs on the strengthened frontier.1

In many African countries, women receive less formal schooling job training, and opportunities for advancement within their jobs compared to men. Furthermore, women generally have less access to land and property despite the expectation that they will provide food, clothing, and healthcare for their families and regardless of the level of support received from husbands, fathers, brothers, or other male relatives. Despite the positive economic boost that globalization claims to have on developing nations, globalization negatively impacts women in eastern Africa because women continue to have unequal and inadequate access to the resources necessary to become viable players in the global market.

The land is public property in Ethiopia [Gebreselassie 2006]; both rural and urban lands are made available to the investors at a competitive price on a Lease-Hold basis. The Lease or Rental value of land and fixed assets may transfer to the third party, but not the land. Incidentally, about the capital requirement, to assist investors to decide to invest on their own or jointly with the domestic investors the minimum capital required for a single project has been apprehended. Under the Investment Proclamation No.769/2012 of Financial Statements Preparation, any foreign investor to be allowed to invest in the country in conformance to this proclamation, shall be required to allocate the minimum capital of 200,000 US$ for a single project

In, “The Land Use Act, 1978” author J.K Agbosu considers the role of the act in the context of class relations in Nigeria. Namely, Agbosu (1988) argues that "The Land Use Act, 1978, is a product of the inherent contradictions of the colonial and neo-colonial dependent, pseudo-capitalist. economic structures established in Nigeria since colonial times" (1). Agbosu furthers this argument by proposing that the reason that the act, is in part contradictory to the norms of everyday Nigerians is the failure of legislators to look beyond their own classed perspectives and consider, “[a] solution that not only abolished private ownership rights in land but also abolished private ownership of other means of production" (1). Indeed, Agbosu takes a decidedly Marxist perspective in his analysis of the law. However, the crux of the argument, which is that the post-Colonial state offers its citizens no new possibilities in its application of citizenship rights, is valuable to the discussion of democracy in Africa.