Oracle Online

Many Hamline students are just as uninformed as the politician Imbo quoted. A student from Iowa once asked you, “Are people in Africa civilized?” The news media presents Africa as a continent imbued with wars, poverty, and AIDS, but fails to provide us with a historical context that would help us understand why these tragedies occur. I have learned there is a history of colonization that continues to affect African countries today, but I don’t know specifically how colonization influences present-day Africa.

Abdi: For the past 30 years at least, since the end of the independence struggle of the 1960s, Africa has been plagued by all kinds of disasters. Drought, famine, malaria, AIDSčit has been one disaster after the other. But with all the malaise the continent has confronted in its path to growth and maturity, none is greater than man-made disasters. The most damaging impact of imperial rule on Africa was neither economic nor political. It was psychological. In most places, effective European rule lasted a couple of generations or less, just long enough to undermine African societies, institutions and values, but not long enough to replace them with new ways of life or establish new systems of government. Colonialism, in short, undermined Africa’s self-confidence. A full 40 years after independence, Africa still looks to Europe and America for aid, goods, services, and guidance.

Krystal: So, when Europeans colonized almost all of Africa, they imposed on them a system of government, economy, and values that served the interests of the colonizers. When colonization ended, African countries remained dependent on the systems that the Europeans imposed. But didn’t some countries try to undo the structures that the colonizers left?

Abdi: Almost all African conflicts have to do with the way countries were created by the colonies to suit the needs of colonial powers. In many cases, colonists divided clans in order to weaken them and the clans fell under various flags. After independence, some of these clans tried to regroup, and this led to border conflicts. In other cases, century-old clan antagonisms resurfaced once colonial power left. This may be the case of one of the oldest modern-armed conflicts in Africa, and it is still going on. These conflicts have caused untold sufferings for African people. Along with the combined effects of debt and AIDS, these man-made disasters gave the continent an image of a big wasteland. African states were not forged by ethnicity, nationalism and war. They were simply bequeathed by departing imperial powers that left highly centralized, authoritarian states to a tiny group of western-educated Africans who rushed in and took over. Some of those states, such as Congo, were established by Europeans as businesses to be milked for profit. Their successors simply continued the practice.

Krystal: So, you are saying that most of the conflicts in Africa that we hear about from the news media are a result of the way colonizers divided land in Africa.

Abdi: Yes, Africa has an abundance of valuable resources, minerals and some good land, which is very attractive to outsiders in order for them to extract the raw materials and ignore the rest. Independence often meant little more than a change in the color of the faces of the oppressors. However, the majority of
African countries live in stability, with success stories, both economically and politically. Unfortunately, those success stories are rarely told and Africa is only presented as the basket case of modern history.

Klein is a CLA senior from the NCORE Network.

Abdi, a member of HASA, is with the Hamline African Student Association.