War in Africa Essay

War in Africa

Due to European colonization and then decolonization, Africa was left in a similar state of the other former colonies. What state were the other colonies left in and what are the similarities?

Concomitant colonization and decolonization of Africa left most of the countries in a state of utter economic dependence on their colonial masters. This state is more or less similar to what happened to former colonies in the Americas and Asia. While there are other socio-political impacts that also resulted, this brief paper focuses only on the state economic dependence that African colonies found themselves in soon after colonial masters went back to their countries.

Prior to the "Scramble and Partition of Africa," African economies were on an upward trend in most areas, but more so in terms of trade. Africans had already established trade patterns with some long distance traders walking covering miles just to exchange their goods

. However, with the arrival of Europeans, this form of economic activity took another turn. European colonization of Africa was largely inspired by the rich natural resources and raw materials found in Africa. Not only did they use Africans to exploit these resources and ship them back to their home countries, but also ferried some Africans as slave workers.After decolonization, most of the Africans had lost touch with economic patterns that they had already established. Therefore, even after the establishment of political and governance system in the independent states, most of the newly crowned African leaders still offered the colonial masters opportunities to exploit these resources, but this time in exchange of some "goodies." This is popularly referred to as neocolonialism

Just as the former colonies, African states were also left in a state of economic dependency. This is best explained by the dependency principle where "resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former." Under this principle, poor nations become poorer making them depend on the rich ones at all times.

"The African continent has had to undergo more fundamental and dramatic changes in this century than any other area of the world." (Clayton 1999) What were those changes and what was the effect?

Several critical changes that have happened in African since 1950 contributed immensely to shaping the destiny of the continent. First, it is within the period….....