We Africans often complain about all that colonialism has done to us in the past. However, we are still feeding our colonial masters after all this time.
Thinking about it all, it really hit home that Africa is betraying its own brothers and sisters. Africans on the continent are starving while certain multinationals based in the West are reaping food, mineral riches, land and labor for peanuts. Now, with the rise of China, we are set to see even more massive exploitation of our continent. The majority of natural resources are located in Africa. So, why does this continent which contains the greatest deposits mineral wealth in the world also possess many of the most economically poor countries in the world? What is Africa doing wrong?
Author, economist and Africa expert, Paul Collier said that natural assets are the main assets of poor people and offer huge opportunities, if they can be harnessed. Those natural assets also have the potential to tear those same countries apart. And this seems to be where Africa’s problem lies, because natural assets have no natural owners.
Ownership over these natural resources is not defined. It can only be defined through good governance which, in my opinion, we very seldom see in Africa.
Western nations have been accused of plundering and farming African land in an attempt to feed their own population.
Some might say this is an opportunity; however, millions of Africans have been driven off their lands and homes and have been deprived of their livelihoods. More than 20 African countries, including famine-stricken Ethiopia, have been affected by foreign ownership of land which has been described as the biggest change of ownership since the colonial era.
Africa betrays its own by trading minerals to fund wars on the continent. Amazingly, the very countries who are supplying weapons to African countries are also the countries that have been the colonial masters of the past, who are also the countries that African leaders call upon for help when in conflict with rebels or insurgents.
Take Mali as an example that has now turned to France for help against Qaeda-linked fighters. Mali (then French Sudan colonized by France from 1883–1960).
What do you think, is Africa still serving it’s colonial masters?