why is africa poor?

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just as american blacks blame whites for their failures, africans deny responsibility for the misery they bring on themselves. By william robertson boggs Black africa is the poorest part of the world by far. It is in africa that we find countries like zaire, ethiopia, chad, and the sudan, where gross national product per person is less than $200 a year. The 41 nations of sub-saharan africa produce no more wealth than the tiny country of belgium, which has only one forty-fifth as many people. Of all of the region’s economic production, white-run south africa accounts for three quarters. Numbers like these mean that africans live in misery so desperate that americans can scarcely imagine it. Every year, thousands of africans die of starvation. In bad years, hundreds of thousands starve. Even in tropical parts of africa untouched by famine, as many as one third of all children die before the age of five. One in a hundred births kills the mother. Malaria, sleeping sickness, hepatitis, leprosy, and aids are rampant. Nevertheless, the population of africa grows faster than that of any other region of the world. The total number of children, grand children, and great-grand children that the average american woman will have is 14. The equivalent figure for the average african woman is 258! despite the ravages of disease, starvation, and inter-tribal warfare, africa’s population increases by more than three percent a year. At that rate, populations can double in 20 years. Standard explanations why is africa poor? the standard explanations blame anyone but the africans. Colonization by whites, it is said, kept africa poor. The slave trade depleted the continent and impoverished it. Multinational corporations plundered it. Just as blacks in america seek to explain their own failings by blaming them on whites, africans explain their own poverty by blaming europe. Recently, this is how a broadcast on somalia’s state-owned radio attacked the bbc for reporting uncomplimentary facts: the bbc’s day dream … was to succeed once again in looting at will the abundant natural resources both on land and at sea in the third world, particularly in africa. The colonial bogeyman still lives. The argument that colonization accounts for africa’s poverty is so easily refuted that it should have gone out of currency long ago. That it has not can be attributed only to the apparently endless capacity of whites to accept arguments that paint them as villain. There is no reason to think that, left to themselves, africans would have risen from the primitive conditions in which europeans found them. To believe that colonization thwarted the economic development of africa is to believe that indigenous societies were on their way towards prosperity but were brutally shoved off course by europeans. In fact, african societies south of the sahara that had not had contact either with europeans or with middle eastern traders showed no signs of modern development. No pre-contact african society had devised a written language or had discovered the wheel. None had a calendar, or built multi-story buildings. No african had learned how to domesticate animals. The smelting of iron was widespread, as was fire-hardened pottery, but the continent did not produce anything that could be called a mechanical device. Africans had no concept of the biological origins of disease, and attributed personal misfortunes to the work of evil spirits. Slavery was widely practiced, and deeply rooted in africa long before the arrival of europeans. There is no reason to think that, left to themselves, africans would have risen from the primitive conditions in which europeans found them. The european slave trade, though unquestionably harmful to africa, was hardly the depopulating scourge it is often made out to be. When the 15th century portuguese began sailing down the coast, they met long-established slave traders keen to sell off surpluses. Europeans almost never went on slaving expeditions into the interior. They bought slaves from dealers, which means that slaves taken from africa were first enslaved by other africans. At the same time, europeans introduced two new world staples that could be stored — cassava and corn — revolutionizing the african food supply. The sudden increase in population more than made up for losses to the european slave trade which, in any case, ended by the middle of the 19th century. It was trade with europeans that introduced modernity to iron-age africa. Far from hobbling and holding the continent back, colonization laid the foundations for whatever evidence of economic progress can now be found in africa. It was europeans who built roads and rail lines, introduced piped water, schools and telecommunications, and built national administrations. Nothing suggests that africans would have achieved any of this on their own. There is no question but that life for africans improved steadily under colonization. By the 1960s, when most of africa became independent, the region exported food. Now, it devours more than $1 billion a year in western food aid, and thousands still starve. Pre-colonial africans it is possible to argue that africans might have been better off if they had been left entirely alone. This is to take a romantic view of the disease, tribal warfare, slavery, and ignorance that were widespread on the continent. Moreover, no african group that has glimpsed the possibilities of western progress has opted to return to purely african primitivism. This suggests that africans themselves would rather have the benefits of western technology than do without them. Given that people naturally yearn for medical advance and material progress, colonization was an obvious and striking benefit to africa.