Africa: 140 years after the scramble at Berlin
It is now 140 years since the ravenous scramble that saw Europe carve up and pillage Africa officially for eight decades, and unofficially for many more. African countries, most of which came into existence through the exploitative and oppressive Berlin Conference, continue to struggle to build strong and sustainable systems due to the faulty foundations laid in 1884/85. After perpetually failing to attain standards set by European invaders, many African countries are seeking to break free, but few seem to be exactly sure what freedom means – that is, only a few of them know what exactly they need to break free from. In more recent times, however, there has arisen an increasing number of African decolonial voices calling for authenticity – these voices are especially magnified through social media. The projected trajectory for the continent is that the coming years will be marked by the upturning of the ill-fitting European foundations. This will be followed by a drive towards building the kind of foundation needed for Africa to be a continent where citizens and communities are thriving.
From independence to dependency
Independence for many African countries was cosmetic. Often, it was merely the removal of colonial flags and letterhead in exchange for those designed by Africans. Across diverse sectors (education, health, agriculture, governance, industry, etc.), every other index remained colonial. Puzzled on how to run or manage an alien system while broke, desperate African leaders turned to their former colonizers for guidance. Colonialism forced Africans to be beholden to the West, and post-independence realities trained Africans to hold on to that gaze. The colonialists were all too happy to maintain their grip on the erstwhile colonies. Africans, on the other hand, were acting contrary to the advice of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who asserted thus: “You cannot develop people. You must allow people to develop themselves.”
It was treachery. Self-defeatism embarked on, out of gross helplessness, to depend on the same colonizers whose collective intercourse around the table at Berlin artificially and forcefully birthed and abused the different African countries. But what would Africans have done? Report to the United Nations? An organization, whose apex body, the Security Council, is a little more than a private chamber of the former colonizers. African countries had no recourse.
From end to end, the continent wobbled while holding on to the hands of the former colonizers in the form of aid agencies, multinational corporations, global big business, and bilateral/multilateral agreements. These were the hands that milked the continent with both hands and, when Africa cried too hard, would take a quick break to pick out strands of green grass and slide in its mouth. Corruption among the African elite kept palms greased and hearts content. Like crabs playing their game in a bowl, governance and individual achievement for Africans became about who would pull who down to rise and who would be noticed by the West, and not about the community’s advancement.
“Why, after many years, are we still the way we are?” one generation of perplexed Africans asked each other before handing the baton to the next generation to continue asking the same question. But what has changed since colonialism, really? Conversations around African dinner tables remained the same: how Africa has not been able to rise from the shackles of colonialism. Yet, generations of Africans remain enthralled with the colonizer’s knowledge and values. “The white man is a god,” Our grandparents said, as parents nodded totally in agreement and translated granny’s words into the colonizers’ language for their children, who no longer speak their mother tongue. At schools, teachers taught students about the colonizer’s world in the colonizer’s language. To think and act like those who have been to the moon and back. Governments still depended on experts from the former colonizers to fashion governance policies. More or less, African countries continue to function as convoluted extensions of the territories of the Global North.
In the field of medicine, for instance, Africans, previously filled with knowledge of healing herbs and healing processes handed down from generation to generation, continue to die while waiting for adequate healthcare fashioned after the way of the former colonizers. Africans are getting more hungry and malnourished by the day. (Neo)colonialism has forced them to focus on the cultivation of cash crops for the satiation of the West’s appetite; crops for which they earn a pittance per kilogram when compared to their market values. Hunger and malnutrition are exacerbated by the shunning of indigenous foods and farming practices in favour of foods (or species) imported from the Global North– rice, wheat, sugar, corn meal and vegetable oil.
Homelessness continues to rise, for homes must be built with items validated by the former colonizers. Also, people must live in cities because post-colonial governments followed the idea of colonizers to concentrate amenities in cities. And people have been convinced that white- or blue-collar jobs are the zenith of human achievement. Communities and villages are abandoned, sometimes in exchange for living in squalor in cities.
Internet penetration and Africa’s transformation
But what no one saw in the midst of all these grappling for direction was the rise of the internet and social media. For the first time since the deep darkness that enveloped the continent when colonial powers exerted energy in trampling the authentic knowledge of the region, there is light. The central grip on knowledge previously held and dispensed from the silos of the Global North has been loosened. Knowledge has been liberalized, and Africans are gradually beginning to see through the deception that was packaged as education, development or advancement. Africans are slowly identifying, and slowly but surely dismantling the colonial foundations upon which their very existence has been pegged for generations.
More Africans have access to the internet, “the continent had around 570 million internet users in 2022, a number that more than doubled compared to 2015.” Africa has the most youthful population in the world, and many of these young people are becoming connected online. Unlike the previous generations, their minds are not shackled to the untruths and half-truths that one finds in the education curricula across Africa. In addition to this burgeoning connected youth, “Africa has the richest concentration of natural resources such as oil, copper, diamonds, bauxite, lithium, gold, hardwood forests, and tropical resources.”When this emerging youth population sits up to take their destiny into their own hands, there’s bound to be a drastic change.
Africa is a rising force that cannot be stopped. The only challenge for the Global North in Africa rising is the potential for a backlash. As young people come across information about the harshness of colonialism and the ongoing exploitation, there is a rising anger and bitterness directed towards the West. This emotion must be carefully managed to prevent the West, whose population and influence are fast decreasing, from being at the receiving end of the treatment it has meted on Africa over the centuries. 140 years after the scramble for Africa, the table has turned against the former colonizers. It is only a question of time before this reality becomes evident to all.