Why is Africa Underdeveloped?

How does a country become underdeveloped? Is it geography? Environment? Exploitation? Unrest?

In a lecture I recently attended at University of Education, Winneba, the professor recommended us all to read “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney. As someone who has always been intrigued by Africa’s unrest, and loves looking at development economics, I immediately went on a quest to find Rodney’s book. The rest of this post is a summary of what I have learned thus far in both my reading of “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” as well as my own experiences on my dialogue to Ghana.

In an effort to explain underdevelopment, Rodney likens Africa to an individual attempting to succeed in life. This means one has to take into account things such as morals, class origins, social relations, and so on, just to determine the state of an individual as a whole. The individuals who are the strongest and most capable will succeed. Sound familiar? It’s just like the Darwinian evolutionary theory survival of the fittest.

When most people think of Africa, they think of poverty and unrest. Many might think of the highly disturbing photo of the starving child. Or they believe that everyone lives in wooden huts without roofs above their heads. I’ll admit, before I landed in Accra, I believed Ghana to be quiet and without much infrastructure. But instead, it was bustling and lined with shops along every street. It may not be New York City, but the people love their home just the same.

In economic terms, Ghana is more developed than most believe. Its villages have grown into towns, and the country’s children are attending higher universities at an unprecedented rate. Ghana now has sanitation and working sewage, all equipped with running water and sustainable infrastructure. In terms of development, Ghana still has a few hurdles to jump over, but it has the outside world fooled. The country is much more developed than one might often believe.

In U.S. history classes, students are taught about slavery in terms of how it affected the United States. They learn about the haunting experiences of slaves on American soil, but very rarely do students learn about the treatment of slaves before the Africans reached America. Some may know about the transatlantic slave trade or triangle trade, but do they know about slave castles? Do they understand the economic impact of slavery?

When economists want to decipher reasons for underdevelopment of a continent or nation such as Africa, it’s common to look at slavery first. Of course, hypothetical questions will arise, such as: What if slavery never happened? Would Africa still be so underdeveloped? But no one will ever know the answers to these questions. All economists have are numbers and historical accounts.

The exact number of imported Africans remains unclear. Some numbers were underreported, others never reported, but estimates range between ten million slaves to over one hundred million. These numbers depict Africa’s massive labor force loss. Even more critical than that, Ghana’s loss was comprised of strong, able-bodied young men and attractive young women.

At first, buyers only wanted tall, broad-shouldered men, but as they realized the worthiness of women in plantations, the numbers of slaves swelled even more. The effects of this mass exit of Africans was catastrophic. Africa lost all of its strongest workers, and the birth rate declined due to the large numbers of women of child-bearing age shipped off. The land could no longer be harnessed and tamed for infrastructure, one of the crucial first steps of development. The African people were left insecure and scared as their families were torn apart. Violence ran ramped throughout the continent as communities turned on each other.

Some may argue that if slavery was a reason for underdevelopment, there would be a significant disconnection between countries that had captives taken and others that did not. Most of Western Africa was used during slavery, mainly because it was on the correct coast to make it easily accessible to the rest of Europe. Regardless, the theory that slavery contributed to underdevelopment must be upheld on the basis that slave trade was an under developing factor for the content as a whole. In the end, no African country was ever distinctly free from Europe’s reign.

The second argument for underdevelopment is colonialism. Before I delve in deeper, any skeptics who may say that colonialism was beneficial let me say this: Colonialism will never been seen as good in the eyes of the colonized.

The colonialism of Africa could also be referred to as the intense exploitation of Africa for the benefit of the rest of the capitalist world. When I visited a junior high school in Cape Coast the other day, I asked students to ask me questions about the U.S. One question stuck out the most: Why do white people take things from us that aren’t theirs?

I couldn’t properly answer the question, and I still can’t properly answer it. Sure, I know that Africa is exploited for resources, such as pre-independent Ghana—or, The Gold Coast. All I could give the student was my brief history lesson.

Europe colonized Africa under the false pretenses that they were gifting the continent things like social order, nationalistic pride, and a booming economy. But all that Europe did was strip Africa of its pride by completing halting their development and taking back what Europeans thought was rightfully theirs.

Under the leadership of Europe, Africa lost its power for 70 years. Its countries lost all their individual power, which only leads to a loss in ability to also defend one’s culture, identity, interests, and ideas. Africa lost its independence overnight, and the consequences of that are just as large as it seems.

Now, as countries in Africa have gained their independence throughout the years, it is time for them to grow on their own. One of the most prominent tools for this growth is the reason I’m in Ghana right now: education.

Education is crucial for all societies to maintain a social structure and preserve lives. Education can be considered something as informal as a mother teaching her children how to be good hosts, or it can be as formal as attending a higher university. Formal education for Ghanians began in the slave castles, for the children born in the castles. The rest of Africa, including Ghana, continues to have a clone of what looks like the British education system.

Education in underdeveloped countries brings social and economic change. Although Africa has been beat with blow after blow, it is recovering. Most importantly, it is recovering without the help of an outside leadership.