What legacy did colonialism bequeath to Africa?
Did it constitute an important revolutionary
episode in the history of the continent? Was it a break with the past,or was it after all,
merely a passing event?
To some historians its impact was on balance
either a blessing in disguise or, at worst, not
harmful for Africa:
"It is easy to cavil today" wrote PC. Lloyd, "at
the slow rate of economic development during
the half-century of colonial rule... Nevertheless,
the difference between the condition of African
society at the end of the nineteenth century and
at the end of the Second World War is
staggering. The colonial powers provided the
infrastracture on which progress in the
'independence' period has depended: a fairly
efficient administrative machine, reaching down
to villages in the most remote areas, a network
of roads and railways, and basic services in
health and education."
Others have contended that the beneficial effect
of colonialism in Africa was virtually nil. The
Balck Guyanese historian, Walter Rodney, has
taken a particularly extreme position:
"The argument suggests that, on the one hand,
there was exploitation and oppression, but, on
the other hand, that colonial governments did
much for the benefit of Africans and that they
developed Afica. It is our contention that this is
completely false. Colonialism had only one
hand--it was a one-armed bandit."
From the available evidence, however, it would
appear that a much mor balanced assessment is
necessary. The impact of colonialism was
positive as well as negative. However, it should
be emphasized that most of the positive effects
were, by and large, rather accidental by-products
of activities or measures intended to promote the
interests of the colonizers.
The first positive political impact was the
establishment of a greater degree of continuous
peace and stability in Africa than before. The
nineteenth century was the century of the
Mfecane and the activities of the Swahili-Arab
and Nyamweze traders such as Tipu Tip and
Msiri in central and southern Africa, of the Fulani
djihads and the rise of the Tukulor and Mandingo
empires in western Sudan, and of the
disintegration of the Oyo and Asante empires in
west Africa; and all this caused a great deal of
instability and insecurity.
The first two or three decades of the colonial
era, that is from 1880 to 1910, intensified this
state of instability, violence and disorder and
caused wholesale and unpardonable destruction
and loss of population. But after the colonial
occupation and the establishment of various
administrative machineries, most parts of Africa,
especially from the end of the First World War
onwards, enjoyed a great degree of continuous
peace and security.
The second positive impact is reflected in the
very geo-political appearance of the modern
independent States of Africa. In place of the
hundreds of independent clan and lineage
groups, city-States, Kingdoms and empires,
without any clearly defined boundaries, were now
established fifty new States with, in most cases,
fixed boundaries; and it is rather significant that
the boundaries of the States as laid down during
the colonial era have not undergone any changes
since independence.
Thirdly, the colonial system also introduced into
most parts of Africa two new institutions which
have been maintained since independence,
namely a new judicial system and a new
bureaucracy or civil service.
The final positive impact of colonialism was not
only the birth of a new type of African
nationalism, but also of pan-Africanism.
Important as this legacy was, however, it is a
typical example of the accidental by-products
rather than the deliberate creations of the
colonial presence. No colonial ruler ever set out
to create and nurture African nationalism.
But if there were positive effects, the negative
effects were even greater. In the first place,
important as the development of nationalism
was, it was generated by a sense of anger,
frustration and humiliation caused by some of
the oppressive, discriminatory and exploitative
measures introduced by the colonial rulers. With
the overthrow of colonialism that feeling was
bound to lose some of its momentum and the
problem that has faced the rulers of independent
African States has been how to replace it with a
positive and enduring feeling of natinalism.
Secondly, while admitting that the geo-political
set-up that emerged was an asset, even though
an accidental one, it nevertheless created far
more problems than it solved. Though the
boundaries of the States that emerged were not
as arbitrary as is generally believed, there is no
doubt that many of the States that emerged
were artificial creations made up of a medley of
peoples with different cultures, traditions, origins
and languages. The problems of nation-building
posed by such a medley of peoples have not
proved to be easily soluble.
Another outcome was that the States that
emerged were of widely differing sizes with
unequal natural resources and economic
potentialities.
Another important but negative political impact
of colonialism was the weaking of the indigenous
systems of government. The colonial officials on
the spot became, in effect, dictators instead of
advisers to the traditional rulers whom they used
to enforce some of the measures deemed
obnoxious by their subjects, such as forced
labour, direct taxes and compulsory recruitment
of men for the colonial armies. Moreover, the
spread of the Christian religion further
undermined the spiritual basis of the authority of
the kings.
A product of colonialism which is often ignored
by historians but whish has turned out to be of
crucial importance was the creation of full-time,
standing armies. These armies were originally
created, most of them in the 1880s and 1890s,
first for the conquest and occupation of Africa,
then for the maintenance of colonial control, and,
finally, for the prosecution of global wars and the
suppression of indepence movements in Africa.
After the overthrow of the colonial rulers, these
armies were not disbanded but were taken over
by the new independent African rulers and they
have turned out to be the most problematic of
the products of colonialism.
The final and probably the most important
negative political impact of colonialism was the
loss of African sovereignty and independence and
the right to deal directly with the outside world.
This meant, above all, the loss of their right to
control their own destiny, to plan their own
development, manage their economy, determine
their own strategies and priorities, borrow freely
from the world at large the latest and most
appropriate technology, and generally manage, or
even mesmanage, their own affairs and derive
inspiration and a sense of fulfilment from their
successes and lessons and experience from their
failures. In short, colonialism deprived Africans of
one of the most fundamental and inalienable
rights of a people--the right of liberty.
Moreover, the seventy-year period of colonialism
in Africa was the very period which witnessed
tremendous and decisive developments and
changes in both the capitalist and socialist
countries. It was the period, for instance, that
saw the entry of Europe into the age of the
aeroplane and the motor vehicle and the nuclear
age. Had Africa been in control of her own
destiny, she could have benefited from or even
been part of these phenomenal changes. But
colonialism completely insulated and isolated her
from these changes and kept her in a position of
dependency.
The impact in the economic field was equally
important and equally mixed. The first and most
obvious of the positive impacts was the
provision of a basic infrastracture of roads,
railways, telegraph, telephone and, in some
cases, even airports. Completed by the 1930s,
this infrastructure facilitated the movement not
only of goods, the new cash crops, and troops,
but also of peoples, and this latter factor helped
to minimize parochialism, regionalism and
ethnocentricism.
Equally important and significant was the impact
of colonialism on the primary sector of the
economy. It was during the colonial period that
the full mineral potential of Africa was realized;
the mining industry boomed while the cultivation
of cash crops such as cocoa, coffee, tobacco,
groundnuts, sisal and rubber spread. In west
Africa these cash crops were produced by the
Africans themselves, clear evidence of their
willingness and ability to adapt and respond to
the right incentives.
This economic revolution had some far-reaching
consequences. Before the colonial era huge
tracts of land in many parts of Africa were not
only uner-populated but also under-utilized. The
introduction and spread of cash crops and the
mining industries put an end to all this.
Secondly, the economic revolution led to an
increase in the purchasing power of some
Africans and with it an increase in their demand
for consumer goods. Thirdly, the growing of cash
crops by Africans enabled individuals of whatever
social status, especially in the rural areas, to
acquire wealth.
Another significant revolutionary impact was the
introduction of the money economy. This led to
the emergence of a new class of wage earners
and salaried groups. The introduction of the
money economy also led to the commencement
of banking activities in Africa, which became
another significant feature of the economy of
independent African States.
By 1935, the economy of Africa had become
inextricably tied to that of the world in general
and of the capitalist economy of the colonial
powers in particular. The years after 1935 merely
deepend this link and not even independence has
fundamentally altered this relationship.
Was the colonial impact on Africa in the
economic field then a desirable one? Far from it.
In the first place, the infrastructure that was
provided by colonialism was not as adequate or
as useful as it could have been. Most of the
roads and railways were constucted not to open
up the country but merely to connect the areas
having mineral deposits and the potential for the
production of cash crops with the sea, and there
were hardly any feeder or branch roads. Nor
were they meant to facilitate inter-African travel
and communication
In the second place, such economic growth as
occurred in the colonies was based on the
natural resources of the area and this meant,
therefore, that areas not naturally endowed were
totally neglected.
Thirdly, a typical feature of the colonial economy
was the total and deliberate neglect or
discouragement of industrialization and the
processing of locally-produced raw materials and
agricultural products in most of the colonies.
Simple and basic items such as matches,
candles, edible oil, even lime and orange juice,
all of which could easily have been produced in
Africa, were importe. All African States were
therefore turned into markets for the
consumption of manufactured goods from the
metropolitan countries and producers of raw
materials for export. This total neglect of
industrialization by the colonial powers should
be chalked up as one of them most
unpardonable indictments of colonialism.
Fourth, not only was industrialization neglected
but such industries and crafts as had existed in
Africa in pre-colonial times were almost
destroyed as a result of the importation into
Africa of cheap, mass-produced commodities.
African technological development was thereby
halted and was not resumed until after
independence.
Fifthly, even though agricultural crops came to
constitute the main source of income for most
African States, no attempts were made to
diversify the agricultural economies of the
colonies. On the contraty, by 1935, the
production of only single or, at best, two cash
crops had become the rule--cocoa in the Gold
Coast, groundnuts in Senegal and Gambia,
cotton in Sudan, coffee and cotton in Uganda
and coffee and sisal in Tanganyika. Most African
States, on the attainment of independence, found
themselves saddled with monoculture economies
and were therefore highly sensitive to the
prevailing international trade winds. Colonialism
did indeed complete the integration of African
economies into the world international economic
order, but in a very disadvantageous and
exploitative manner.
Because of the concentration on the production
of cash crops during the colonial era, Africans
were compelled to ignore the production of foo
for their own consumption. It was this neglect of
food production, coupled with forced labour,
which caused so much malnutrition, severe
famine and so many epidemics in some parts of
Africa during the early colonial days. Thus, under
the colonial system, Africans were in most cases
made to produce what they did not produce,
clear evidence of the lopsided and exploitative
nature of the colonial economy.
The colonial presence also led to the appearance
on the African scene of an increasing number of
expatriate banking, shipping and trading firms,
and from the 1910s onwards their amalgamation
and consolidation into fewer and fewer
oligopolies. Since it was these trading companies
that controlled the export as well as the import
trade and fixed the prices not only of imported
commodities but also of the exports produced by
Africans, the huge profits that accrued from these
activities went to the companies and not to the
Africans.
Colonialism also virtually put a stop to inter-
African trade as the flow of trade from each
colony was reoriented towards the metropolitan
countries.
Finally, whatever economic growth there was
during the colonial period was achieved at a
phenomenal and unjustifiable cost to the
African--forced labour, migrant labour,
compulsory cultivation of certain crops,
compulsory seizure of land, forced movements of
populations with the consequent dislocation of
family life, the pass system, high mortality rates
in the mines and on the plantations and brutal
repression of the protest and resistance
movements these measures generated.
What is the record of colonialism in the social
field? The first important beneficial social effect
was the overall increase of the population of
Africa during the colonial period of nearly forty
per cent after an initial decline during the first
two or three decades. This increase was due to
the establishment of an economic base, the
spread of roads and railways which ensured that
food could be rushed to famine areas, and the
campaigns launched against epidemic diseases
such as sleeping sickness, bubonic plague and
yellow fever.
Closely connected with this was the second
social impact of colonialism--urbanization. The
kingdoms and empires of Africa had such
capitals or political centres as Kumbi Saleh,
Benin, Ile-Ife, Kumasi, Gao and Zimbabwe,
commercial centres such as Kano, Jenne, Sofala
and Malindi, and such educational centres as
Timbuktu, Cairo and Fez. But there is no doubt
that, as a result of colonialism, the pace of
urbanization was greatly accelerated and
completely new towns came into existence.
Moreover, the population of both the already
existing towns and the new towns grew by leaps
and bounds during the colonial era. The
population of Nairobi, founded in 1896 as a
transit depot for the construction of the Uganda
railway, increased from a mere handful to 13,145
in 1927 and to over 25,000 in 1940, and that of
Lagos from 74,000 in 1914 to 230,000 in 1950,
that of Dakar from 19,800 in 1916 to 92,000 in
1936 and to 132,000 in 1945.
There was also undoubtedly an improvement in
the quality of life, particularly for those living in
the urban centres. This was the result of the
provision of hospitals, dispensaries, pipe-borne
water, sanitary facilities, better housing and the
abolition of such practices as domestic slavery
by the colonial rulers as well as the increase in
employment opportunities.
The spread of Christianity, Islam and Western
education was another important impact of
colonialism. It was during the colonial period
that Christianity gained a firm foothold in eastern
and central Africa, at times following and at
times being followed by the flag and trade. Islam
also spread rapidly in western and eastern Africa
as a result of the general improvement in
communications during the colonial period and
the patronage of both the French and the British
rulers. It should be emphasized that these gains
were not made at the expense of traditional
religion. What colonialism did, then, was to
strengthen and perpetuate religious pluralism in
Africa, thereby enriching its religious life.
Closely associated with the spread of Christianity
was that of Western education. Certainly, by the
end of the colonial regime, there were relatively
few areas without at least elementary schools.
The spread of Western education had far-
reaching social effects, among which was an
increase in the number of the westernized
educated African elite, an elite which now
constitutes the ruling oligarchy and the backbone
of the civil service of African States.
Another important colonial impact, a mixed
blessing as we shall see, was the provision of a
lingua franca for each colony or set of colonies.
In all the colonies, the mother tongue of the
colonial power, either in its pure or pidgin form,
became the official and business language and,
in many cases, the main means of
communication between the numerous linguistic
groups that constituted the population of each
colony. It is significant that, except in north
Africa, The United Republic of Tanzania, Kenya
and Madagascar, these languages have remained
the official languages to this very day.
The final beneficial social impact was the new
social structure that colonialism introduced into
some parts of Africa or whose development it
accelerated in others. Although the traditional
social structure allowed for social mobility, its
class structure appeared to give undue weight to
birth. The new colonial order, on the other hand,
emphasized individual merit and achievement. All
these changes radically altered the traditional
social structure.
Thus, by the 1930s, in place of the precolonial
social classes of the traditional ruling
aristocracy, the ordinary people, domestic slaves
and a relatively small educated elite, a new
society emerged that had become more sharply
divided thatn before into urban and rural
dwellers, each of which was differently stratified.
Mobility within this new structure was based
more on individual effort and attainment than on
ascription.
On the negative side, however, the phenomenal
growth of the population of the urban centres
was not the result of the natural increase of the
urban population but rather of the continuous
pull of young men and women to the urban
centres by the need for education and
employment and the push from the rural areas
by famine, epidemics, poverty and taxation.
Moreover, since the Europeans tended to live in
the urban centres, all those facilities that
improved the quality of life were established only
in those areas. The rural areas were therefore
virtually neglected and this in turn accentuated
the drift from one to the other. A huge gap exists
even today between urban and rural areas in
Africa and there is no doubt that it was the
colonial system that originated and widened this
gap.
Nor did the migrants find the urban centres the
safe and rich haven they had expected. In no
town were the Africans accepted as equals and
fully integrated. Moreover, nowhere did a
majority of them find jobs or decent
accomodation. Most of them found themselves
crowded into the suburbs and the shanty towns
in which unemployment, juvenile delinquency,
drunkenness, prostitution, crime and corruption
became their lot. Colonialism did not only
impoverish rural life, it also bastardized urban
life.
A second serious social legacy has been the
European and Asian settler problem. What made
their presence so inimical to Africans was that
the Europeans came to occupy most of the
fertile lands while the Asians monopolized the
retail and wholesale trades. By 1935, this Asian
and European problem had assumed very serious
proportions for Africa and it has not been entirely
resolved to this day.
Furthermore, though colonialism did introduce
some social services as we have seen, it must
be emphasized that not only were these services
grossly inadequate and unevenly distributed in
each colony, they were all, by and large, meant
primarily for the benefit of the few white settlers
and administrators, hence their concentration in
the towns. In Nigeria in the 1930s, whereas
there were 12 modern hospitals for 4,000
Europeans in the country, there were only 52 for
Africans numbering over 40 million.
In the field of education, what was provided
during the colonial days was grossly inadequate,
unevenly distributed and badly orientated and
therefore not so beneficial as it could have been
for Africa. Five different types of educational
institutions were established under colonial rule:
primary, secondary, teacher-training, technical
and university. But while many primary schools
had been established by 1860 in British West
Africa, it was not until 1876 that the first
secondary schools were established in the Gold
Coast and Nigeria. It was not until after the
Second World War that technical schools and
university colleges were established in most
parts of Africa.
The curricula provided by all these institutions
were determined by the colonial rulers and were
closely modelled on, if not carbon copies of,
those of the metropolitan countries and therefore
irrelevant to the needs of the continent. They
also struck at the very roots of African religious
beliefs, sanctions and taboos and thereby shook
the foundations of African societies, bringing in
their trail a sense of uncertainty, frustration and
insecurity.
The impact of this inadequate, lopsided and
wrongly orientated education on African societies
has been profound and almost permanent. First,
it left Africa with a huge illiteracy problem, a
problem whose solution will take a long time.
Secondly, the educated elite that was produced
was, by and large, and alienated elite that
adored European culture and civilization and
looked down on African culture. However, since
the elite included the wealthiest people and since
they occupied the highest posts available both
during and after the colonial era, they came to
wield power and influence out of all proportion to
their numbers.
Beneficial as the linguae francae promoted
through the educational systems were, they had
the regrettable consequence of preventing the
development of some of the indigenous
languages into national languages. Twi, Hausa
and Swahili could easily have been developed as
the national languages of the Gold Coast, Nigeria
and the three British East African colonies
respectively. In fact, an attempt was made by
the colonial administrators of British East Africa
to develop Swahili as a lingua franca during the
1930s and 1940s, but this attempt was
countermanded by the Colonial Office.
Another highly regrettable social impact of
colonialism was the deterioration that it caused
in the status of women in Africa. This is a new
theme which needs further research, but there
does not appear to be any doubt that women
were inhibited from joining in most of the
activities introduced or intensified by colonialism.
The colonial world was indeed a man's world
and women were not encouraged to play any
meaningful role in it.
Moreover, under colonialism Africans in general
were looked down upon, humiliated and
discriminated against both overtly and covertly.
In his recent Reith lectures, Ali Mazrui
emphasized this legacy of humiliation imposed
on the African by the triple sins of the slave
trade, apartheid and colonialism when he
declared: "Africans are not necessarily the most
brutalized peoples, but they are certainly the
most humiliated in modern history."
Some historians have concluded that
"colonialism produced its own gravediggers",
while Maugham has maintained that "On the
tombstone of the British Empire may be written
'Lost by snobbery".
Worse still was the impact of colonialism in the
cultural field. Throughout the colonial period,
African art, music, dancing and even history were
all not only ignored but positively discouraged or
denied. As one speaker declared at the Second
Congress of Negro Writers and Artists, in Rome,
in 1959: "Among the sins of colonialism, one of
the most pernicious, because it was for a long
time accepted by the West, was the concept of
people without culture."
Nevertheless, in the cultural field, the impact of
colonialism was relatively speaking neither
profound nor permanent. Such changes as were
introduced in the cultural field, such racial
discrimination as was practised, and such
condemnation of African culture as was
preached, even in the heyday of colonialism,
were all confined to the coastal areas and the
urban centres and never penetrated into the rural
areas where life ran gaily on very much as
before. African dance, art, music and traditional
religious systems held their own and any
borrowings and adaptations were additions
rather than substitutions.
In the rural areas, and even to some extent in
the urban centres, new beliefs, new gods, new
utensils, new artifacts and new objects were
added to the old ones. Certainly, in these areas
many Christians did and still do retain their belief
in their traditional gods. Indeed, in the field of
religion, it was if anything the European religious
that were Africanized, as is obvious from the
rituals of some of the syncretic and millenarian
churches, and not the other way round.
What is more important, the gound that was lost
in the field of culture, even in the urban centres,
has virtually been regained. Today, African art,
music and dance are not only taught in
educational institutions of all kinds but are now
booming in Africa and gaining recognition in
Europe. Thus, as far as the cultural field is
concerned, colonialism was certainly only a brief
episode and its impact skin-deep and ephemeral.
From all the above it should be clear that it is an
over-reaction to write off colonialism as an
unmitigated disaster for Africa that caused
nothing but underdevelopment and
backwardness. Equally guilty of over-statement
are those colonial apologists who see
colonialism as an unqualified blessing for Africa.
But whatever colonialism did for Africans in
Africa, given its opportunities, its resources and
the power and influence it wielded in Africa at
the time, it could and should have done more. As
P.C. Lloyd wrote:
"So much more might perhaps have been done
had the development of backward territories been
seen by the industrial nations as a first priority."
It is precisely because colonial rulers did not see
the development of Africans as their first priority
or even as a priority at all that they stand
condemned. It is for these two reasons that the
colonial era will go down in history as a period
of growth without development, of the ruthless
exploitation of the resources of Africa, and, on
balance, of the pauperization and humiliation of
the peoples of Africa.
In the long history of Africa, colonialism was
merely an episode or interlude in the many-
faceted and variegated experiences of its
peoples. It was nonetheless an extremely
important episode politically, economically and
even socially. It marks a clear watershed in the
history of Africa whose development has been
and will continue to be very much influenced by
the colonial impact.
