Why question Africa's contribution to development?

By Madibeng Kgwete: posted on 06 August 2007

In his book, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, Walter Rodney says: “In order to understand present economic conditions in Africa, one needs to know why it is that Africa has realised so little of its natural potential, and one also needs to know why so much of its present wealth goes to non-Africans who reside for the most part outside of the continent”.

Rodney continues thus: “When the ‘experts’ from capitalist countries do not give a racist explanation [of why Africa remains underdeveloped despite its wealth of natural resources], they nevertheless confuse the issue by giving as causes of underdevelopment the things which really are consequences. For example, they would argue that Africa is in a state of backwardness as a result of lacking skilled personnel to develop”.

In essence, Rodney decries the over-simplification of Africa’s underdevelopment – the very deficiency Janine Grobler succumbs to in his response to my letter, “Picture Africa without the West’s interference” (The Star, 06 August 2007).

Grobler’s argument that “the West would like to leave Africa to its own devices, simply because it costs them too much and nothing seems to change” would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious and so often repeated without denunciation.

Far from costing the West too much, Africa has always been the engine behind the West’s development. Through the slave trade, Africans have shed tears and blood to lift Europe and North America out of poverty and underdevelopment.

It is one thing to think, as Grobler does, that Africa is a burden to the West and the rest of the world. It is quite another thing to imagine the West without the slave trade, Africa ’s oil and mineral resources.

Europeans obtained much of their wealth from Africa without paying a cent. Rodney puts it aptly when he says: “When citizens of Europe own the land and the mines of Africa , this is the most direct way of sucking the African continent”.

It is one thing to imagine Africa without Westerners, but what about the West without Africans? Think about it. Think about the cheap labour that Europe enjoyed through the slave trade. Think about the looting of resources and the raping of Africa ’s women. All at no cost to Europe !

Today we Africans are expected to rise to the heights to which Europe and other parts of the world have risen. But, can we invade Europe and loot its natural resources, enslave her people, all at no cost to us? Can we own land in Europe and have Europeans camping in shacks out of the cities in their own countries?

We Africans have neither the capacity nor the will to develop at the expense of the West. We may be ridiculed for failing to emerge out of undemocratic governance, corruption and power-hunger, but these are just symptoms of the greater imperialist project to which we have been subjected for many decades.

Blaming the West for our underdevelopment may not help us, but when loyalists of the Western empire continue blame us for slow progress or sheer backwardness without any reference to historic facts, we must refuse to bow our heads in shame.

The several civil wars still going on in some parts of Africa (such as Dafur in Sudan and Mogadishu in Somalia) are not wars for war’s sake. After all, there is no fun in killing each other. Our wars have a long history, and this is the same history that we are urged not to refer to in analysing our continent.

There is no question or doubt about the many positive contributions that Europe and North America made to Africa, and so should be no question about the positive contributions that Africa made (and continues to make) to Europe and North America .

The West might have “pumped billions into the [African] continent, written off debt, saved the masses from starving” as Grobler argues, but what about Africa ’s contributions to the West? Why all the silence about Africa ’s immeasurable contributions to the West and the rest of the world.

We may be having despots, civil wars and corruption in Africa but, again, what about the West? Look at the recent or current ugliest wars in the world and ask yourself who was involved. Look at Irag , Afghanistan , Lebanon , Israel and Palestine . Is Africa involved or responsible?

In as much as we Africans have problems, the West has its own. And there are some problems that we can solve without lectures from the West, in as much as there are many problems the West can solve without Africa .

One of those problems we Africans can solve is the Zimbabwean problem. We can’t allow ourselves to be pushed around, to be shouted at on the urgency of “regime change”.