'Colonialism and the Political and Economic Problems in Africa Essay\r'

'The impact of Africa’s colonial inheritance has long been debated by experts. Some say that colonialism was not completely disadvantageous to Afri back statuss because it opened the continent to the break of the world. Others maintain that colonialism did nothing to significantly improve the lives of Africans. art object it is true that Africa’s colonial heritage has whatsoever positive effects, the negative effects are console harder to ignore. Seveal independent African asseverates emerged after colonial discover in Africa. Countless clans, kingdoms, city-states and mempires were replaced with forty-eight new states, legion(predicate) of them with clear boundaries.\r\nNegative effects of this division surmount the positive ones, however. The exhibit of the establishment of each state’s boundaries was arbitrarily done by European chancellors, so what resulted were artificial nation states (Boahen 96). Their borders divide pre-existent ethnic groups, k ingdoms, and states. For example, the Bakongo are virtually â€Å"chopped” by the boundaries of Gabon, congon, Zaire, and Angola. Each Africation nation today is composed of a variety of peoples with different cultures, language, and traditions.\r\nNation-building has therefore been a worry for these nations because of the arbitrary boundaries which could be traced back to colonial eld (Boahen, et al. 329). Problems related to arbitrary borders don’t stopover at nation-building, however. Today, natural resources are unequally distributed among African states because of their different sizes. Huge countries such as Algeria, Nigeria, and Sudan ware vast territories season others such Lesotho, Burundi, Togo, and The Gambia are besides small, limiting their sparing capacities.\r\nThe positioning of African countries is as well awkward and almost helter-skelter. Uganda, Malawi, Niger, and Chad are landlocked time others excite long stretches of sea coast helpfu l for fishing. Zambia, Zaire, and and Nigeria are rich in natural resources, while Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger have less to get by. National credential is besides a problem since some countries, equivalent The Gambia, has a single border to protect, while others such as Zaire has as many as ten borders to patrol (Boahen, et al. 329).\r\nDuring the colonial era, Africans were made to get to cash crops to export to their colonizers and they were compelled to ignore growing provender for their own consumption. Africans therefore had to buy imported diet at high prices (Boahen, et al. 330). The imprint of colonialism on the witticism of Africans in addition affects their economic ways. Years after their independence, there are still people in sub-Saharan Africa who believe that they are incapable of producing manufactured or processed goods. They are under the impression that they can only produce and export raw materials.\r\nThe rightfulness is that there are no natural barr iers preventing Africans to process the raw materials that they produce (Mshomba 118). Commercialization of land also brought about widespread poverty in Africa. people fought over ownership of land, resulting in a submerge of litigations, causing poverty among land-owning families and ruling houses. Inter-African trade also ended with the rise of colonialism, stopping the spread of autochthonal African languages like Swahili and Hausa in different split of the continent.\r\nAncient caravan routes were blocked and transaction in the midst of members of the same ethnic group from either side of new borders turned into smuggling (Boahen 102). Colonialism also left(p) political instability behind. After their independence, many African nations succumbed to dictatorships, which discouraged investment in sub-Saharan countries and undo resources (Mshomba 118). Finally, Africa’s colonial heritage is also creditworthy to the growing number of expatriate banking, shipping and trading companies which later consolidated into oligopolies.\r\nThese compnies controlled the import and export of commodities produced by Africans, which meant the lion’s share of profits go to them and not to the real producers (Boahen, et al. 332). African nations clearly have to address these challenges head on to improve their economic standing. Works Cited Boahuen, A. Adu. African perspectives on colonialism. Baltimore: JHU Press, 1989. Boahen, A. Adu et al. The general floor of Africa: Africa under colonial domination 1880- 1935. Oxford: James Currey Publishers, 1993. Mshomba, Richard E. Africa in the global economy. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000.\r\n'