how was Africa living before the advent of colonial masters?how did the colonial masters underdevelop Africa?

Question

the history of africa before colonialism and also during colonialism.

Answer 1

yes there was alot of oppression and poverty in there but I think they prefer it to be by an african than a european

Answer 2

Many African countries flourished under colonial rule and after independence fell back into their old ways where petty tribal differences and brutish self-aggrandizement have resulted in poverty and misery for the population.

A good example is Zimbabwe. Under British colonial rule (it was called Southern Rhodesia) the country produced so much beef, corn and wheat that it fed half of Africa on the surplus. Workers from other African countries came to find jobs. Living there as a child, I did see poverty, certainly, (as one sees in every society) but NOT starvation.

Under the current regime, once flourishing farms have been taken from their owners and given to Mugabe's friends, who are rich on the foreign aid they've been stealing for years and so don't need to farm the land. The tenant farmers who made their livelihood working the land have been thrown off, and are starving as a result.

Anyone who says a word against Mugabe is either beaten up, jailed or killed. Thousands of able bodied Zimbabweans daily try to leave the country to find work elsewhere, usually South Africa, to support their families, but they usually get turned back at the border.

For horrific examples of post-colonial Africa, consider the rule of Idi Amin Dada in Uganda, and the 1994 Hutu-Tutsi tribal clashes in Rwanda in which about a million ordinary people were hacked to death just for belonging to a different tribe.

Colonialism certainly wasn't perfect, and the Spanish, French and Portuguese did things a little differently from the British, but in the end it wasn't all bad. For many Africans, life was far better under colonial rule than it was before or since.
Interestingly, many of them have kept the legal and educational systems of their former colonial rulers, which would suggest that they considered those things better than anything they could come up with themselves.

Answer 3

If you listen to some black people it was like the Garden of Eden. Slavery was not the invention of the white man it was already established as a profitable business long before the white man even knew that Africa existed. Yes there were cities pillaged long before colonial times. After slavery was abolished (or made illegal anyway)
I think mant Africans were better off under the colonists than they are to-day.

Answer 4

Despite the existence of empirical studies linking Africa's current
underdevelopment to its colonial history, a formal theoretical explana-
tion of this link has yet to be made. How could colonialism have had
apparently lasting impacts? I provide a game-theoretic model that
explains how extraction, taking the form of the slave trade and colo-
nial control, resulted in a permanent increase in rent-seeking behavior
and a permanent decrease in the security of private property, both of
which have helped foster Africa's current underdevelopment.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

Life in Africa before colonialism was nasty, brutish and short.
In far too many places it's becoming that way again.