CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of Study

Africa is a mosaic of peoples, cultures, ecological settings and history. The continent has an area of 11,677,240 square miles (30,244,050 square Kilometers), stretching from the Mediterranean in the north to the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the south (Chazan 1999: 5). It has the highest arable land per capita in the world; its landmass of 2.1 million hectars with 32% of forest and woodland and 6.2% arable land is twice its share of world population (Mosha 1981) Africa has a population of some 730 million (roughly 10 percent of the world’s population) who speak more than eight hundred languages. Seventy percent of the population lives in the rural areas who earn their living either through farming or animal rearing (Chazan 1999: 5). Africa is also rich in minerals and other resources. It has one quarter of the world’s hydroelectric power and only 3% is presently utilized. The continent contains the largest reserves of metallic ores (top producer of cobalt and nickel), non-ferrous base metals (top producer of copper, lead and zinc); precious metals (top producer of gold and diamond) and non-metallic deposits (a leading producer of phosphates) (Mosha 1998).

Africa’s international contact in the 16th century and afterwards, was to its disadvantage. European merchants shipped millions of Africans, to work on their plantations in the Americas. In the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, more than 30 million Africans were transported to America from 1500 to 1890, leaving the continent without young cultivators.

The trade distorted the already booming economic and cultural civilizations. While Europe and America were prospering through industrialization, Africa failed in an exploitative and unproductive system and relation of trade. The trade also created psychological inferiority on the part of Africans.

Following the deterioration of the importance of slavery in the economy, Europeans began to colonize Africa, which culminated at the Berlin conference of 1884-1885. The impact of colonialism was again severe on Africa, a continent that was still under the debacle of slave trade.

In the social dimension, they disrupted accustomed ways of earning a livelihood. In the name of Christianity, the colonizers dismantled African customs, and obsessed in perpetuating white domination. In the name of education, they taught their civilization and history, with little regard for African civilization.

In the economic aspect, colonialism adversely affected production, distribution and consumption. Africans became producers of raw materials for the industries of Europe. They produced cash crops such as palm oil, rubber and cotton, and minerals like copper and gold by ignoring the production of subsistence (consumer) goods.

Migrants from Europe appropriated the most fertile land from the natives and established their own farms or plantations, as a result of which African farmers began to sell their labour to the land owners. African men also migrated to supply labor for the production of minerals in the mines, particularly to western Africa. Hence, only women became producers of food for their families. Forced labour was also common during the construction of railways that served for the exploitation of the economy.

Politically, the boundaries they left behind became a source of conflict among the present states of Africa. These boundaries were artificially made to satisfy their own system of administration, which in the distortion of traditional social and economic patterns. It also created differences among the various African countries in their quest for nation building and economic development and stability.

1.2 Statement of Problem

The direct involvement of the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies in African politics created instability, tension and suspense among the states of Africa. There were a lot of conflicts, either directly or indirectly instigated by the Super-Powers, and a lot of conflicts where they or their allies were directly involved, the intervention of France in Chad and in Zaire (Congo), Britain in Rhodesia and Uganda, Cuba in Angola and Libya in Chad among others are illuminating. Eventually, when the Cold War ended, Africa became marginalized. It no more became a continent of strategic importance to the Super-Powers.

According to the Dependency School of Thought, the trade patterns that developed in the 16th century and thereafter during the colonial period by Western Europe made many African countries to produce food and minerals for the world market and primarily to trade with the former colonial countries. The price and the demands for the products fluctuate greatly, affecting incomes for sustainable development programs. Multi-National Corporations of the North-frozen small competing firms of Africans, leaving the continent to remaina supplier of primary goods, which are not sufficiently available in the industrialized countries.