Colonialism and (Under-)Development in Africa

Note: Please keep in mind the basic principle that I am responding here to a series of questions from a seminar syllabus before engaging in the assigned readings; this is therefore an "off-the-cuff" pre-test of my understandings about colonialism in Africa. My reaction after reading the assigned material would be heavily influenced by Walter Rodney's under-development thesis.

The colonial administrations of African nations introduced cash-crop economies because their private interests in profit were served by this. The subsistence agriculture which characterized much of Africa prior to colonization provided few or no marketable products, and might not even provide sufficient calories to support non-agricultural primary industries such as forestry or mining. European settlers in Africa fell into three basic types: the Boer-type, who were farmers who came to establish multiple-crop farming communities basically analogous to European settlements in North America; the Planter-type, such as those who founded tea and coffee plantations in East Africa; and the administrative type, like missionaries, government officials, and mine supervisors. But Europeans were not the only settlers in Africa.

Indians and Chinese came in large numbers especially to eastern and southern Africa to work as indentured servants on plantations or in mines. Two happy results of this, not mentioned in the readings, are Gandhi-ji's legal practice in Durban and Bunny Chow, the South African dish of curry served in a hollowed out loaf of bread. The general result of these settlements, however, has been at least as much suffering as happiness. White settlers owned disproportionately larger plots of land, and better land, than indigenous peoples, and the Asian settlers, while underclass, further exacerbated the land crisis.

Zimbabwe has experimented with reapportionment of lands taken from white settlers without real success in improvement of the general population. Nyerere recognized special problems of land apportionment in a diverse state such as Tanzania. Overharvesting is a serious liability for long-term development, but is a common problem because of market inequities between end-consumer and raw producer. Few or no post-colonial governments have responded effectively to the problems bequeathed them by the colonial administrations.