The Communist Party of Great Britain posted this article. It makes some very astute observations about the state of Africa and how it got there.
The wealth of Africa
From its 800 million people to its vast fertile lands and enormous mineral wealth, Africa is brimming over with riches. There is nothing inherently poor about this great continent. The poverty of the majority of its people is a peculiar product of the latest phase of its history – colonial and neo-colonial – which was so closely tied up with the birth of modern industrial capitalism in western Europe and north America. The plunder of Africa’s great wealth played a major role in the bringing about, and sustenance, of European and American affluence.
“Manganese for steel, cobalt for chrome and alloys, gold, fluorspar and germanium for industrial diamonds – Africa remains a treasure trove for the world’s sophisticated economies. The US continues to rely on Africa for raw materials, and for American companies there are tremendous profits in the current trade agreements that continue the age-old exploitation of the continent by the rich world.
“Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest place, is also its most profitable investment destination. According to the World Bank’s 2003 global development finance report, the huge continent offers the highest returns on foreign direct investment of any region in the world.” (‘When it comes to Africa, Bush has more on his mind than aid’ by Torcuil Crichton, Sunday Herald, 12 June 2005)
Africa’s independent, pre-colonial history and cultural achievements, a reflection of its great civilisations, were for years denied by European scholars in order to back up the insidious colonialist lies about ‘child-like people’ who needed shepherding to full adulthood and who were not ‘ready’ for independent rule. It was a rough ‘parentage’ for the people of Africa – mercantile capital saw the continent as a gold mine first for the harvesting of slave labour, then as a vast plantation to be worked by slave labour in situ – as colonies.
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