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Systemic Plunder
“By the direct control of Africa’s economy and political administration made possible through colonialization, Africa was compelled or forced to accept the international division of labor which assigned her the compulsory role of production of agricultural raw materials required by the industries in Europe.”- CHINWEIZU.
The present role of African states in the international world economy as sources of raw materials, and consumers of manufactured products, did not come by accident; it is manufactured to play out as it is, owing to a colonial plan to subordinate Africa.
The deep-seated corruption in most African states and the egocentric attitudes of most of Africa’s political leaders are attributable to the effects of colonialism and imperialism.
At the advent of the industrial revolution, the slave trade and slavery had fulfilled their basic function of providing primitive capital.
The quest for the investment of the accumulated capital and the need for raw materials led to the colonization of Africa. As Chinweizu (1978, p. 35) observed:
“when Europe pioneered industrial capitalism, her demands upon the resources of the world increased tremendously.”
“In addition to obtaining spices for her tables and manpower for her mines and plantations in the Americas, Europe set out to seize for her factories, the mineral and agricultural resources of all the world. Her need to take African manpower to the Americas declined. She needed instead to put African labor to work in Africa, digging up for her the riches of African mines; the trading companies that had for centuries bought and sold on Africa’s coast were found inadequate for seizing and carting off the raw materials of the African hinterland. Europe now felt a need to export her power into Africa’s interior to reorganize the farms, mines, and markets for Europe’s greater profit.”
Her adventurers banded together obtained charters from their national governments and came to seize the African markets from the African middlemen, with whom for centuries Europe had been content to trade.