Was there any poverty in africa before the europeans colonized it.?
Poverty is generally defined in comparison to something else. By our standards, even the very rich of Africa prior to colonization would be considered poor (yes, some of them may have had money and nice clothing, but no running water, horrible sanitation, bad housing, etc). Compared to the average American today, pre-colonization Africa was poor, but since they had no benchmark to compare to, they could not conceive of a society that was better off. Throughout history, most of humanity has lived in conditions that modern day Americans would consider terrible, but without the technology and skills that modern day man has, that was the best they could do.
