Why is Africa poor?
Africa is economically poor. Some Afri-philes and some Africans sometimes blame colonialism as part of the reason why the continent is economically poor. Afri-phobes insist that after half a century of freedom from colonialism, that particular excuse is no longer valid, and that we need to look elsewhere. Colonialism, and slavery before it, served at least to put the brakes on local civilisations, so that the ways Africans were doing things before became obsolete and backward and therefore undesirable. That supposes that like children, Africans had to re-learn how to live, at the mercy of the colonizer besides the civil war that affects the lives of the African. Another result of colonialism is that African countries still trade with their colonial masters (at a loss) instead of with each other. “African countries are grappling to undo a legacy dominated by trade with their former colonial rulers rather than with each other. Senegal’s biggest trading partner is France, while Gambia tra
