How capitalism made Africa poor
by CHARLIE KIMBER
AFRICA IS the poorest continent on Earth. Around 13,000 of the 30,000 children who die every
day from the effects of malnutrition are African. Nine of the ten most indebted countries are
in Africa. The average African household today consumes 20 percent less than it did 25 years
ago. Sub-Saharan Africa, with 14 percent of the world's population, now has just 1 percent of
world trade.
Much of the media explains this through the myth of the "dark continent", a backwater of
human development. But Africa has not always been poor. It was made poor by capitalism. The
geographical and climatic conditions in Africa are far more difficult than in Europe-40
percent of the continent is desert. But great cities, states and kingdoms were established in
Africa at about the same time as in Europe or even earlier. Techniques like iron working and
the use of animals were discovered before or at about the same time as in the rest of the
world.
Egypt was one of the foremost early civilisations. The great pyramid of Gizeh was built over
4,000 years ago. Aksum, in the highlands of northern Ethiopia, was a developed civilisation
in Roman times. The Zanj culture on the east coast of Africa south of the "horn" of Somalia
developed in the 7th century. Beginning in the area around Mogadishu, a linked set of city
states stretched as far south as Mozambique within 100 years. A developed culture grew up
from early times in the Katanga area of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In 1510 Leo Africanus, a Spanish born resident of Morocco, travelled to Timbuktu (in modern
Mali) and wrote, "Here are many shops and merchants, especially such as weave linen and
cotton cloth. Corn, cattle, milk and butter this region yieldeth in great abundance. The rich
king keeps a magnificent and well furnished court. Here are great stores of doctors, judges,
priests and other learned men." In 1600 a Dutch trader who entered the city of Benin in west
Africa wrote, "The city looks very big when you go into it. The houses in the town stand in
good order as our Dutch houses are. These people are in no way inferior to the Dutch in
cleanliness. They wash and scrub their houses so well that these are as polished as a looking
glass."
But at the beginning of the 18th century Africa was devastated by the slave trade and
colonialism. Between nine million and 13 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic
between 1451 and 1870. As capitalism developed in Western Europe, it shovelled more enslaved
human beings into the plantations of America and the Caribbean to provide the wealth to
ignite industrial growth.
From 1700 to 1800 some 60,000 Africans a year were transported across the Atlantic in ships
which, according to the Royal Africa Company, allowed each slave a space "five foot in
length, 11 inches in breadth and 23 inches in height". The slaves were shackled together and
the journey could last for many months. The historian Patrick Manning has calculated that the
removal of nine million slaves across the Atlantic required the capture of 21 million
Africans. Millions of others fled their villages and went into hiding.
This all occurred when the population of the entire continent was only around 50 million. The
population of Africa south of the Sahara did not grow at all between 1750 and 1850. This was
catastrophic for societies which were short of enough people to develop further.
The slave trade also transformed African political life. It meant the development of
militaristic regimes which could either hold out against the slavers or which would capture
their neighbours and sell them. In the first great phase of the arms trade British traders
alone shipped an average of 330,000 firearms a year to West Africa between 1750 and 1807.
Colonialism's history of butchery and massacres
AS THE slave trade began to wane, colonial invasion exploded. Before 1880 almost all of
Africa was ruled by Africans. Within a few years five European powers (and the king of the
Belgians) had divided almost all of Africa between them, creating 30 new colonies spanning
ten million square miles.
Previously Africans had fought Western invasions and often won-a sign that they were not
"primitive" societies. But by the 1880s the West had a significant lead in certain weapons,
especially accurate rifles and efficient machine guns. These were used to destroy African
states and rob their wealth. At the Congress of Berlin in 1884-5 the Great Powers carved up
the African continent between them. Not a single African was invited to attend.
Once European powers seized these territories they were squeezed for profit, regardless of
the cost in human suffering or economic devastation. One particularly well documented example
is Congo, taken virtually as personal property by King Leopold II of the Belgians. In 1875 he
caught the mood of other European powers and wrote, "We must obtain a slice of the
magnificent African cake." Within ten years he had international rights to 2.5 million square
kilometres of the Congo basin, with a wealth of natural resources and a population of up to
20 million.
Leopold had posed as a great supporter of human rights, even sponsoring an anti-slavery
conference. But in Congo there was soon clear evidence of a carnival of massacres behind the
veneer of the king's civilising crusade. Leopold's companies used ruthless methods to force
people to harvest rubber. Each district was assigned a quota of rubber to produce. Those who
failed were beaten, whipped or butchered.
The Belgian authorities sent out punitive expeditions to terrorise those who resisted. The
killers would hack limbs off the dead, or sometimes off the living. A Baptist missionary
described how the soldiers cut off the hands of people they had shot and took them to the
authorities: "These hands-the hands of men, woman and children-were placed in rows. This
rubber traffic is steeped in blood."
Before the arrival of the rubber companies Congo's population was around 20 million. An
official census taken in 1911 revealed only 8.5 million. Entire regions were wastelands. Even
where colonialism was not so instantly murderous, it pauperised Africa. Half of all the
profits on the minerals of the Gold Coast (Ghana) made between 1920 and the end of
colonialism were sent out of the country, mostly to Britain.
Why the poverty continues
AFRICANS FOUGHT colonialism and won independence for most of the continent by 1965. But this
did not mean economic freedom or an end to rule by the rich. Local elites replaced the
imperialists, and the economies were still often dominated by the multinationals and big
banks that had ruled before. Often the new rulers were people who had been trained by the
West, such as Bokassa in Central African Republic, who had served in the French army, and
Mobutu in Congo who was helped into power by the CIA.
Today debt sucks out billions every year from Africa. Governments spend four times as much on
debt as they spend on health and education combined. Over 20 African countries have suffered
the vicious effects of "structural adjustment" imposed by the bankers as a condition for
further loans. That means food price rises, unemployment and cutting public spending on the
services that the poor need. Between 1980 and 1997 the price of almost all the commodities
that Africa produces fell catastrophically on the world market. The pinstriped boys at the
London Metal Exchange and the futures market were enjoying the "greed is good" decades of
Thatcherism. Africans starved and died.
There is no reason why Africa should be poor. It has huge material and human resources. But fundamental change requires a confrontation with the capitalist system.