UNDERDEVELOPMENT AS A HISTORICAL PROCESS: THE EXPERIENCE OF AFRICA

Abstract

With a land area three times the size of the United States, Africa's vast rich continent possesses all the resources required for modern development. The many-faceted history and culture reach back through the empires of early antiquity to the modern site of human life. Long before Europeans discovered the Americas, peoples of Africa had built towns and carried on trade with Europe and Asia. Prior to World War II, Africa was a net exporter of food. Today, with a population of over 500 million, Africa shifts an infinite variety of mineral and agricultural riches - the raw sinews of modern industry and luxurious consumption - to all corners of the earth. Yet, at the same time, four decades after the peoples of Africa began to throw off the bitter yoke of colonial rule, some 28 African countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, still rank among the words forty-two poorest. The World Bank (1989) noted that, in 1980s alone six more African states had "slipped" into the lowest income group. Deteriorating economic and social conditions left the average African government to adopt policies that many critics claim push tens of thousands more Africans still deeper into the mire of poverty and dependency. The problems of Sub-Saharan African countries is such that the recovery of the World economy from the global economic recession of the late 1970s, as noted by the World Bank, “seems to have by-passed sub-Saharan Africa, even in those countries with the best earlier” records, (especially oil exporters (Olowu, 1988 p.1).