I don't think Africa's problems started with the encroachment of Europeans.

Rather, Africa was colonised by Europe instead of the other way around precisely because Africa was underdeveloped in the first place. Which is not to say that Africa's forceful incorporation into a world system wasn't traumatic.


For something completely different: I consider Africa and Europe cultural, not geographical terms. What's more, they are identities vis-a-vis Islam. 'Europe', in the modern sense of the word, originated with the conquest of the southern Mediterranean by Islam in the seventh century. Which put an end to the ancient Mediterranean world. The sea around which civilizations sat as frogs around a pond. Two distinct civilizations now existed, north and south of the Mediterranean.

In Africa, the same happened. In a long arch, from the mouth of the Gambia to Zanzibar, Africa belonged to the culture of Islam, the Ummah. South and west of this then lay Africa proper. A distinction that the Western world has adopted. Although adjusted to suit the more racially orientated western thought: black Africa, or later, more euphemistically, Sub-Saharan Africa.

A difference is that the Africans did not and the Europeans did self-identify as Africans and Europeans respectively.

In this scheme religion is the enduring dividing factor. With the two intervals of race (1870-1945) and ideology or polical systems (1945-1989) only of passing interest. Indeed, at the edges of the religious spheres, where the religious tectonic plates meet, there is instability and strife. In the North, from Kosovo and Bosnia to Algeria and the Paris suburbs. In the South, from Darfur to Somalia. This border instability has been in place for 1300 years, although the plates have shifted back and forth.

/pumping blood into the debate by mentioning religion and Islam.*

*which would then further go to show that religion is what flares the passions of the 21st century. Twenty years ago, dropping the word 'Marxism' would've aroused passion, and 'religion' merely a yawn.