How are you? The problem of this question is that it needs only one respond and that is “Fine” or “am fine” but in reality the one responding might have good number of difficulties. Anyway this is not of my concern today!
History tells us that up to the 15th century the economic development level was the same all around the world that is; Africa was having the same economic status as Europe and Asia without speaking of America and Australia. Walter Rodney spoke of “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, to my opinion that was Adam-eve approach “blaming others for your own mistakes”. What came up? Why didn’t Africa under develop Europe? Please don’t perceive me wrong am at no intention of either argue or criticize the Rodney’s thoughts.
We can stand together and think what went wrong, why was Africa left behind? Some argue carelessly that primitive accumulation and mercantilism which was then advanced to colonialism are the processes that made Africa the way it is today. But the question is still unanswered why Africans failed to accumulate and colonize Europe? Why Africa went on being the exploited?
We can now realize that something went wrong even before all those processes, so instead of finding all ways to blame Europe lets try to find the real cause of us as continent being poor as we are.
There are two hypotheses I would like to state. The first states “the more you face problem the more creative you become” and the second important hypothesis is “facing problem involves giving it the right solution” Please you don’t need to agree with me or to disagree.
The European especially those of the North West faced a lot of problems from environmental disaster, cold to land shortage, the intensity of their problems gave them higher demand for the good solution to avoid it from reoccurring. The identification of problem requires a great understanding of the cause and effect, so that instead of dealing with effects we deal with causes. Identification of a problem is the first step towards solving the problem.
What came up? Africans came to be the way they are today simply due to lack of creativity and failure to come up with proper solution for their small problems. Woo! These are my opinion and no one can just say yes or no. But please you have the chance and right to think otherwise.
