Far from victim-based rhetoric, Nofi explores in an analytical way the historical, economic, and political processes through which Europe, via the slave trade, colonization, and neo-colonial mechanisms, inserted Africa into a structural logic of underdevelopment. This is not an indictment, but a methodical examination of the deep causes of a lasting inherited imbalance whose effects continue to shape the contemporary African economy.
Context of precolonial Africa and early European contacts
At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as Europe embarked on its maritime expansion, sub-Saharan Africa was anything but a terra incognita. Far from the persistent clichés of a continent frozen in orality or historical discontinuity, it was home to powerful kingdoms and empires structured by political institutions, systems of production, legal codes, and autonomous artistic expressions. Entities such as the Mali Empire or the Songhai Empire controlled flourishing commercial networks linking the banks of the Niger to trans-Saharan caravans, while the Kingdom of Benin pursued an active diplomacy with Europeans as early as the sixteenth century. Ethiopia, for its part, embodied another path: that of an independent African Christian power with centuries-old imperial ambitions.
The diversity of these societies did not prevent them from maintaining complex exchanges, both within the continent and with its North African margins and, soon, with European maritime powers. When the Portuguese sailed along the Atlantic coast, it was initially in an exploratory and commercial logic. The first settlements (Elmina in 1482, the islands of São Tomé, or the trading posts in Kongo) were coastal footholds, not centers of colonization. Europeans at that time had neither the military technology nor the manpower needed to impose themselves inland. Africans therefore controlled most of the terms of trade: gold, ivory, and enslaved people were exchanged for textiles, beads, or weapons.
But this unequal relationship was soon transformed. From the seventeenth century onward, the transatlantic slave trade became the main engine of the West African coastal economy. Fueled by the growing demand of slave plantations in the Americas, it durably reshaped regional balances. Certain African political entities, such as the Kingdom of Abomey or the coastal chiefdoms of the Gold Coast, specialized in the capture and delivery of enslaved people.
In the short term, they gained resources, prestige, and weapons. But in doing so, they entered into a logic of economic dependence and political instability. Societies outside the slave circuits were themselves weakened by raids, regional militarization, and the erosion of the social fabric caused by the forced export of hundreds of thousands of individuals each century.
This dynamic placed Africa on a particular trajectory of participation in the emerging world economy. It did not integrate as an autonomous trading power, but as an extractive periphery whose main resource became its population. Far from being a mere side effect, this brutal insertion into transatlantic trade prepared the ground for colonization proper. By undermining endogenous political structures, installing asymmetric economic dependencies, and accustoming certain elites to negotiating on unequal bases, the slave trade laid the foundations for a more explicit domination in the nineteenth century.
Thus, long before European cannons opened the way for territorial conquest, Africa was already being shaped in the service of European expansion through trade, moral debt, and the manipulation of local rivalries. It is within this precise historical context that the next phase must be understood: that of systemic economic subjugation which Walter Rodney would describe as a process of “underdevelopment,” methodically constructed rather than passively endured.
Historical stages of European exploitation
Between the Atlantic slave trade and the nineteenth-century colonial conquest, Africa experienced a major historical shift, not as the result of a simple meeting of civilizations, but within a structured process of subjugation. Walter Rodney states it clearly: Africa’s underdevelopment is the historical product of continuous over-exploitation, sustained by an economic and political architecture put in place by Europe. This process unfolded in two major sequences: the export of millions of African bodies through the slave trade, followed by the systemic appropriation of land, institutions, and economies through colonization.
The Atlantic slave trade, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, constituted the first major phase of brutal extraction of human resources. Around 12 to 15 million Africans were deported to the Americas in what was probably one of the largest forced population transfers in history. This economic system (known as triangular trade) linked European ports, African trading posts, and plantations in the New World. It generated colossal fortunes for European shipowners, merchants, and capitalists, while durably bleeding Africa of its vital forces.
The regions of the Gulf of Guinea, Benin, Casamance, or the Congo were the most affected: villages destroyed, artisans captured, social structures dislocated. The consequences were not only demographic (stagnation, even decline of population) but also political: inter-ethnic wars fueled by European demand, militarization of certain kingdoms at the expense of civilian organization, and the weakening of internal cohesion.
At the continental scale, this period established violence as an economic engine. The slave trade was not a simple demographic drain; it disrupted the mechanisms of social reproduction: it targeted young adults, slowed growth, prevented the accumulation of knowledge, and destabilized local commercial dynamics. Long before colonial conquest, Africa was thus placed in a defensive posture, internally weakened.
When Europe began, from 1880 onward, what historiography calls the “Scramble for Africa,” the ground had already been prepared. The Berlin Conference (1884–1885), which officially codified the rules of annexation of the continent, enshrined the principle of effective occupation as justification for colonial rights. In less than thirty years, nearly 90% of Africa came under European domination: Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, Kenya, Namibia, and Angola became “colonies” administered, exploited, and supervised.
The means employed were unambiguous: overwhelming military superiority (firearms, artillery, logistics), instruments of terror (summary executions, destruction of villages, systematic repression), and the strategic use of divisions between ethnic or tribal groups. From the resistance of Samory Touré to the Maji-Maji war, examples abound of a continent that did not passively accept domination. But these resistances were crushed, marginalized, or even turned against themselves through the recruitment of indigenous soldiers into colonial armies.
Domination did not rest solely on weapons. It was accompanied by administrative structures of formidable efficiency. France implemented a system of direct rule: governors-general, colonial districts, controlled chieftaincies, and a Code de l’indigénat instituting legal inequality between colonized and colonizers. Great Britain, in some regions, adopted indirect rule, relying on traditional authorities to govern without mobilizing too many resources. In both cases, African sovereignty was nullified, laws were imposed, and European languages became vehicles of symbolic and legal domination.
These practices were supported by a powerful ideological apparatus. According to European discourse, colonization was not predation but a “civilizing mission.” It claimed to educate, heal, evangelize, and moralize. Africa, portrayed as a “backward” continent, became the terrain of a trusteeship justified by the supposed gap between “civilized races” and “primitives.” This rhetoric concealed the real stakes: control strategic routes (canals, ports, fertile lands), secure sources of raw materials (rubber, cotton, gold, uranium, palm oil), and expand commercial outlets needed for European industrial growth.
Thus, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, European exploitation of Africa operated through two complementary logics: first human extraction, then territorial extraction. In both cases, the continent was not integrated into the global economy as a partner but subjugated as a reservoir. The colonial project was neither philanthropic nor temporary. It was a systemic operation, designed, equipped, and executed with the aim of durably subordinating African societies to the interests of European metropoles.
Economic mechanisms of colonial dispossession
Beyond territorial conquest and political domination, European colonization of Africa was structured around an economic architecture of dispossession. Contrary to the rhetoric of “development” often invoked in administrative archives, colonial economic practices aimed above all at appropriating resources, exploiting labor, and durably sterilizing the continent’s capacity for economic autonomy. Walter Rodney forcefully emphasizes this systemic dimension: the mechanisms of underdevelopment were not accidental consequences but the very core of the colonial project.
After the formal abolition of the slave trade and slavery, colonial powers instituted a large-scale system of forced labor, disguised under pseudo-legal forms. The Code de l’indigénat, in force in the French Empire from 1887, legalized the requisition of thousands of African workers, compelled to work on public works, European agricultural estates, or for large concessionary companies.
This forced labor, poorly paid or even unpaid, became the keystone of colonial accumulation. It enabled, at minimal cost, the construction of strategic infrastructures (roads, railways, ports) that did not benefit local economies. The Congo-Ocean Railway, built between 1921 and 1934, is emblematic: between 15,000 and 30,000 workers died to build a line designed exclusively to export resources to the Atlantic.
At the same time, colonial administrations carried out massive land grabs. The most fertile lands were confiscated for settlers or foreign companies. In Algeria, Kenya, or colonial Zimbabwe, African peasants were displaced and pushed into often unproductive “reserves.” This territorial spoliation went hand in hand with compulsory export crops. Subsistence agriculture was sacrificed to cotton, peanuts, coffee, cocoa, or rubber, whose production became a legal obligation in certain regions.
These crops, sometimes imposed under threat or administrative sanction, disrupted agricultural ecosystems and created chronic food insecurity. Africa became a “giant plantation” geared toward export, solely for the benefit of European industries.
Added to this was the intensive extraction of natural resources by European companies backed by colonial administrations. Gold from Ghana, copper from Katanga, South African diamonds, rubber from the Belgian Congo, or tropical timber exported to Europe were exploited under conditions of near-servitude. The colonial economy was not designed to integrate or develop African regions but to extract and transfer wealth. Infrastructure (ports, railways, warehouses) was conceived exclusively for export logistics, not for internal circulation or African trade. Most of the added value was captured outside the continent, in London, Paris, or Brussels.
This system also relied on a coercive colonial tax regime. Head taxes (such as the indigène tax in French West Africa or the hut tax in British colonies) forced African populations to obtain colonial currency, often inaccessible in a subsistence economy. The effects were multiple: forced monetization of rural life, obligation to sell livestock or crops at very low prices to pay taxes, and, above all, forced migration toward centers of wage labor. Taxation thus became an indirect tool of labor recruitment and social control. Meanwhile, settlers and European companies benefited from tax exemptions and administrative subsidies. Inequality was structural and institutionalized.
Finally, colonies were locked into a rigid colonial pact that bound their economies completely to the metropole. Exports were directed to a single market, imports restricted to European manufactured goods, and any attempt at industrialization was blocked. Local industries capable of competing with the metropole were forbidden.
This strategy caused the progressive deindustrialization of African economic life. Textile crafts, traditional metallurgy, and local processing workshops were displaced or destroyed. In many West African regions, for example, the massive influx of British industrial textiles led to the collapse of local production. In the long run, this logic deprived Africa of the economic bases necessary for endogenous industrialization, keeping it in the role of a supplier of raw materials, dependent for even its most basic needs.
Thus, far from being a mere trade imbalance or administrative misstep, the colonial economy rested on a fundamental principle of unilateral extraction. Labor exploitation, land confiscation, fiscal extortion, and industrial suffocation formed a coherent system designed to prevent the emergence of African economic powers. It is within this structure (colonial in form, capitalist in purpose) that what Rodney calls “underdevelopment” is rooted—not as the absence of development, but as the result of inverted development, exclusively benefiting Europe.
The long-term socio-economic impacts of colonial domination
Although European colonization officially ended in the mid-twentieth century, its effects endure with structural intensity. Far from being a closed historical episode, the colonial order bequeathed Africa a series of lasting constraints: deep social disorganization, economic dependence, deficits in training and infrastructure, and an internal dualism that has become almost inextricable. Walter Rodney’s analysis shows that it was not only Africa that was exploited, but also its future that was confiscated.
One of the first notable impacts is the disorganization of African societies, especially at the level of family, social, and productive structures. Forced labor and the massive displacement of male labor toward mines, construction sites, and plantations disrupted traditional community organization. Subsistence economies centered on the extended family were marginalized; women were left alone to maintain food crops while men worked hundreds of kilometers away under conditions often close to servitude.
This dislocation of the social fabric had lasting consequences: weakening of intergenerational bonds, cultural uprooting, fragility of community solidarities, and ultimately vulnerability to internal crises and social conflicts. The imbalance introduced by this structural rupture continues to hamper attempts at coherent endogenous development after independence.
Economically, colonization locked Africa into structural dependence and economic extraversion from which it still struggles to escape. At independence, African economies were almost exclusively oriented toward exporting a few raw materials (coffee, cotton, cocoa, oil, minerals), whose prices are set on volatile global markets. In contrast, manufactured goods, machinery, vehicles, and even basic consumer products continue to be imported at great cost.
This asymmetry, reinforced by postcolonial economic agreements (such as the CFA franc zone in francophone Africa), maintains an unequal relationship with former colonizers. The lack of local processing of raw materials, combined with chronic trade deficits, traps African countries in a cycle of debt and underinvestment.
This dependence is aggravated by an economic dualism inherited from the colonial system. The model established by European administrations distinguished two spheres: a “modern” sector (mines, plantations, ports, infrastructure) controlled by colonizers or their economic intermediaries, and a “traditional” or “informal” sector, essentially rural and subsistence-based, excluded from the dominant market circuits.
This divide has persisted: large cities, industrial hubs, or ports remain connected to global flows, while rural areas, where most of the population still lives, remain isolated, under-equipped, and poorly served. The postcolonial state inherits this dichotomy: public policies favor urban areas and export hubs, often at the expense of rural regions, creating deep internal inequalities and a fragmented domestic market.
The colonial legacy is also infrastructural and humanly deficient. Roads, railways, and communication networks built by colonizers served only one purpose: linking extraction sites (mines, plantations) to export ports. Very few interregional connections were created, making it difficult after independence to build an integrated national market. Moreover, investment in education and health was minimal. Only a narrow elite, trained for the needs of the colonial administration, had access to secondary or higher education. In 1960, all of French West Africa counted fewer than 1,000 university graduates.
This training deficit severely hampered the capacity of young states to manage their own development: the shortage of engineers, doctors, lawyers, and managers left room for foreign experts or multinational corporations, thus extending technological dependence.
Finally, these accumulated imbalances produced structural poverty and persistent social inequalities. Contrary to the narrative of gradual colonial progress, the figures show a continent impoverished by the capture of its wealth and the exclusion of its populations from economic decision-making and benefits. The colonies financed the metropoles, never the reverse. The development of European cities, banks, and industries was often made possible by massive transfers of capital, natural resources, and labor extracted from Africa.
This founding imbalance is still visible today in income structures: a minority (often urban, connected to the global economy, and sometimes close to former powers) concentrates wealth, while the majority lives below internationally defined poverty thresholds. Underdevelopment, as Rodney conceptualizes it, is therefore less an endogenous failure than a successful project of systemic dispossession.
Thus, the colonial enterprise did not only organize Africa around exploitation; it also undermined the foundations of autonomous development. By sabotaging social structures, preventing industrialization, and imposing an unbalanced specialization, it shaped vulnerable economies unable to withstand external shocks. The continent does not suffer from a lack of wealth, but from a historical architecture of plunder whose effects still reverberate today. To revisit these mechanisms is to understand why so many African countries, despite their resources, still struggle to escape the cycle of poverty.
Contemporary legacy and postcolonial perspectives
After the independence movements of the 1950s to 1970s, Africa formally entered the postcolonial era, but a rigorous analysis of economic and political dynamics reveals the deep persistence of domination logics inherited from colonization. The new states, though sovereign in appearance, remain largely embedded in neocolonial structures. Monetary zones such as the CFA franc, still pegged to a European currency, testify to the continuity of financial dependence shaped under imperial tutelage.
Many strategic sectors (energy, mining, export agriculture) remain under the control of Western or foreign groups, extending in a softer but equally constraining form the appropriation of local wealth. The balance of power has shifted from military to diplomatic, from cannon to contract, but the asymmetry remains intact.
The task facing young African nations has thus proven extraordinarily complex. Borders inherited from imperial partition, often incoherent in human or geographic terms, produced unstable political entities riddled with internal tensions. Postcolonial conflicts—ethnic, separatist, or economic—frequently originate in this artificial fragmentation.
Economically, the situation is no more favorable. Colonial specialization (exporting raw materials, importing finished goods) left behind disarticulated economies lacking a robust industrial base and unable to meet internal needs. To break free would require massive investments in infrastructure, education, research, and health—projects undermined by the structural debt inherited at the departure of colonial powers.
Lacking accumulated capital, many African states turned to external loans and international aid programs. But these, often conditioned by former colonizers or institutions dominated by Western powers, rarely enabled deep transformation of economic structures. The structural adjustment programs of the 1980s, forced liberalization, and mass privatizations mostly further weakened the room for maneuver of African states. Public debt became both an unsustainable budgetary burden and an instrument of political pressure, prolonging foreign interference by other means.
Faced with this impasse, attempts at emancipation have emerged. Some involve strengthening regional and continental cooperation, as seen in the African Union or emerging free-trade zones. Others focus on reasserting control over local resources: nationalization campaigns, greater control over raw materials, renegotiation of mining contracts. At the same time, a movement of historical reappropriation is underway: restitution of looted cultural heritage, rewriting of the continent’s economic history. Thinkers like Walter Rodney laid the foundations for an offensive and critical reading of the colonial past, demonstrating that African underdevelopment is not the product of intrinsic incompetence but the result of an organized process of exploitation.
This diagnosis, as severe as it is precise, should not lead to fatalism. Rodney himself insists: if Europe built its power on the back of Africa, Africa still has the means to forge its own future. But this requires breaking free from the symbolic and economic grip of the old colonial order. The point is not to endlessly retry the past, but to understand, lucidly and methodically, how that past shaped the present. Only on this condition can the African continent once again become master of its trajectories and an active agent of its development, finally breaking the visible and invisible chains of dispossession.
Notes and references
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972.
Amin, Samir. Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism. Éditions de Minuit, 1973.
Suret-Canale, Jean. Afrique noire occidentale et centrale: des origines à la conquête coloniale. Éditions Sociales, 1961.
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. Afrique noire: permanences et ruptures. Payot, 1985.
Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Gann, Lewis H. & Duignan, Peter. The Rulers of British Africa, 1870–1914. Stanford University Press, 1978.
Nzouankeu, Jacques Mariel. Les partis politiques africains. Présence Africaine, 1984.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Thomas Nelson, 1965.
Cooper, Frederick. Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Mbembe, Achille. Sortir de la grande nuit: Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée. La Découverte, 2010.
Fall, Babacar. Le travail forcé en Afrique occidentale française (1900–1946). Karthala, 1993.
Table of contents
Context of precolonial Africa and early European contacts
Historical stages of European exploitation
Economic mechanisms of colonial dispossession
The long-term socio-economic impacts of colonial domination
Contemporary legacy and postcolonial perspectives
Notes and references
