Without being churlish, it’s fair to say there were many benefits from colonialism. But, as stated in my earlier article, those benefits could have been transferred in other ways other than colonialism. Again, it’s fair to say there were also many negatives of colonialism.

• Firstly, Africans changed from being a commodity to producing commodities.
• All old African industries were stopped stone dead, and everything was imported. Mono economies were created. It is said, Africans grew what they did not eat and ate what they did not grow!
• Land disputes became prominent due to land acquiring value.
• Colonialism also brought to an end any intra-Africa trade that had existed for centuries. For example, crossing the Luapula River from Northern Rhodesia into the Congo now became smuggling, something people had been doing for centuries! This particular international border is still considered absurd. The border is often ignored openly, as it’s the same people on both banks of the Luapula River, with the same chiefs.
• Then all monies were controlled by colonisers, and the Africans were just economic by-standers (still are!!).
• In addition, colonial development was extremely lopsided and is partly responsible for the rural-urban differences that still exist today.
• Then there was the miseducation of Africans. The Whites condemned many things African and sought to tar black men with a White mentality.
• The colonial languages also led to the death of many African languages.
• There was, in addition, a cavalier attitude by the colonialists in destroying the old African social structures that had evolved over thousands of years.
• There was, moreover, the downgrading of women, as men moved into towns to earn money to pay taxes. This meant that the women were left in the villages, as grass widows, to tend to children and old people. Previously, women in many traditional African societies had been held in high esteem. This was because of their substantial economic contribution to society. Now women were in a very weak position because they became economically marginalised.
• Then, in addition to the God-given maladies that afflicted Africans, the Whites brought some new diseases to the party. These diseases included jiggers, smallpox, influenza, syphilis, and animal disease like rinderpest that saw off a sizeable number of Africans who depended on the animals that were wiped out.
• There were, furthermore, psychological negatives such as inculcation of a colonial mentality (3-piece suits in a terribly hot climate). The mindset that things belong to the government and are therefore not ours still lingers on. There were also feelings of inferiority and loss of human dignity. Dignity is coming back, but not the feeling of inferiority as Africa falls further behind technologically.
• The discrimination against Africans was a psychological hammer. Africans had to live in separate townships and used separate roads (joke!). Africans needed a pass to visit other parts of the same country; they had their own shopping areas, usually called second-class. If they went to the first-class areas, then they could only be served through a hatch. The Africans had second-rate schools, second-rate hospitals, and second-rate clinics. Africans were segregated even in churches!
• Miscegenation-1, that is the mixing of the genes of Black men and White women, was punishable by death of the Black man. Miscegenation-2, the mixing of the genes of White men and Black women was widespread and accepted.
• In countries where the Whites planned to have their bones interred, and also the bones of their grandchildren interred, the Whites pushed Africans from fertile lands into wastelands. This happened in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as examples.
• At “independence” democracy was imposed on most African countries. This a foreign concept that has struggled to deliver because of widespread poverty and low literacy levels.
• Then armies — first formed during World War One and later World War Two to fight for the colonisers — were bequeathed to newly “independent” African countries. These armies have been a nuisance all over black Africa, especially in West Africa, fomenting coups, and civil wars.
• The foreigners dissed indigenous African knowledge gathered over thousands of years. For example, Africans had a vast accumulated wealth of knowledge in agricultural methods that worked in their environment, but colonialists had given short shrift to this.
• Africa used to have legal systems that had worked for the society for centuries. These were systems that had taken into consideration the lack of prisons in many societies. These legal systems were ditched for systems whose primary purpose was to punish the offender and not rehabilitate him or her.
• There were numerous other examples in which indigenous systems that were far better than the western ones had been abolished. The colonialists marched into the interior of the continent eliminating practices that had worked for centuries and transfusing their own customs and practices.

So, the negatives are as numerous as the benefits. But it is what it is, and African countries have to take control of their destinies.