ABSTRACT

Africa is often portrayed as a lost cause—cursed by geography (the world’s largest desert, untold varieties of insects, and lethal illnesses), topography (deep valleys but few navigable rivers), and too many resources that invite predators and stir up conflicts (oil, diamonds). Its treatment by Europe’s barbaric transatlantic slave traders knows no equal in history (Rodney 1972). Wars of dispossession turned Africans into refugees, and up until the 1960s, forced labour was widely practiced by the Belgians, the Portuguese, and the South African white minority regime. In the 1990s, the majority of Africa’s population were peasants and agricultural workers; it had half the world’s refugees and displaced persons; external repayments on debt exceeded total resource flows into the continent ( Cheru 1994, 61). The continent is described as “tragic”, with Africans either dying of HIV/AIDS or slaughtering each other. Despite receiving significant foreign aid from the benevolent West, Africa shows little progress for the largess of its former tormentors (for this view see, for example, Guest 2004).