Imperialism and Its Impact on African Starvation

When parents are confronted with adolescents wasting food, the immediate response often alludes toward poor, starving African children to invoke shameful feelings. Many adults of the Western world perceive Africa as plagued by poverty, famine, drought, and disease. Africa is portrayed as a humanitarian disaster to more developed countries, but Western media does not address the true reasons behind African starvation and abject living conditions. Modern developed countries have a colonial history of expansion into less developed regions, and profit-driven resource extraction fueled injustices within 19th century colonization of Africa. Because capitalist interests incentivized Western powers to dominate and exploit African countries, imperial

Although European powers implemented different forms of colonial rule, each administrative system undermined African political and social structures due to the authoritarian nature of imperialist governments. Faced with native opposition, Western colonial powers sent military forces to eradicate leaders of the resistance. Rebellious Africans wielding spears and swords were squashed by technologically advanced European soldiers armed with machine guns and artillery cannons. Once military domination ensured foreign authority, Western powers streamlined economic interests to exploit resource-rich lands. In the Congo region, Leopold established a trade monopoly that designated Belgium as the sole recipient of exported African ivory and rubber. Failure to provide European currency for taxes also required the Congolese to pay them in labor; indigenous populations were trapped by debt and forced to work under the state, which controlled purchase prices and therefore determined a minimal amount of income. Leopold had created an economic system that virtually enslaved the native population to ensure maximum profit and resource extraction. A Congolese refugee describes the horrific working conditions in Colonialism in the Congo: Conquest, Conflict, and Commerce: “Wild beasts—leopards—killed some of us when we were working… others got

The resulting civil wars, genocides, apartheid, social tensions, and hierarchies detained societal progress and disadvantaged African countries. The long-term consequences of Western imperialism continue to be felt in modern society; Belgian colonial rule fueled racial tensions that led to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, descendants of American settlers maintain disproportionate control over Liberia’s political and economic structure, and negligent withdrawal of imperial powers undermined future self-government and stability. When questioning Africa’s humanitarian status today, the modern implications of Western imperialism cannot be ignored. In accounting for the domination, oppression, and exploitation of native Africans, a more holistic perspective better explains the historical legacy of