Page 115 - A People Called Afrika

Restoring The Honor Code

Alemayehu proposes an alternative consideration, that the
history of Afrika’s debt crisis can only be understood ac-
curately by looking at it from the point of view of Afrika’s
pre-colonial history. According to this paper, “Africa had
autonomy in its linkages with the rest of the world and did
produce processed goods. It is also worth noting that the qual-
ity of many of these processed goods was quite comparable
with products originating in other parts of the world. More-
over, none of the goods brought by Europeans supplied any
of the basic or unfulfilled needs of African societies. … Af-
rica had a healthy and fairly independent economic system
before colonialism intervened to force a structural interaction
with Europe.” He goes on to explain that the Europeans be-
gan to influence Afrika’s production aggressively during the
16th and 17th centuries to match the needs of the industri-
al revolution. This had the effect of interrupting the natural
path of Afrika’s own industrialization. By the end of the co-
lonial period, the Europeans had managed to convert most
of Afrika into a commodity exporting economy and they
controlled virtually all the import and export trade… influ-
encing what was produced, imported and exported by Afrika.

“Thus, given such a historical process it is not surprising to
find that almost all African nations had become exporters of
a limited range of primary products, and importers of man-
ufactured goods, by the time of independence in the 1960s.
This was further accompanied by a demand for external fi-
nance when export earnings were not sufficient to finance the
level of public expenditures required for maintaining and ex-
panding the commodity exporting economy. This structure
has not changed in any meaningful way in the post-colonial
era.” Thus, Alemayehu suggests, Afrika’s problems are direct-

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