Africa Post-Colonial Development: Fatoumata Waggeh at TEDxGallatin

[Music] I want you all to do something take a moment close your eyes and think about Africa open your eyes I know I had your eyes closed you were thinking about your earliest childhood memory of the African safari and Africa of poverty hunger and genocide inexpensive and overly dramatic Nollywood movies and Africa of unruly people and weak political systems while most of these things are true today I want to talk to you all about why African countries have so much but continue to have so little my name is Fatima 2yk and the central question of my talk today is water resource rich African countries like Nigeria underdeveloped and I think we can understand Africa is under development through three key arguments one we can understand it by looking at how African countries are incorporated and continued to be incorporated into the global political economic system two we can also look at the dynamics and practices of the colonial legacy and how has such a history manifested in the post-colonial and three we can also look at the practices and policies that have been in put in place Bretton Woods institutions specifically the International Monetary Fund also known as the IMF the first country that I like to talk about today is the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1800s a man by leopold ii the king of belgium the finally Kim fellow he is conquered the region and constructed the Congo Free State with the Industrial Revolution at its height Leopold imagined the Congo as the space that will feel the Belgium economy and mark international prestige on Belgium during such a time period war materials such as rubber and ivory were also in great tomb at this Leopold institutionalized a colonial a colonial regime which would coercively extract robbed and ivory from the Congo in so doing he created an army called the force publique and the sole focus of the force publique was to go in was to go into local Congolese villages and make sure that Congolese villagers fulfilled their rubber and ivory quarters it villagers didn't they were beaten parts of their bodies were amputated and they face other forms of human rights atrocities my point is that earlier on the Congo was incorporated into the global political economic system in a very coercive and extractive manner where the Congo slowly functioned as the space to extract war materials which would feed Western economies the Congo became radically open and vulnerable to the global system as a whole and as the African scholar Samir Amin argues the Congo became mark as the periphery while the West became mark as a centre Leopold's history did not die today the Congo continues to be incorporated into the global political economic system in a similar extractive matter where Congolese resources of diamond and box.i are geared solely towards the global system feeding Western markets and feeding Western corporations and leaving behind a Congo suffering with a series of weak political system a Congo suffering with a populace that is denied of human rights and a Congo suffering from human rights from under development the practices and dynamics of the colonial history also manifests into the post-colonial take a country like Nigeria for example one of the world's largest oil producers there during the Berlin Conference of 1884 all the Western powers came together they sat down they had a map of Africa in front of them and they literally carve Africa up into colonies in this process arbitrary nation-states recruiting nation states which credd across geographical spaces nation states which cut across ethnic groups and nation states which cut across people who have been at peace or at war with for years for centuries and years when the British Empire came into Nigeria Nigeria had over a hundred ethnic groups however through the through the British Empire's policy of ethnic politicization Nigeria was constructed it was carved into three dominant ethnic groups the house of felonies in the north the Yerba in the West and the ebo in the East the British Empire used these three ethnic groups as their agents and their partners in the colonial regime where these three groups were used to sustain the British Empire and were also used to sustain the British Empire's indirect rule and it was these three groups who are able to breed the fruits of the colonial regime where they were able to obtain a Western education amongst other good and necessity and when Nigeria gained independence in 1960 Nigeria became a nation state that was arbitrarily constructed a nation state which had ethnic politics as history tells us in the wand in context ethnic politicization during colonialism breeds ethnic violence in the post-colonial today contemporary Nigeria is a Petro State where the three groups that the colonial regime constructed continued to have an iron grip on the Nigerian economy politics and the Nigerian social system and oil wealth is only oil wealth is dominated within these three groups and other ethnic minority groups that the British Empire marginalised specifically the Oconee and each our oil wealth is not distributed to them and they Java and the Oconee they have resorted to violence to reclaim in their nation-state and Nigeria remains underdeveloped and it remains a nation struggling with corruption and weak political systems during the 1970s with neoliberal capitalism on its being just being born and with the recent decolonization of most African and other poor other developing countries the International Monetary Fund a Bretton wood institution also known as the created a policy cost structure alone structural adjustment loan policy and these were basically loans with conditionalities where in order to reach a freaking country's receive these loans where in order to receive these loans African countries had to cut back on their public service spending such as education and health and after decolonization most African countries were either socialist or authoritarian and if they were doing pretty good as that but structural adjustment made them radically privatized radically capitalized there are national economies so what did this do this left African countries in huge debt this made african national national economies devalue within the national system larger global system and it also made their economy is very weak within the global political economic system the effects of structural adjustment is evident in the country of Zambia one of the world's largest carpet producers as the HDI statistics behind me suggest because of structural adjustment gum Zambia is important mortality rate is extremely grotesque we're one in five Zambian children die by the age of five and also as the life expectancy rate shows life expectancy rates has decreased and so has the primary school enrollment whereas Zambia is GDP rate has also been grotesquely low after the structure adjustment loans and because structure adjustment loans also made Zambia Zambia and the Zambian government come back cut back on government subsidies that farmers were received this led to got zombies zombie is food security to being greatly threatened so you all might be wondering okay now what how can Africa move away from this history of other ization and racial oppression into a state of development last summer I conducted a research at the African Commission on Human and people's rights and I met this guy named Charles and guna and Charles was a lawyer and charge told me bhasu Africa's dusty is in the hands of the Africans primarily the African use as charles's although Africa continues to be the site of charity and other forms of aid Africa would only become developed when Africans take control of their own political social and economic systems their own business so you might be wondering ok but what can i as an individual to earlier actual to think about Africa and I'm sure that a series of images conjured through your mind some which were true some which were untrue and some which was positive and some which were negative my point is that we have this idea this myth of Africa and we need to reinvent this idea this notion that we have of Africa and realize that the attributes that we often associate with Africa or in fact historically constructed by hegemonic powers and are in fact arbitrary after all change only becomes possible once we are aware once we question the way we think and once we challenge the institutions that are put in place thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 124,121

Rating: 4.8286815 out of 5

Keywords: English language, Hyphenate Media, New York, English, United States Of America (Country), New York University, Hyphenate, ted, tedx talks, ted talk, ted talks, tedx, USA, TED, tedx talk, ted x, TEDx, NYU, Africa (Continent), Gallatin, Postcolonialism, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Id: s7lmz4UL4wE

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2013