If it were not for colonialism, don’t you think Africa could have been the biggest economies of this world? Before responding, think, reflect and read the stories of the great Africans like Mansa Musa and the others.

Africa before colonization by the Europeans was a vast and diverse economy. Its people traded easily without much restrictions as we’re experiencing today. Our forefathers had a common currency for exchange, precious minerals including gold and diamonds, which is not the case today. Just imagine if today gold could have been Africa’s currency!

But with the entry of Europeans into our continent, they disrupted and anhilated the good cohesiveness and structures that existed in Africa by subdividing it and creating imaginary boundaries that destroyed the trade routes that existed back then. This brought about ethinicist and tribalism that never existed before their coming. Subdivision has inhibited regional trade or free trade within Africa. Till today, we’ve been unable to integrate Africa into a huge single market that used to exist in the time of Mansa Musa, making it impossible for it to realize its full potential that lies in Africa’s humongous population.

As if that was not enough, the visitors introduced slave trade in Africa, where the young and productive Africans were taken out of Africa to the European countries to serve as industrial workers under deplorable conditions. This action deprived Africa the human resource it needed most to develop itself. In addition to this, they exploitated Africa’s natural resources and exported it back to their mother countries without compensating the owners of the minerals.

This historical injustices are some of the reasons among many others why we still lag behind but the continent is catching up, thanks to its populous, young, learned and innovative productive generation coupled with its richness in its natuaral resources such as vast lands and minerals.