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Changes!

Commentary

Volume 1 of this trilogy, “Go home m’zungu, Go Home !”, is the answer to “What brought

us to where we are?” It describes how, we the m’zungu shaped modern-day Africa.

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“Changes” (Volume 2 of the trilogy) tries to answer the question “Just where are we exactly?”’

It’s a multi-faceted description of the realities of modern-day Africa. Africa is a multi-
layered kaleidoscope of realities.

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In order to understand “Just where are we exactly?” we first need to understand the

context, the circumstances of the first 60 years of African independence. If we then take

on board how changes in the world order that have and happened and will continue to
happen, we might then be in a better position to answer "What’s the best way forward from

here?"

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Modern-day Africa was not shaped by Africans
Before the m’zungu came, Africans ruled themselves.

The m’zungu came and did what they wanted with Africa. What they handed back to the
Africans was a ‘white man’s’ version of Africa. After many decades of m’zungu exploitation

and extraction what they handed back were countries that had legal status but little of the

infrastructure needed for a nation state.

Walter Rodney’s (1972) work “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, was probably the first

major work to set out uncomfortable truths about the m’zungu relationship with Africa.

“When one tries to measure the effect of European slave trading on the African continent,
it is essential to realize that one is measuring the effect of social violence rather than

trade in any normal sense of the word. ”

Nathan Nunn’s (2017) study "Understanding the Long-Run Effects of Africa's Slave Trade”
illustrates just how much m’zungu nations benefited at Africa’s expense.
..if the slave trades had not occurred, then 72% of the average income gap between

Africa and the rest of the world would not exist today, and 99% of the income gap
between Africa and other developing countries would not exist. In other words, had the

slave trades not occurred, Africa would not be the most underdeveloped region of the
world and it would have a similar level of development to Latin America or Asia.

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