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Uchendu Chigbu Monday, February 4, 2008

echigbu@yahoo.com


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WHAT YOUR CHILD SHOULD KNOW ABOUT AFRICA: ORIGIN OF POVERTY IN AFRICA

'…yam and palm are economically indispensable to the African, Once they are guaranteed he can build a home, raise a family, join clubs, and participate in other forms of social, political and religious behaviors. Palm produce is our basic industry, and there is nothing from the mother palm tree that is thrown away. We use its vegetable oil for preparing meals, soap and pomade. The nut is cracked and used as food and lubricant. The nut shells are spread on the road to prevent erosion. When oil is pressed from the pulp, the remains are burnt at the kitchen oven as fuel. The palm leaves are fed to the goats, sheep and cows and sometimes used in building fences. The palm branches and stems are used as rafters and pole lines in building houses. Palm roots are strong cords useful in making harps and violins. Brooms, brushes, walking sticks, and fans are only a limited list of other materials which we manufacture from the palm. To the common man in my province, wealth means the sum total of the proceeds of the palm industry. Mbonu Ojike, My Africa, 1946


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hat was the state of wealth of most African nation-states prior to colonialism. There were adequate supplies all cardinal aspects of human survival (food, shelter and clothing). Due to the nature of most of our cultures in Africa, we lived a cooperative communalistic life. Land was there for all and each family had access to farm certain lands because it was communally owned. In fact, many men practised polygamy in order to have enough family members to farm and acquire from the community pool of lands. If these people die without heirs, the land they possess is returned into the community pool. So, land was not an issue as it was managed used and owned communally, yet possessed by individuals. One could be punished for offences or atrocities committed against the community by denying him/her access to community land (via ostracism).

The young African of today might not understand the power of the African industry before it got distorted by colonization and our present quest to copy and become westernized. There was food and housing, and of course our own fashion of dressing which was born out of common-sense, safety and style of living. There was always a striving economy based on levels of harvest year-in-year-out. But the Africa of those days, although, had no institutionalized social security, had different institutional practices that catered for the welfare and social living of all within a common ground. Widows and widowers; orphans and those in need were catered for by the community through their extended family or via community tasking.

Taking the case of the palm trees mentioned above. Life was dependent on nature, plants and animals in the African communities. While the palm tree was a great plant resource for everyday living, there were many other trees that served same purpose. The palm tree mentioned in this article is only an isolated example. Palm trees in places like Nigeria, Ghana, Madagascar, Sierra Leon, Togo, etc, (in Africa) often grow nearly everywhere - close to water, raffia palms even grow in streams and off-shore from rivers, on open community land, and as well as planted in home gardens. These palm trees could be raffia palms, coconut palms, oil palm tress and many others. Generally, they have evergreen leaves shaped like a fan or a feather. These trees are well adapted to grasslands, acid soils, as well as desert lands. Trees such as the palm tree provided the African communities a major natural resource for everyday living. So, the whole issue about poverty today was not known in our communities. Poverty is alien to the traditional African society because communalism as a way of life made it possible for all to have a sense of belonging. One's house was a matter of taste and size of your family or your social ability to mobilize others to help in erecting what is your choice. Age-grades or peer-groups helped each other in the provision of adequate living for their members. Materials were provided by the forests; hence, the woods were exploited prudently for this purpose based on the principle and practice of fallow systems.

The palm trees probably have the largest seeds (in the case of coconuts and oil palm trees), the largest leaves and the biggest inflorescence in the natural plant world, with seeds weighing nearly 14 kilograms (in the case of oil palm) each and reaching almost half a meter in diameter. Its inflorescence could contain millions of tiny flowers. Its height varies but do attain heights of about 60 meters while the height of its leaves could hit the 28 meters length and of about 3 meters width. In fact, in Namibia, the palm tree is a tree of national importance. They grow in hot weather habitat from the tropical rain forests to desert areas. Although, in Europe and the USA, many people relate them to mainly exotic vacations sites, but in African communities it is an important symbol of living. Its growth stands for peace and victory, and it is a tree of overwhelming economic importance. Oil palm and plants of such importance were made major targets for export (as raw materials to Europe). So what happened to our palm trees?


"The moment that one group appears to be wealthier than others, some enquiry is bound to take place as to the reason for the difference. After Britain had begun to move ahead of the rest of Europe in the 18th century, the famous British economist Adam Smith felt it necessary to look into the causes behind the 'Wealth of Nations'… At all times, therefore, one of the ideas behind underdevelopment is a comparative one. It is possible to compare the economic conditions at two different periods for the same country and determine whether or not it had developed; and (more importantly) it is possible to compare the economies of any two countries or sets of countries at any given period in time…indispensable component of modern underdevelopment is that it expresses a particular relationship of exploitation: namely, the exploitation of one country by another. All of the countries named as 'underdeveloped' in the world are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now pre-occupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation. African and Asian societies were developing independently until they were taken over directly or indirectly by the capitalist powers. When that happened, exploitation increased and the export of surplus ensued, depriving the societies of the benefit of their natural resources and labour. That is an integral part of underdevelopment in the contemporary sense." Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 1973
These were exploited for colonial benefits. The various colonial policies toward the oil palm (and other crops of such economic importance) industry had no positive revolutionary impact on the people.


"…the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting of black skins signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production". Karl Max, 1848
I will stir off slavery and concentrate on the economic rape perpetrated by the colonialists. The millions of trees, crops and forest resources that served the traditional African communities' economies face the assault of the Western powers; this began a full depletion of drowning a people who were in economic abundances. The demand for raw materials to service the booming industrial productions in Europe necessitated the economic raping of Africa by these colonialists. A lot has been said and written about how the industrial revolution was probably financed by proceeds from slavery and slave labour. As industrialization grew and spread throughout Europe, competition for raw materials increased. European industrialists encouraged their governments to colonize African countries as a method of guaranteeing sources of raw materials. This colonization became a method to protect the European markets for their industrial goods. This was probably the beginning of the impoverishment of the African continent.

Considering the fact that our economies were agrarian and depended on land and nature before the capitalist private-property oriented economy we operate today, I hope some people could at least understand why poverty was not an issue in our societies then. Poverty was a curse which one is punished with only when he/she defies his community, and this curse of poverty is imposed on such individual via ostracism, banishment from the community and other forms of social exclusion etc. Poverty has evolved to the perspective of lack of food and that is because such natural resources, like the palm trees are no more being utilized to their optimum value due to our quest to follow a westernized system of living. This may be due to the fact that colonization brought western education, exploitation and introduced western ways of thinking. The colonizers seem to have brought their underdevelopment down to our communities and exported our developments to their own communities; hence, the beginning of the rape of Africa.

European historians argue that Africa was not civilized and that was why they colonized the continent to introduce civilization into it. The big question is 'who was civilized and uncivilized amongst Africa and Europe? Africans had food and knew no economic hunger - Europeans were completely segregated between the rich and poor, the kings and their serfs. Africans had shelter (owned homes and never lived in shared apartments) and lived an organized political life - Europeans were warring between the homeless and home owners; and between apartment houses and wholly-occupied houses, while their kings lived in castles. While Africans owned land communally and protected their lands communally - Europeans were deep into private land ownership in a survival-of-the-fittest form. So, what civilization did Africa lack that Europe brought? Historians are yet to be specific on this. Every evidence points to the fact that Europeans had their way of living and African had theirs. During the scramble for Africa, European countries entered to colonize all of Africa, (except Ethiopia and Liberia). These European countries were Britain, France, and Portugal (colonial powers); and Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain who took minimal part. They then started exploitation of the highest order - minerals and agricultural production. This resulted to destruction of the African environment which has subsequently resulted to the situation we are in today. The resourceful natural crops and plants that fed our forefathers have been completely depleted via exportation. Our civilization has even in some ways been copied by them. To day, Europeans are talking a lot about village renewal, land consolidation, land readjustments, building up the green belts and creating biotops. These were original African environments which they destroyed in their colonial mission. To create a more understandable picture of the issue, I will borrow the words in a song written by John D. Loudermilk:

"They took the whole Cherokee nation
Put us on this reservation
Took away our ways of life
The tomahawk and the bow and knife
Took away our native tongue
And taught their English to our young
And all the beads we made by hand
Are nowadays made in Japan

Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die

They took the whole Indian nation
Locked us on this reservation
Though I wear a shirt and tie
I'm still proud red man deep inside

Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die

But maybe someday when they've learned
Cherokee nation will return, will return, will return, will return, will"
Released by Paul Revere and the Raiders, 1968

If one understands the song above, then one will understand the way a raped people or land feels. That is the way Africa feels today. Having raped the great food-providing trees and environment of Africa, food shortage has finally become an issue in Africa today. This kind of poverty in Africa has its roots in the colonial system and the policy and institutional restraints that it imposed on the people of the continent. Western-controlled (e.g. IMF and World Bank) Institutions' imposed Structural adjustment programmes (SAP) have dismantled existing traditional economic systems without replacing them with better functional ones. Hence, the situation is marked by continuing stagnation, poor production, low incomes and the rising vulnerability of our people. That is the origin of poverty in Africa. This poverty has been institutionalized by the lack of democracy in the continent due to the fact that most of our countries were run by juntas, instead of democratically elected and accepted leaders.



Mr. Chigbu is the author of 'Beyond Sight and Beyond Sound' - a book of ideas expressed in poetry. This can be accessed via http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-4008482-8222022?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=eugene+chigbu&x=0&y=0


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