EUROPE AND THE UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA (ENGLISH AND LINGUISTIC PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
EUROPE AND THE UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA
Underdevelopment is tied to the fact that human social development has been uneven and from a strictly economic viewpoint, some human groups have advanced further by producing more and becoming wealthier,
The question of manufacturing in Africa before the time of the white man, it is essential to recognize where achievement have been underestimated.
African manufacture have been contemptuously treated or over looked by European writers, because the modern conception of the word brings to mind factories and machines, However, manufacture means literally, ‘things made by hand’. Moreover, Africa manufacture in this sense had advanced appreciably. Most African societies fulfilled their own needs for a wide range of articles of domestic use, as well as for forming tools and weapons. Though North Africa, Europeans became familiar with European superior brand of red leather from Africa, which was, formed ‘Moroccan leather’. In fact, it was tanned and dyed by Hausa and Mandingo specialist in northern Nigeria and Mali, when direct contact was established between Europeans and Africans on the east and west coasts. Many more impressive items were displayed, as soon as the Portuguese reached the old kingdom of Congo, they sent back word on the superb local cloths made from bark and palm fiber and having a finish comparable to velvet, The Buganda were also expert bark-cloth makers. Yet, Africa had even better to offer in the form of cotton cloth, which was widely manufactured even before the coming of the Europeans.
Economic development was reflecting in the separation of dyeing from cloth making and the separation of spinning from wearing. Each separation marked greater specialization and quantitative and qualitative changes in output.
Europeans industry has been intensively studied and it is generally recognized that in addition to new machinery a most decisive factor in the growth of industry was the change over from domestic production to factory system with the guild marking an intermediary stage.
Africa was a continent of innumerable trade routes across the Sahara or the routes connected with Katanga copper. But in the main, it was trade between neighbouring or not too far distance societies. Such trade was always a function of production.
Various communities were producing surplus of giving commodities, which could be exchange for items that they lacked. In that way, the salt industry of one locality could be stimulated while the iron industry would be encourage in be another. In a coastal lake or river rain area, dried fish could become profitable, while yams and millet would be grown in abundance elsewhere to provide a basis for exchange. The trade so readily distinguishable in every part of the continent between the 10th and 15th centuries was an excellent indicator of economic expansion and other forms of development, which accompanied increasing mastery over the environment.
