Efraim Shimbali

When colonialism approached Africa, it was a generational mission that African leaders did not understand. 

The Berlin conference did not only plan physical wars against Africans, but the brutality of war was a tool to convince Africans to submit to the strategic implementation of African colonialism. What is this African colonialism that African leaders failed to understand? 

Many African leaders think colonialism is about physical wars and exploitation of resources, but it is more than that. African colonialism is the implementation of strategic means towards ownership of Africa by colonisers. 

To understand this ownership, you must acknowledge Africa’s existence in three phases.  Phases are the existence of Africa before colonialism, the existence of Africa during colonialism implementation and the existence of Africa after colonialism implementation. 

Analysis of these three phases will give a total understanding of Africa’s generational colonialism implementation planned during the Berlin conference. 

The existence of Africa before colonialism was a very crucial phase that gave Africans dignity, ownership and humanity. 

In this phase, Africans were under their leadership, under their control and shaping their creativity. 

They were in a phase of producing, and farming food to feed themselves, to the extent of domesticating wild animals. They were in the phase of using natural resources and minerals to present forth their creativity in making various tools and crafting. 

Africans had the skills to make pots, weapons, utensils, hoes, musical instruments and shelters. 

It was a phase where Africans were experts in using nature as medicine to heal. 

The phase where Africans valued their native languages, valued their culture and worshipped their own. 

Cultural and crafting education was a vital community objective. 

In this phase, Africans have shown a sense of creativity in leadership, creativity in making tools to help themselves and creativity in stable cultural grounds towards a prosperous community. 

Africans lived the best life with no external forces, with their own leadership and with a dignified value of life.

 This is the most important phase in African history, yet the most hated and blurry phase to generations of Africa. 

This is a phase that the Berlin conference targeted to wipe away from Africa’s generations to come. 

The existence of Africa during colonialism is unfortunately a brutal one, which needs reversal and not forgiveness. 

It was a phase that constituted barter trade with colonisers as well as the sale of Africans as slaves to colonisers.

 The Berlin conference carried an eraser for the first phase of Africa’s existence. 

It was actioned towards taking over ownership of Africa from the indigenous population by enforcing territorial division as planned during the Berlin conference for easy control. 

It wanted the total erasure of African culture by transforming and enforcing the adoption of colonisers’ cultures and religions. 

It included the introduction of colonial education, aimed at categorising the indigenous population for the workforce required and not necessarily to benefit themselves. The education of indigenous languages suppression and promotion of colonial languages. 

The use of brutal force towards self-advancement within the continent. Development of colonial laws and colonial governance. Depopulating indigenous people from the continent through death or slave trade to other continents. 

Presiding over-extraction of mineral resources and ownership of land. 

This is a phase that damaged and suppressed the brains of Africans, especially those who were present and had undergone this stage. This is the phase of social and economic transformation towards dependence on the colonisers, which was not the case in the first phase of Africa’s existence. 

The existence of Africa after the implementation of colonialism is non-negotiable and needs urgent abolishment. 

This phase defines perfect mental disorder and lack of self-ownership among Africans. 

It indicates failure and total brainwashing imposed on Africans during the second phase.  It was at this stage that presents that the strategic colonial systems of the Berlin conference were implemented and African leaders sat comfortably on them towards their advancement. 

It is the phase where Africans are championing colonial laws and comfortably fighting for what colonisers implemented. 

This phase articulates the superiority of colonial languages over indigenous languages, and even declares them as official languages. 

Living in colonisers’ religious worship and cultural practices is something no African will dispute. 

This is to the extent where African spirituality and cultural practices have been abandoned.  Not only that Africans no longer value themselves, but the colonisers have declared them as people of lower value and never equal to them. 

This phase still proves evidence of territorial division of which people are confined to countries and have even further divided themselves into regions/provinces within these countries. 

This is where movement between countries is made difficult and controlled. 

The phase where valuable land is not owned by indigenous people, and mines are owned by investors who are believed not to be Africans. 

Whereby the selling prices of our mineral resources are determined and controlled by the colonisers. 

This phase proves external power controls over decisions Africans make and what they do. 

It presents that Africans have become a new version of colonisers to themselves, and the colonisers are just regulating and controlling the progression of the strategies they have implemented. 

Analysing all three phases of Africa’s existence, it is evident that there is no more ownership and self-control than Africa had before colonialism. 

It is these phases that prove that the Berlin conference’s strategic plans are still valid. 

There is no freedom to cheer to date, and Africans never obtained the independence they had before colonialism. 

Africa ought to retain the freedom to stand on its own, feed its people with food produced within the continent, as well as prioritise culture and indigenous languages in the restoration of dignity. Adopting technology from colonisers and using its status quo towards channelling out Africa’s owned technological means will present visibility of Africa’s greatness. 

Africa is the primary source of what makes the rest of the world, yet it is the last to acknowledge its value. 

Primarily, the leadership of Africa has failed to understand colonialism.

-Efraim Shimbali is a YALI alumnus and a Namibia YALI executive, responsible for partnerships and resource mobilisation. He is the author of ‘I Woke Up on African Leadership’. -shimbaliefraim98@gmail.com