Travel in Africa – Part 7 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #572 by Asrar Qureshi

Travel in Africa – Part 7 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #572 by Asrar Qureshi

Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #572. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.

We are out of Africa and Dubai is last leg of our tour. We went to Nigeria in West Africa and then got into Kenya in East Africa. 

Africa is a great place. I have been to several countries in the African content. The weather is very pleasant in most places. People of Africa living in Africa are mostly gentle, patient and giving. It may be because of centuries of torture, discrimination, and exploitation over centuries. Rather than being vindictive, they are welcoming and generous. It is so unfortunate that entire Africa was captured and made into colonies. British and French were in competition to cover more and more geography.

British colonies included: Gambia, Nigeria, Southern Cameroon, and Sierra Leone in West Africa; Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania in East Africa; South Africa, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Nyasaland (now Malawi), Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland in South Africa; and Egypt in North Africa.

French colonies included: Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Benin, Niger, and Togo in West Africa; Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco in Northwest Africa; and French Equatorial Africa was Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo – DRC, Gabon, and Madagascar.

Portugal (present day Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique), Belgium, Italy (Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia), and Spain also had colonies in Africa. Six principal colonies of German Africa, along with native kingdoms and polities were the legal precedents for the modern states on Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Togo. Some other territories were also under German control at various points in history.

Two countries in Africa are considered to have never been colonized: Liberia which was founded by freed slaves and Ethiopia who resisted Italian attempts at colonization. 

Americans did not colonize Africa, but they joined hands and excelled in slave trade. They captured shiploads of slaves from Africa and sold them on the American market. During 1800s and 1900s, slave trade was the most profitable business.

Europe owes it development and prosperity to Africa, rather it is built upon the blood and sweat of Africa. Profits from slave trading and from sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco are only a small part of the story. English banking, insurance, shipbuilding, wool, cotton products, copper, and iron smelting transformed Western Europe economies, and the cities of Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow multiplied in response to the direct and indirect stimulus of the slave plantations.

Before the horrific trade in ‘human goods’ began between Europe and West Africa, Europeans, particularly Dutch and Portuguese had begun trading items such as cloth and metalware with West African countries as early as fifteenth century. In return, they received spices such as pepper and raw materials including ivory and gold. It was the transatlantic slave trade which gave impetus to the enormous growth in trade between West Africa and Britain from the eighteenth century onwards, and established trade routes which continue in use even today. During the eighteenth century, more than 11,000 British ships traded in enslaved Africans: more than half originating from Liverpool. The transatlantic slave trade, however, was not only reliant on Europeans. The trading systems required to enable slavery also depended on African middlemen who formed an intricate network throughout West Africa, supplying captured Africans from inland and arranging caravans via which they were marched, shackled to the coast where they were traded. Kingdoms such as Kumasi, in present day Ghana, Dahomey and Benin in Nigeria grew large and prosperous from the money they made from trading enslaved Africans to Europeans. The only contact with Africa that slave traders had with during this period was therefore conducted along the West African beaches.1                         

The economy of the world and the way money is valued, is one of the biggest scams of the universe. Money and wealth are naturally backed by mineral resources, land, and basically physical commodities such as precious metals. But in Africa, it is not so.

And if we were to go by the above, which is clear for all to agree with, then it is safe to say that African currencies are supposed to be most valuable in the world, given that Africans have more of the valuable resources of this world.

But the reverse is the case. We have multinational companies of European and American origin, who have been mining Africa’s gold and diamond for centuries, and have used the gold to enrich their economies. But more disturbing is the devilish manipulations of monetary organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, who connive with European nations to frustrate the economies of African nations and keep their currencies in low value2.

To be Continued……

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1. Trade between Europe and Africa | Revealing Histories

2. How European And American Governments Steal From Africa And Destabilize African Economies - Prepare For Change