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By Aliyu Suleiman

Any society that does not pay regard to her young people is a society adrift a giant headed to the rocks ~ John Henrik Clerk

Youth constitute more than 60 to 70% of Africa’s population, and African youth were described as one of the most resilient people in the world in all ramifications, intellectualsim, gregarious, innovation, creativity, etc. But the major obstacles that stand on their way are how they were mentally captured through indoctrination of the colonial powers.

In this article, I’ll give an overview of the impacts of colonization, Neo colonization, and what African youth can do to mitigate this primitive thought that is holding back their mentality on Africa’s developmental agenda and emancipation of the continent from York of Neo-Colonization and Imperialism

Thus, colonization was a project of the colonial powers which succeeded slavery, we remember that slavery was the first pernicious project against Africa, although Africans were not the only people who were subjected into slavery even the European powers were enslaving themselves in that Era. The only difference between European enslavement and Africa’s one was that the Africa’s method of slavery was more unprecedented, more devastated and pernicious to the core; we remember how Arabs when they came to the Eastern Coast part of Africa and took people to the Arab world what they do is they castrated men, so that today we can not find a number of dark skin colour as the number as we should in the Arab world because they castrated men.

On the project of slavery, European powers came after the Arabs, the Portuguese were here, Germans were here, French were here and many of them, all with their arrogance and they made their way and the Impact of slavery is alive and well as we speak, one only need to watch a watch a film dramatised by African-American Alex Haley the “Root” and in root he dramatised how a young man was taken from Juffureh village in the Gambia, Kunta kinteh was his name he was a young man taken to the United States of America to be enslaved and the first thing that they did to him was to beat him up that he may change his name from ‘Kunta kinteh’ to something Called “TOBi” but he refused and they continue to beat him and brutalises him until he renounced his name to their desire name I.e “Tobi” and this is how I understand how they did to us during slavery, they beat our Africaness out of us, they beat our culture, our values, norms and traditions out of us.

Thus, after the abrogation of slavery the next enterprise of the European powers was the project of “Colonization,” the scrambled for Africa, by the European countries, includes Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium led to the partition of after the Berlin Conference of 1884/1885 in Germany. All these European powers parcel Africa and took their portion into spare of influence. Britain colonised Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia, and Sierra-Leon in West Africa, so these countries were categorised as Angliphone Africa, and they speak English as their linguafranca, France took Cameroom, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Algeria and they were called Francophone Africa because they were colonised by the French, Portugal also took Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe and they were described as “Lusophone” Africa because they were colonised by the Portugal. Similar to the rest of the European Powers.

However, after sharing out and occupying every bit of African territory, except Ethiopia and Liberia, the European colonising Powers established different forms of government to administer their respective colonies:

The British Indirect Rule system: Before British official administration, the indirect rule system had been used under company rule in many areas of her influence. The companies had made use of indigenous traditional rulers in their administration. In Northern Nigeria, the Royal Niger company recognised the authority of the Emirs and left it intact. In the south native councils were formed and given powers to make laws. In Ghana, George Maclean used the same system to establish company rule where he allowed the fante and Accra chiefs to retain their powers under British supervision. In a nutshell, the indirect rule system simply refers to the use of our traditional rulers to control our affairs.

The French policy of assimilation: Assimilation, which means ‘to become part of’, was a product of the French Revolution of 1789. Under the assimilation policy, all Africans were entitled to acquire French citizenship after they had received French education and could behave as the French. French local government system was also introduced into Africa. In Senegal, for example, four communes were created in the old colony at various periods during the nineteenth century. They were St Louis and Goreein 1872 Rufisque in 1880 and Dakar 1887. But later on, they had changed it to the policy of the association because the system can not thrive like the indirect rule system.

• Portuguese Policy of Assimilation: The Portuguese saw their African colonies as an extension of Portugal. Angola was formally proclaimed as such in 1951. After the Bilundo war of 1902, in which the Portuguese finally crushed Angolan resistance, a direct form of colonial rule was imposed on the East African country. Large numbers of Portuguese were encouraged to emigrate to Angola. This development turned her into a settler colony. The assimilation policy was adopted by a decree promulgated in 1917, spelling out the requirements an indigene had to fulfil to become assimilated. To qualify, a person must have attended and passed out of the official primary school and must be able to speak, read, and write Portuguese. He was then issued with an identity card, which he was expected to have with him always. Those assimilated were called “Assimilado.” To lose the card meant the loss of the Assimilado status, and once caught without the card, one was treated as a native. The status of Assimilado entitled an African to be employed in the civil service as a messenger or clerk, and he could train to become a nurse or primary school teacher. He could not aspire to anything higher.
• German Policy of Paternalism: The German adopted a direct system of administration called paternalism. It was born out of the belief in the superiority of European race and culture and that they had a mission to guide Africans to civilisation. The colonised Africans were regarded as children whose interests should be protected. This included thinking for them. Under the system, each colony was divided into districts, with district officers called ‘Bezirksamtman’, appointed to administer it, and a detachment of the police force to maintain law and order Where there were no German officers, African chiefs (with the title of Akida in Tanganyinka) were appointed and sent to rule districts other than their home places. An Akida was usually under the supervision of a German district officer. The district officers were given powers to appoint and dismiss African chiefs.

The Impacts of Colonization

One can still argue that the impacts of colonization in Africa are apparently in the public domain, in every sector of the economy, politics, culture, health, education, etc. In the political space, one can argue that African political systems were designed on a basis of mimicry, of European powers, e.g, immediately Nigeria regained her independence from the British they embraced Parliamentary system of government which is in place at the United kingdom, similarly, to the rest of the African countries colonised by either France, Germany, Spain or Portugal. If we look at the Nigeria’s parliament, Uganda’s parliament, Kenya’s parliament, Gambia’s parliament is a complete mimicry of British system, and no African country can ever succeed on that bases ~ jonneth Kennedy

Part of the worst impact of colonization was the belief by the Africans that the colonial powers have a divine duty to tell us what to do, and also we behave as if we have a divine duty to accept what they tell us is still our problem. The colonial powers still think their former colonies in Africa are still their fiefdoms.

Today in Africa sometimes we were refered as Developing continent if developing is not sweet they refer us as underdeveloped continent if it’s not sweet either they refer us as satellite continent; Africa is always been referred in a names that she did not participate in choseen, in other to silence us and paralyse us, so that we can not appreciate what we are doing.

In other words, under the guise of Neo colonization one can said without fear of contradiction that the the colonial powers project is alive and well subterranean and pernicious to the core we shouldn’t delude ourselves because if we do so we will once again be manipulated.

The minds of the African Youths

Africa is the only continent whose young men and women have no sense of their history, no sense of their present, and no sense of their future. Young people in Africa were mentally captured in all spheres of life. In the area of education, a typical African student either in Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Algeria, or Zambia will spend 8 years in an African university struggling to complete his/her bachelor degree, similarly he may go to Cambridge university and obtain a one month certificate but upon his return to Africa you’ll see a sticker in his car saying and calling himself behold I’m an “Alumni” of Cambridge meanwhile he spent 8 years in an Africa’s university, mental slavery. Another instance is many young people who’re in the middle class or high profile personalities in many African countries. When their wives are expectant. they take them to the United States of America so that their children can become citizens of the United States. Mental slavery is still affecting Africa in a monumental way.
In areas areas of sports and entertainment In many African countries, young people were imprisoned by Arsenal, Real Madrid, and Barcelona while their peers in certain part of the world were inventing and innovating they were thinking about how they’ll conquer the world our young men and women were on social media’s and on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, TikTok etc. African women were busy dancing on TikTok and Instagram while the Chinese are reading, the Japanese are reading, the indians are reading the Koreans are reading; now the question is are African youth ready to compete? The answer “Is I doubt it and why do I doubt? I doubt based on the evidence in hand. There was a survey that was undertaken recently that on average hours of young people that stay on media for a long period in a day, and African countries dominated the first place, including Egypt, Nigeria, this tells me that there’s alot of work to be done in other to salvage African youth from their long sleep and slumber

Thus, in order to free the African youth from this primitive thoughts, in which we have read the impacts of colonial powers in controlling our life affairs, looking at how we think, how we behave, the culture we embraced, the language that we speak, the food that we eat:, the education that we received, the political administration imposed in us and how our cultures was beaten out of us.

I came out with the following answer to this problem;

• Interrogation of our educational system: I believe if we want to get things right in Africa, we must checkmate our curriculum. What are we teaching in our universities in Africa? As that African American says in his book title “Miseducation of the Negro” were he opined that we were Mis-educated. And I want to give another example with a book written by Kenya’s Ngugi wa thingo title “Decolonizing the Mind” and he said In that book that “The mind is the standard of the man, once your mind is conquered the Conqueror can seat pretty at home and Predict what the mind will do”. This is exactly what happened to our young people and all of us in the continent because they knew that our young people were the fountain of life
• Self-esteem, Self Proud, and self-discovery: this must be our guiding principles. We must respect and value ourselves and love the things that we make at home.
• Cultural Rehabilitation: our cultures must be Rehabilitated and must be given its pride of place in the continent, because he who forget his or her culture will be eternally a slave. Today many young people have source pride in their culture; starting from cloths they wear, the food the eat, the sports they watch, the books they read etc we have totally lost ourselves in searching for other people’s culture and the personal conquest is the beginning of true leadership if we don’t conquered ourselves we are going nowhere as a people.

One of the reason we are saying that Africa must be great is not to conquer everybody, that is not the business of Africa, we are saying that Africa can participate in ab equal footing with others

Finally, liberation of Africa is an intergenerational struggle is not for the faintherted and is not going to be easy, but we must do it.

Writing from Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria and writes via email:
aliyu002063@gmail.com

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