A Brief Perspective of the Sustainable Development Goals

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WRITTEN BY: Asanya Boluwatife Ndidi The unanimous agreement of the 193 member states of the United Nations General Assembly to the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in 2015 produced one of the most ambitious and inclusive global aspirations in history. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. Targeted at committing members states to ensure greater inclusivity, end poverty and push the world to a more sustainable path. The SDGs are broad and interdependent thus begetting the question as to how well these broad global aspirations are likely to result in implementable developments especially in developing countries. The inclusion of so many goals without a hierarchy of priority and without reference to inherent contradictions that are likely to result in conflict between the goals may have unintended negative consequences which may inhibit the timely/e...
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NEGATIVE IMPACT OF COLONIZATION IN AFRICA EDUCATION: CAUSES AND EFFECT

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NEGATIVE IMPACT OF COLONIZATION IN AFRICA EDUCATION: CAUSES AND EFFECT

CAUSES OF COLONIZATION OF AFRICA 
The major reasons for the colonization of Africa by the Europeans are the search for new markets, the need to obtain raw materials, the desire to invest surplus capital outside Europe, and the claim that Africans needed to be civilized through western education and religion.

You will find all the reasons for European colonization of Africa shortly. But first, it is important that we begin with a definition of colonialism.

 

WHAT IS COLONIZATION? 
Colonialism refers to a process by which a foreign power annexes and creates dependencies whose economic, political and cultural systems are restructured and made to serve the foreign power’s interes

 

Cause of colonization of Africa 
1. The Europeans were searching for markets for their surplus manufactures as a result of the industrial revolution of the 18th century.

2. They also needed raw materials to feed the industries.

3. Colonies provided room for the Europeans to invest their surplus capital.

4. Europeans desired to spread their culture to other lands.

5. This was a time when colonies became a symbol of the greatness of a nation hence the desire to colonize territories in Africa.

6. The industrial revolution led to an increase in mechanized production which created surplus labour. There was, therefore, the need to export the surplus labour to the colonies.

7. The colonizers also claimed that they colonized Africa in order to bring to the people civilization through the introduction of Western formal education and the Christian religion

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF COLONIZATION IN AFRICA.
Negative effects of colonialism in Africa are thus:

1. Economic dependence and exploitation: In as much that the colonialism brought development into Africa, it was also a form of exploitation too. The idea of colonialism was introduced to make Africa forever dependent on the colonial masters. They took all the wealth and resources of Africa to their own country. During the time of colonialism, people were highly taxed by the colonial Masters so as to generate funds to make their plans of colonization successful.

Coupled with that, the colonial masters made sure that they were in charge of all the metropolitan industries, thus making Africans economically dependent on the colonizers.

2. It created the problem of disunity: Another negative effect of colonialism in Africa was the disunity which it brought. Take for instance, in Nigeria today, it is argued that colonialism is responsible for the religious and tribal disunity in the country. This was as a result of the merging of all the regions in 1912 by lord Lugard.

Accordingly, the difference countries which colonized Africa also caused disunity in some way. It divided Africa into French speaking countries and English speaking countries and that is one of the major problems of the Economic Commission of West Africa States (ECOWAS).

3. Cultural imperialism: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has already said much on this. From that book, we could see how the colonial masters treated African culture as inferior and theirs as superior. They disregarded African culture, changed anything that wasn’t in their favor and made gullible African to see the new culture as the best. The local language of Africans, religions, names, education, dress, music, sport etc were replaced with foreign ones.

4. High level of slave trade, deportation and humiliation of Africans: With the introduction of colonialism, the idea of slave trade was introduced in Africa. In fact, it was actually practiced by the colonial Masters because they were the ones in need of slaves then. This negative effect of colonialism reduced the number of able-bodied men in Africa.

Also, colonialism reduced the prestige that was given to many African leaders. The colonial masters literally controlled the leaders through threat and humiliation. Leaders who failed to follow the rules of the colonial masters were deported and sometimes killed. Take for instance, Oba Overamwen was deported in 1896 after the Berlin Massacre and he later died in exile.

5. Alienation of people from the government: Before the inception of colonialism, Africans had a type of political system were everybody took part in the political decision making of their state. But when the colonial master introduced their own system of government, a lot of Africans were no longer allowed to participate in the political decision making of their nation. This was one of the causes of the Aba women riot of 1929.

Since the traditional rulers were made subordinate to foreign officials, the alienation from government wasn’t really a problem to the people. This was the case in Africa until some educated Nigerian nationalists started to enlighten the people and oppose the government.

 

6. Poor education system: Apparently, the system of government introduced by colonial masters to Africa wasn’t as good as foreign education system. It was basically to enable African learn how to Read and write the language of the colonial masters. Intentionally, the colonial masters neglected things like: technical, vocational and scientific studies so as to restrict the knowledge of Africans and to make themselves superior to Africans.

 

Colonialism had a negative impact in the economies and social system of the African states; most of them are still felt today and the effects reverberating into future for many years to come. Some of the negative impacts that are associated with colonization include; degradation of natural resources, capitalist, urbanization, introduction of foreign diseases to livestock and humans. Change of the social systems of living. Nevertheless, colonialism too impacted positively on the economies and social systems.

 

WORK CITED
African Perspective on Civilization. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
The Scramble for Africa. New York, NY: Longman, 2010.


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