HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa questions the division of the world into two categories, those of underdevelopment and development, and demonstrates through a Marxist analytical framework that the underdevelopment of Africa is the direct result of the exploitation and domination of the continent by the European colonial powers. More importantly, Walter Rodney argues that Europe not only impoverished Africa, but that in return Africa contributed, in largely underestimated proportions, to the development of Europe. Based on this demonstration, the author also provides ideas for the implementation of fairer and more equitable policies that would promote the development of social justice in Africa. Originally published in 1972, this text had a major influence on the Anglo-Saxon academic world and continues to be studied today in the field of postcolonial studies, many of the issues raised in the book still being of burning relevance today. Indeed, the inequality gap between Africa and the West has widened over the past fifty years, while poverty is now rife in Africa. Time has not diminished the relevance of the ideas put forward in the book nor the power of its argument.