12/09/2021
Did Colonialism Underdevelop Africa: Ethiopia 🇪🇹 was not colonized why then is the country not 'developed'?
To start with, we want to clearly point out that, Ethiopia is not what we see today, Ethiopia, was a kingdom that shines the world before attempts of colonization and enslavement. Ethiopia was one of the world's most advanced societies, not only in Africa but on the global stage. A valid question should rather be ~why has Ethiopia been destroyed after it refused to be colonized and enslaved?
Like all other African countries, Ethiopia, on several occasions have been under attacks of the external forces in the efforts to get the country colonized and enslaved.
For example, between 1935 and 1937, Italy declared war on Ethiopia which has come to be part of history as Italo-Abyssinian War in an effort to colonise the old African empire.
It was as a result of fighting and defending the kingdom of Ethiopia against these unprovoked attacks that got the advancements and development of Ethiopia destroyed over several hundreds of years.
Additionally, Ethiopia had to suffer the pain of her resistance for more than 400 while the oppressor controlled the rest of African. It must be noted that, prior to colonisation of the African Continent, Ethiopia was a center of trade for Agro products, precious mentals, and education. Food items were traded and supply to nearly all parts of African and that was one of the major sources of revenue for the kingdom.
Upon Ethiopia's resistance and the successful capturing of all other parts of Africa by the colonizers, Ethiopia then, lost the right to trade along all her established trade roots and partners. No country in Africa is permitted to transact or establish any form of diplomacy or relationship with Ethiopia. the country's strong economic development had to come on it knee with time. These are the things we are not looking into, when we want to look at the under development of Ethiopia specifically, and Africa in general.
If one wish to understand how, the global system was designed to isolate Ethiopia just to break down the country and its development, one can read more about the Italo-Abyssinian war which I have indicated earlier.
During this war, Many Black Americans at the time organized themselves and requested passports from the authorities of the United States of America in order to allow them to travel to Africa to support their brothers and sisters at home (by way of devoting their lives to fight to defend the kingdom) unfortunately, they were all refused.
At the same time, other Americans who traced their origins to Italy were granted the permission to go home and fight along with Italian Army against Ethiopia when they placed in their requests (Read American role in Italo-Abyssinia War for more detail). Ethiopia became the enemy of the world, and no one was permitted to associate with the Kingdom.
The negative effects of such organized wars and crippling economic designs employed by our colonizers are what destroyed the development and advancements of Ethiopian.
It is untrue that Ethiopia is not developed though it was not colonized. What is true is that colonisers came with a system designed to destroy the development of both those they enslaved and those they failed to conquer.
It is time to rebuild what has been destroyed by relying on our own ingenuity efforts and not to depend on the very people whose agenda has been to destroy Africa.
Source : The United State Of Africa
