In February of 1885, European nations met at the Berlin conference and signed the Berlin Act. This legalized the sharing of Africa among themselves. The effects of colonialism are many and cannot be fully covered here. However, I will try to list a few ways in which it adversely affected the continent.

How colonialism altered Africa:

A. Socially

New social classes were created that did not exist before or did not exist on a large scale. Class formations were dependent on the kind of political economy of the colony. There was a creation of a working class of people who were once craftsmen or farmers. For example, Kenya was a settler colony which was semi-industrial (Nairobi). The white settler farmers displaced Africans from their land. As Nairobi became more industrialized, there were some people who were trained as clerks and in other office related professions--petty bourgeois. At the same time, there was a large urban class working in the fields. After these two classes were the peasants who hardly had enough land to live on who were the majority. Europeans were at the very top of the hierachy who had the best land, placed taxes on what the people produced, and implemented other agricultural restrictions.

During World War 2, political consciousness expanded because Africans were conscripted. Consequently, guerrilla troops (Mau Mau) formed who came from the poorest members of society. They committed themselves to the eradication of all white settlers in Kenya. However, they did not succeed, and the Mau Mau rebellion was crushed in 1956. Once the Britsh repressed the armed resistance, they had land schemes. The British let the petty bourgeois get cheap credit to acquire large amounts of land. As a result, they slipped into the place of the white settlers in controlling the land and government. Then the British left Kenya (1963) to fend for itself with these social classes.

B. Functionally

Agricultural labor was shifted from food crops to cash crops. Colonies were there to serve the needs of the metropole and to make a profit for the mother country. As a result, African nations shipped such things as cotton, peanuts, and coffee to their colonial masters. Then technology would be applied to the goods, and they were turned into finished products. Since the technology was applied in Europe, a tremendous amount of value was added to the goods. Thereafter, European nations would sell their colonies the finished products at an expensive price. Because of this, much of Africa did not develop much industries of its own, since most of the technological applications were done in Europe. Therefore, Africa became dependent on Europe for much of its goods and became an import oriented society.

C. Geographically

The European powers sliced up Africa without regarding the differences in language, culture, ethnicity, or religion in the continent. Thus, some tribes who did not like each other, to put it mildly, found themselves occupying the same territory. In other cases, a tribe was divided by an international border (i.e. the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania).

One could go on and on with this list and make more points and sub-points. This page was formed to enable people to comprehend a few issues.

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