The triple causes of African underdevelopment: Colonial capitalism, state terrorism and racism

The paper attempts to inform Africans and the world at large of the triple evils of colonial capitalism, state terrorism, and racism and of different forms of African resistance in order to search for new ways of implementing universal human rights laws and the rights of indigenous people. Most indigenous Africans are immensely underdeveloped and have suffered for more than five centuries because of these triple evils that have been imposed on them by European colonial powers, successive global powers, and their African collaborators. The European colonial powers, namely Spain, Portugal, England, Holland, France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy and their African collaborators terrorized, exterminated, abused, and misused indigenous Africans from the 16th to the first half of the 19th centuries, and consequently they have underdeveloped and impoverished the surviving African populations. The homelands and economic and natural resources of Africans were expropriated and transferred to European colonial settlers, their descendants and their African collaborators that have no interest to protect the political, economic, civil, and social rights of these people. Since most of these indigenous peoples are still not represented in government, academic, economic and media institutions of neo-colonial African states, their voices are muzzled and hidden and most people of the world are misinformed and know nothing or little about them. By degrading and erasing the cultures, histories, and humanity of indigenous Africans, the descendants of the settlers and their African collaborators have convinced themselves that they can continue to terrorize and dispossess the resources of these people without moral/ethical and political responsibilities with the help of powerful states of the West and that of China (Quan 2013) as well as global financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.   Key words: Colonial capitalism, terrorism, racism, underdevelopment, indigenous Africans, human rights, self- determination, democracy, and social injustice.