The Disadvantaged

Focused on Africa's inscrutable development paradox and its checkered history begun with the seventh century Muslim invasion, the author has listed in one or two of the above publications and has traced the story of the conquest of the North and parts of East Africa by the Islamic Jihadists. These publications also narrated the story of the 400-year period during which the young men and women of Africa were usually captured and sold to slave traders as marketable species mostly suitable for hard labor in the homes and on farms of the wealthy in North America and the Middle East. These publications further attempt to establish that as soon as the atrocities of chattel slavery had been outlawed, a number of European nations in 1884 sent their representatives to a conference in Berlin, Germany, to discuss what next to do with the African nations and citizens recently freed from the burden of enslavement. The unanimous decision at this conference was to divide up the African continent into zones of control renamed as colonies by European powers where European legal infrastructure would regulate everyday order of governance and social life. What happened next was the partition of Africa into new nations and the introduction of colonization which lasted until the late nineteen seventies. As independent nations today, it is incumbent upon African leaders as well as citizens to face their own countries' realities, to design and execute their development plans, and to care for their citizens' general wellbeing. This remains the only way out by which most of their citizens will no longer be counted among the disadvantaged.