Africas Role in World Affairs
INTRODUCTION
Africa has long been considered marginal to the world in both economic and political terms. Indeed, Africa has never existed apart from world politics, but has been unavoidably entangled in the ebb and flow of events and changing configurations of power. This essay seeks to examines external involvement in the continent, exploring how Africans and in particular, African political actors interact with each major external states and international organisations currently influencing African politics.
BACKGROUND (AFRICA'S ROLE IN WORLD IN THE PAST FIVE CENTURIES)
First of all, to consider Africa's role in world politics, we must first understand the background of Africa’s past. The ideas and events, which have shaped the presumed inferiority of black peoples with the superiority of whites, which arose in Western societies as Europeans sought to justify their enslavement of Africans and the subsequent colonization of Africa.
SLAVE TRADE
Why go back five centuries to start an explanation of Africa's role in the world affairs today? Must every story of Africa's political and economic under-development begin with the contact with Europe? The intention is not to produce another nationalist tract on how whites, driven by lust for material possession and armed with firearms, gin and a bag full of tricks, subjugated innocent Africans. The reason for looking back is that it holds the key to the root of Africa's alienated role in world politics and the current predicaments facing African societies.
From the outset, relations between Africa and Europe and for that matter the world at large were economic. Portuguese merchants traded with Africans from trading posts they set up along the coast. They exchanged items like brass and copper bracelets for such products as pepper, cloth, beads and slaves - all part of an existing internal African trade.
The African societies then were utilizing a diversity of materials made available through inter-regional trade;
Africa has long been considered marginal to the world in both economic and political terms. Indeed, Africa has never existed apart from world politics, but has been unavoidably entangled in the ebb and flow of events and changing configurations of power. This essay seeks to examines external involvement in the continent, exploring how Africans and in particular, African political actors interact with each major external states and international organisations currently influencing African politics.
BACKGROUND (AFRICA'S ROLE IN WORLD IN THE PAST FIVE CENTURIES)
First of all, to consider Africa's role in world politics, we must first understand the background of Africa’s past. The ideas and events, which have shaped the presumed inferiority of black peoples with the superiority of whites, which arose in Western societies as Europeans sought to justify their enslavement of Africans and the subsequent colonization of Africa.
SLAVE TRADE
Why go back five centuries to start an explanation of Africa's role in the world affairs today? Must every story of Africa's political and economic under-development begin with the contact with Europe? The intention is not to produce another nationalist tract on how whites, driven by lust for material possession and armed with firearms, gin and a bag full of tricks, subjugated innocent Africans. The reason for looking back is that it holds the key to the root of Africa's alienated role in world politics and the current predicaments facing African societies.
From the outset, relations between Africa and Europe and for that matter the world at large were economic. Portuguese merchants traded with Africans from trading posts they set up along the coast. They exchanged items like brass and copper bracelets for such products as pepper, cloth, beads and slaves - all part of an existing internal African trade.
The African societies then were utilizing a diversity of materials made available through inter-regional trade;