A Multifaceted Exploration of Africa: From Colonialism to Development

Posted on Aug 7, 2024 in Geography

Measurement/Numbers

Abdel Omran

Abdel Omran invented an important epidemiological system to explain life expectancy and disease patterns.

Disability-Adjusted Life Year

This relatively new and controversial measure includes years of life lost and premature death related to illness. It also accounts for the fact that someone might be “in some state below perfect health” for several years. The public health community is transitioning to using this measure.

• 1 year of healthy life lost is = 1.67 years lived with blindness or 5.24 significant episodes of malaria or 41.67 years of life with an intestinal worm infection.
• This can be more effective than life expectancy primarily for quality of life reasons (Indian paradox).

Construct

A concept or idea of interest, e.g., well-being.

GDP

GDP is the market value of all officially recognized, final goods and services produced within a country during a given period of time (usually one year).

Uses of GDP

• Level of economic activity
• Wealth of individuals
• Material well-being
• Growth of an economy over time
• Wealth of a country
• Resilience of an economy
• Degree of industrialization

Shortcomings of GDP

• A lot of economic activity isn’t counted, including domestic work, black markets, etc.
• Suggests that well-being is being achieved through consumption
• Averages are not good indicators of typical experience, particularly in countries with great inequality
• Includes bad as well as good
• Encourages unsustainable behaviors

Example countries with high GDP: South Africa, Nigeria, Angola

Gini Index

The Gini Index is a measure of the degree of distribution of a country’s wealth or income.

• 0 = perfect equality, 100 = complete concentration
• Completely egalitarian lines up right on the 45-degree line
• Gini value = [A/(A+B)] x 100
• Can also look at income distribution within a country

Limitations of the Gini Index

• It’s a well-being indicator, but different countries have different views of well-being
• The same index value can result from different distribution curves
• Demographic factors are not accounted for

MDGs

The MDGs are eight international development goals that were established in 2000 by the UN:

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. To achieve universal primary education
3. To promote gender equality
4. To reduce child mortality
5. To improve maternal health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. To ensure environmental sustainability
8. To develop a global partnership for development

There are 8 goals, 21 targets, and approximately 61 indicators.

The UN defined the construct of extreme poverty. There are many indicators that might be used to define someone as living in extreme poverty, including:

• Household income below a particular threshold (absolute or relative)
• Household expenditure/consumption below a particular threshold
• Household wealth excludes particular assets
• Household lacks access to one or more basic services (e.g., adequate housing, water supply, sanitation)
• Subjective feeling of poverty relative to others in society

But the MDGs decided to use this indicator: having an income of less than US$1.25/day*.

The measurement approach used to determine a value for this indicator in most countries is a direct interview of adults in a representative sample of households.

The global goal set for 2015 was reached in 2010; however, sub-Saharan Africa did not and is not expected to reach it. As of 2010, 1.2 billion people still lived in extreme poverty.

Measurement

A set of rules we use to determine the value of something.

Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

The MPI is an international measure of acute poverty covering over 100 developing countries. It complements traditional income-based poverty measures by capturing the severe deprivations that each person faces at the same time with respect to education, health, and living standards.

MPI Indicators

• Child mortality
• Nutrition
• Years of schooling
• School attendance
• Cooking fuel
• Toilet
• Water
• Electricity
• Floor
• Assets

UN Human Development Index

Development is about options, choice, and opportunities. The UN Human Development Index can compare human development across countries. Human development = enlarging people’s choices and enhancing their capabilities to live a long and healthy life, acquire knowledge, and achieve a decent standard of living (constructs).

Critiques of the HDI

• No consideration of sustainability
• No justification for weighting of components
• Originally did not consider inequality

Validity

The extent to which an indicator measures what we intend it to measure.

Colonization

African Railroads

Largest building: 600 miles from Bambada to Lake Victoria: about 2,500 people died in the construction of this railroad (imported Indian indentured servants). 1,000s of local people also perished. The railroad was more for the colonists than for the African people and did not promote economic activity locally. A visual map of railroads in Africa reveals that rail-lines all connect mineral deposits with colonial ports. “There are nations that are trying to get to the moon, but we are trying to get to villages.”

Berlin Conference

• 14 European nations came together in Berlin in 1884–85.
• Drew a series of lines on a map
• Established boundaries of European colonial rule
• There is a lot of power in maps.
• The lines had nothing to do with languages, ethnic/political identities of the African people.
• Most lines still remained after the colonial period ended in the 1950s–60s.
• Included a treaty that all countries involved would suppress slavery

Cecil Rhodes

• Came from Britain to work in diamond mining, where he earned immense amounts of money
• Became a politician and later prime minister of Cape Colony in South Africa
• Founded “British South Africa” company, which led to the scramble for Africa
• Annexed a huge portion of the African continent, calling it “Rhodesia”
• Lobengula, King of the Ndebele people, signed an agreement with Rhodes that said that the mining companies could do “anything necessary to their operations.”
• Shameless racist, white supremacist, British supremacist
• “I would annex the planets if I could.”
• Thought that Africans were only laborers
• Proponent of the “Native Lands Act,” which designated large parts of Africa for white settlement only, causing large displacement of the African people
• Set up the “compound system”: black labor was segregated and contained within a closed compound that looked like a prison and had a guard tower
• Large number of deaths and a high mortality rate associated with the mines in Southern Rhodesia
• Reputation today: one of the people that established this exploitative system, architect of apartheid, remembered now as a villain

Circular Process

Raw materials from Africa are sent to Europe, which produces manufactured goods from these raw goods and then exports them back to Africa. This has huge economic repercussions.

Colonialism

• Franz Fanon: colonialism was a psychological process.
• Legitimacy and necessity of violence to take over other lands
• Violence is a cleansing act, an assertion of humanity.
• Fanon is not only an advocate of violence.
• What consequences did colonialism have on the development of Africa?
• Boosters: agriculture, railways, ports, storing exports, technology
• People had to die to make these innovations happen.
• The slave trade and tyranny resulting largely in an underdeveloped world. See circular process, and King Leopold.

David Livingstone

• Rhodes-Livingstone Institute—two faces of colonial history—see Rhodes
• Early explorer, doctor, preacher, and traveler in Africa from Scotland
• Lifelong campaign against slavery, “open sore of the world”
• Empathy with Africans, saw them as fellow creatures of God, potentially fellow Christians
• Had disapproval among white settlers; they burned down his house.
• Died in Zambia; African followers took his dead body over 1,000 miles (a journey of over 5 months) to ship his body home.
• Remembered as a friend in Africa, “Africa’s first freedom fighter”
• “Christianity and Commerce,” civilization—he wanted to replace slavery with legitimate commerce.

Henry Morton Stanley

• Negotiated treaties with chiefs in the Congo basin for Leopold
• Left trails of corpses (used force and violence to get his way)

King Leopold

• Deemed himself as the savior of Africa, insisted that he had no personal interest in Africa, said his involvement was purely a kind service, but he walked away with the Congo Free State as his personal colony.
• 7–10 million people in Congo died.

Lord Overtoun

• Funded medical missionaries in Africa, had a chemical factory in Britain
• Workers were treated so poorly that it was a scandal (low pay, highly toxic metals, ulcers on the hands/inside nose, etc.)

Mungo Park

Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was the first Westerner known to have traveled to the central portion of the Niger River.

Nzinga Nbemba

Nzinga Nbemba was a Kongo ruler who allowed and helped the slave trade. He wrote a letter saying that “the wrong people are being enslaved,” as if slavery was a fact of life.

Rhodesia

• Scramble for Africa.
• Rhodes annexed a huge portion of Africa, calling it “Rhodesia.”
• Large number of deaths and a high mortality rate associated with the mines in Southern Rhodesia
• Marked independent in 1965, but this is misleading because it was the whites that declared this so that they could resist the cascade of decolonization.

Decolonization

Apartheid

Apartheid was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, the rights, associations, and movements of the majority black inhabitants and other ethnic groups were curtailed, and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained.

• Set aside “reserves” (called “homelands” by the white people) for the black people to live
• Everyone assigned a black citizenship—1948 watershed election for endorsers
• Made black people foreigners in their own land
• Migrant labor system made it possible for people to go and work in places that they couldn’t live
• Short-term contracts—mines
• Not forced like slavery, but it was the only option that most families had
• Labor was only available to men, so women and children were left behind.
• People were very dependent on this migrant life.
• Mines were extremely dangerous (many died, nearly a thousand miners died every year).
• Risk of disease (tuberculosis was very deadly, came from working in the mines)
• Very high death rates came down over time.
• Labor was temporary and came with no political rights.
• Laborers had to have a pass that showed that they were allowed to stay.
• Essentially, if you got sick or made trouble, you got your only source of income removed.
• Number of white settlers only made up 4% of the population.
• Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations.

Basic Income Grant

The basic income grant is an alternative explored by Ferguson to the aid allowances by the country. Social payments are universal instead of making people seem helpless—a universal right for the citizens. Helps in many of the poverty indicators—empowerment and small market culture provided by even the most minimal income.

Cash Transfer Programs

Cash transfer programs are state programs as an anti-poverty intervention in which states give allowances to their citizens stemming from the labor and agricultural breakdown.

South Africa Specifics

• Disabled and 60+ along with those who have children under 18
• Monthly state payments
• 45% of the households
• Model has spread to other areas
• Not high amounts of money, $150 to the elderly, $30 per child per month
• Results are looking promising: people are reporting higher scores on marks of poverty, hunger, etc.

Decolonization

The process of decolonization began in North Africa in 1955 when several countries joined the UN.

Watershed in South Africa, 1957–1960

• 16 African nations achieved independence, “the year of Africa”
• Extremely rapid process from the perspective of a historian
• 1940: a map of Africa was a map of European empire
• Rise of African Nationalist Movements—ANC, Mandela, National Congress of South African—Christian groups that used the language of the colonizers and turned it against them

European Approaches to Decolonization

• From violent repression to gestures of liberality
• Investing in education and health care designed to develop Africa
• Self-created vision of African development
• French Algeria: counterinsurgency war—Franz Fannon publication
• Portuguese colonies would succeed in stalling independence for more than a decade due to the high rates of colonists.
• Rhodesia is marked independent in 1965, but this is misleading because it was the whites that declared this so that they could resist the cascade of decolonization.

Britain: From Repression to Cooptation

• Officials sought to control the process and capture resources on the way out.
• 1951: Kwame Nkrumah makes himself dictator/prime minister in Ghana, used massive violence, placed the needs of the British on these newly independent governments in Africa

“National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.” — Biko

Can be extended further: it is an issue that, whether for violence, for lack of infrastructure, etc., would persist—“coherence is not present, there is only a blind will toward freedom, with the terribly reactionary risks which it entails.” — Franz Fanon on the effects of freedom

Causes of Decolonization

• Economic: From around 1925 until World War II, the colonies suffered. The colonial powers concentrated on domestic issues, protectionism and tariffs, disregarding the damage done to international trade flows. The colonies lost most of their export income and were forced away from the “open” complementary colonial economies to “closed” systems. Some countries began a sloppy industrialization period, like West Africa, while others returned to sustenance farming (British Malaysia). Became less dependent on white farmers who provided no benefit.
• Nationalist uprisings: Organizations like the African National Congress, NAACP
• Morality reasons: As allied nations fought against countries that promoted such behavior, it became morally reprehensible to commit the same atrocities that they were fighting against. Rising rebellion in Biko, Fanon, Marley, black power, etc., made it more reasonable for the countries to capitalize on a long-term exit strategy rather than fight long and hard wars.

The Decolonization Process: The Early Times and Violence

• There is no set way that it occurred—about a 40-year period from start to finish.
• 1960: 16 African nations achieved independence, “the year of Africa”—extremely rapid process from the perspective of a historian
• 1940: a map of Africa was a map of European empire
• Long Wars: French Algeria—a 6-year war with the loss of thousands—countries lost often because they were spread too thin.

“Stupidly enough, the system turns back to say that blacks are inferior because they have no economists, no engineers, etc., although it is made impossible for blacks to acquire these skills.” — Biko

Imperial pullout for financial reasons—“when it realizes that it is impossible for it to maintain its domination over the colonial countries, [it] decides to carry out a rearguard action with regard to culture, values, techniques, and so on.”

Britain: from repression to cooptation—British officials sought to control the process—Urabi Revolt, which led to access to Egyptian resources.

Leaving Africa in shambles—no one way about the process—economic and political aftermath—psychological change: from one type of colonialism to another. Hasan in Morocco, Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea—partnered with countries like the United States and allowed for the purpose of resource contracts and partnerships—blood mining—French-Algerian War—things that could not be forgotten.

To this day, the French do not acknowledge the extent to which they massacred—stunted and meddled development—the two-sided role of the Western world.

Millennium Villages—Jeffery Sachs—encouraged villagers to borrow money to finance investments that would help to create “more successful farming,” people were left very poor because these technologies failed—messy process of both psychological and violent.

Franz Fanon: “Spoilt children of yesterday’s colonialism and of today’s national governments, they organize the loot of whatever national resources exist. Without pity, they use today’s national distress as a means of getting on through scheming and legal robbery, by import-export combines, limited liability companies, gambling on the stock exchange, or unfair promotion.”

Decolonization as a Psychological Process

The oppression of colonization created a dynamic of superiority and inferiority—“you are giving them some kind of psychotherapy to move away from being a defeated society.”

Many of the African leaders distanced themselves from their own people—contact with white leaders . . . “serves to boost up their own ego to the extent of making them feel slightly superior to those blacks who do not get similar treatment from whites.”

The double-edged sword: “a psychological feeling of inferiority which was deliberately cultivated by the system. So equally, too, the whites in order to be able to listen to blacks needed to defeat the one problem which they had, which was one of ‘superiority.’” — Biko

Apartheid

Remnants from colonization that cannot be denied or undone:

• Religion: the remains of Christianity and reconciling the atrocities
• Equating the white man to someone closer to God—“Through the work of missionaries and the style of education adopted, the blacks were made to feel that the white man was some kind of god whose word could not be doubted.” — Biko
• Technology and lack of communication between states—“Stupidly enough, the system turns back to say that blacks are inferior because they have no economists, no engineers, etc., although it is made impossible for blacks to acquire these skills.” — Biko
• Dealing with a society that had not grown up in a previously free land
• The institution of racism: Caroli Linnaei, growing segregation, emphasis on pigmentation and degree of “blackness”—Berlin borders
• Events that scar the past: The Paris Massacre of 1961, the French Algerian war
• The Mau Mau in Kenya and the nearly decade-long fight against the British—”Decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally.” — Franz Fanon

Distributive Justice

The social allocation of goods in a society of inequality. Example: post-apartheid South Africa, see also cash transfer programs.

Franz Fanon

• Writer of The Wretched of the Earth, born in the French colony of Martinique
• An evolved black person, European education, French-speaking
• Psychotherapist
• Lived in the French colony of Algeria, which was locked in an anti-colonial struggle
• Attempted to make sense of colonialism as one that infiltrated humanity
• Legitimacy of violence, violence a cleansing act/assertion of humanity
• Fanon is not only an advocate of violence.

Frederick Cooper: Gatekeeper State

That “development” were precedented by the colonizer’s impulse to “open” Africa to commerce through railway construction and health campaigns. The colonial campaign adopted a new goal in the 40s: to improve the standard of living for Africans by any means, including intervening when the market failed to do so on its own.

The field of “development economics” spawned around the same time, and gave African governments and NGOs effective language to appeal for aid (grants and cheap loans). Post-colonial governments adopted this same language of “development” after independence and in implementing their grand schemes (talk about Volta dam in Ghana displacing thousands) presented some colonial state tendencies (to be distant, extractive, and imposing).

To fund these schemes and spark industrialization, like their colonial forebearers, young African states were strongly reliant on the outside because this is where they sourced formal sovereignty from, outside was the source of aid and assistance and they were unable to command their citizens’ respect and taxes. The only way they could secure a steady source of funds was to position themselves at the boundary between the internal and external economies as a “gatekeeper”, collecting and distributing resources sourced from this boundary or gate e.g customs and tariff revenue, foreign aid, business permits, visas, forex deals. Lens that this creates (Talk about people “bypassing gates” here e.g. diamonds being exchanged for guns and luxury goods in Angola and Sierra Leone).

The emergence of dictators was partly driven by the ability of the gates to provide ample funds to reward followers and exclude rivals.

Frederick Lugard

• Chaplain for the British Army who fought in Afghanistan, Sudan, Malawi and remained in Africa to work as a mercenary for the British East Africa Company
• Spent 20+ years in Nigeria and became the theorist of “indirect rule”
• Administering of foreign rule through the use of working through traditional chiefly authorities
• Portrayed colonialism as a great boon for both the mother country and Africa

Freedom Charter 1955

The ANC sent out 50,000 volunteers into townships and the countryside to collect “freedom demands” from the people of South Africa. This system was designed to give all South Africans equal rights. Demands such as “Land to be given to all landless people,” “Living wages and shorter hours of work,” “Free and compulsory education, irrespective of colour, race or nationality.”

Jeffery Sachs and Millennium Villages

• 30 years after integrated development projects
• Attack all the different problems at once to get rid of interrelated problems
• Sachs had the missionary zeal (tried to be like Livingstone) and didn’t make important comparisons between communities.
• As problems came up, funding decreased and money dried up.
• Encouraged villagers to borrow money to finance investments that would help to create “more successful farming.”
• People were left very poor because these technologies failed.

“Offering an innovative integrated approach to rural development, the MVP simultaneously addresses the challenges of extreme poverty in many overlapping areas: agriculture, education, health, infrastructure, gender equality, and business development.” — Millennium Villages Project website

• Access to “other piped” water supply increased from 13% to 77% in Millennium Villages.
• Under-5 mortality declined by an average of 5.9% per year.
• “No significant differences were recorded when comparing poverty, anthropometric outcomes, diarrhea prevalence, measles immunization, newborn care, antenatal care, or HIV testing in pregnancy between Millennium Village and comparison clusters.” (Pronyk et al.)

However, it is developed by academics living far away from the subject areas and with a poor understanding of local cultures and differences between the communities they work in. This lack of understanding led to fatal flaws such as promoting growing corn, which was not locally eaten historically, and building a short-lived livestock market when there was no local demand.

• Agriculture is the biggest example of their shortcomings. By trying to force Western methods and commercial farming, they ignored the fact that maize was not a local plant or food source, which was a huge part of the program’s demise.

Julius Nyerere

• African socialism pioneer
• “Ujamaa”: concentrated everyone in villages, the plan was based on the premise that African traditions are wrong
• When the plan didn’t work, the state started to move the villages by coercion, threatening to burn down their homes
• “Make it look like the representation, the maps”
• Although this is simplified for the planners, it is not effective because it does not take into account the African traditions that were there for a reason.
• Caused the Africans to be dumped on arid land, useless for farming

Land Grabs

• Used by governments to try to spur growth and agricultural economies
• Charging international companies to come in and make commercial operations
• Has created the issue where good land is taken from the current inhabitants

Nelson Mandela

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

Mobutu Sese Seko

• President of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1965 to 1997
• Government kleptocracy: personal fortune of $1–5 billion while his resource-laden nation fell into district
• Remained a US ally because of trade agreements

Rwanda

• Hutus and Tutsis
• Rwanda fight established by colonial rule
• Ethnic cleansing
• Planned killing with machetes months before the genocide, killing many

Sol Plaatje

• South African, writer of Native Life in South Africa, or, The Case of the Natives Land Act
• Documents what happens in the aftermath of this transformative law
• He tells about the human suffering in his work and then became one of the founders of the ANC.

The Incorruptible Kodak

A growing number of photographs showing Africans dead or with their hands cut off (he chopped hands off villagers whose people had failed to meet the quota of required rubber). Used to bring awareness to Congo and others like it.

Integrated Rural Communities

Areas that overhaul customary practices. Case study: Lesotho wanted to improve grazing lands, completely change the way that people grew crops (switch to cash crops like wheat). Migrant labor system: rural communities started making money from labor, migrant labor, had exaggerated faith in technological fixes (water pipes that ended up breaking, most technologies were extremely difficult to use).

Perception of Africa

Bartolome de las Casas

• First person to come as a missionary in the Spanish empire
• 1515: profoundly offended by acts against the enslaved Native Americans
• “Horrors that go beyond human description.”
• His solution: import Africans instead of Native Americans

Caroli Linnaei

• Systema Naturae
• Conception of race and the taxonomy of the human race
• Broke down the four races into American, European, Asianic, and Black and gave defining phenotypes and personalities to each of them
• First time of educationally enforced race

W. E. B. Du Bois

• Founder of the NAACP, African intellectual
• Extended an argument in 1917: Du Bois traced WWI back to the European competition for African countries
• Argued that profits from Africa could be used to buy off white workers
• Challenged backward beliefs about Africans
• Quest for African colonies drove Europeans into conflict within each other.

Ecotourism as Consumption

• A great example is the Serengeti.
• Parks so that people will want to visit again
• Merchandise such as T-shirts
• Destructive to the perceptions of Africa and native life

Heritage-Based Programs

Example: Living Landscape Project. Definition: training of local people as guides, heritage managers, basically in “tourism-related projects” to reconnect the local people with their surroundings. Problems with using tourism to solve poverty.

Kony 2012

(Joseph Kony, warlord in Uganda, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army) Another part of the plan to “save Africa,” example of arrogant appeal.

Rooibos Tea

• “Saving Africa through consumption practices.”
• Marketing erases years of colonial violence, impoverished workers.
• Late 1990s: a period of economic stagnation led to 25% of the Rooibos population unemployed. Inequality has increased since apartheid.
• Rooibos is grown almost completely on white-owned land (93%).

Serengeti

Conservation areas, hunting areas, national park, very large area. Africa stereotype and ecotourism.

National Geographic

Western views of the untamed wild in Africa. The African association originally . . .

Notion of a Tribe

-Political scienceNo consistent meaning. Developed by Europeans to classify Africans. Tribes often came with affiliated stereotypes (Yorubas in Nigeria seen as fun-loving and hedonistic; Igbo’s seen as money hungry; Hausa’s seen as parochial and concerned with hierarchy.)-Similarly, tribes were created by Europeans. Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda. Distinction created by French /Belgians. Hutu and Tutsi lived interspersed in same territory, spoke same language, intermarried. All aspects of culture were the same.-Example: Zambia – sorting of Zambians into fixed “tribes” produce of British colonialism. Applied stereotypes to different groups: Bemba, Ngoni, and Lozi were strong; Bemba and Ngoni were warlike; Bemba were a finer race as Ngoni had really bro? Tribes is word used by Europeans as opposed to nations. “Tribes” now have connotations of being “primitive”. -For example, one would not describe the Scottish or Welsh as “tribes” bordering England. But one describes Zulus as a tribe. Consequences-Colonial authorities often play off tribes against each other. Tutsi given privileged positions in colonial government over the majority Hutus. In time, distinctions become codified into law. This leads to inequality on a massive scale. (And of course, violence.)-Used to homogenize the complex interplay of African ethnic groups and cultures. “Tribe” is an extremely indiscriminate term. Used lazily to refer to all sorts of smaller units of larger nations, peoples or ethnic groups as well as to groups of people (often numbering in the millions) who live across the world and have very different histories.Tribes within tribes; tribes can cut across tribes; people who live in a particular area may be called a tribe. – very inconsistent. –Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring history and change. Propagates a sense of Africa being primitive. People in tribes are savage, Africa as primordial, irrational, and unchanging.-Racism and psych thought:-Jefferson/ Sally Hemmings-owned 600 slaves, participated in auctions Sally Hemmings was his concubine -hypocrisy isn’t an analysis: “Notes on the State of Virginia” –Jefferson was a pioneering racist: He thought that slaves should be moved to another part of the country because although “they weren’t real people, they should be free” –Linnaeus– father of Taxonomy wanted a classification system for every living thing (animal, mineral, vegetable?) -used phenotypes for grouping, common physical attributes -Controversial- put man in the same group as other primates —> enlightenment –RACE-Origins: comes from the Newton’s apple: not why did God dump apple on my head BUT why does body of mass move towards the ground (i.e. there are a set of theories that dictate and thus govern physical processes. Can be used to predict).-Out of same Enlightenment tradition came classification. Linnaeus’ taxonomy – one can classify every living animal. Out of the same intellectual foundation of classification came biological conceptions of race → Linnaeus offers taxonomy for humans. –Race becomes a scientific distinction. Blacks become as different to whites as monkeys. -Consequences:-Notion of “the other”:  define a black person as different to you → different becomes non human → black people are not human.-Allows Jefferson to proclaim that “all men are created equal” yet hold slaves. Black slaves were not regarded as human. –Once constructions of race are created, they can become institutionalized. Thus the move from prejudice to institutionalized racism. -The use of race as a social cleavage is a uniquely AMerican phenomenon. Other societies use religion/class/language.Health/Well being:-Some argue that the best way to cutdown disease is intrastructural improvements (think building wells), . Advantages of the hardware approach include:-The projects can often be easily and quickly implemented (talk about the drill rate of wells in the “Water of Ayole” project.-his method often appears to be the most direct solution to the problem.-The tangible product (hardware) makes donors feel more accomplished.-Now problems.-The fixes are often built and installed without any local participation, and if this is the case,  when they break, the locals may not have the knowledge or skills to bring  them back online. Even if they do, spare parts may be expensive and unavailable. (talk about the initial breakdowns of the wells in the “water of Ayole video”-Often, because of the implicit and explicit assumptions builders make about the causes of the problem they are trying to fix, the solutions even if implemented perfectly don’t produce any effect on the problem they were intended to solve. Perfect example of this is the Millennium Village Project water wells failing to have any effect of the rate of diarrheal disease in the MVs. –The behavioral methods are a tad more nuanced. Involve understanding the reasons why the people in question are acting the way they do, and designing an intervention that uses this understanding to try and effect behavioral changes that provide the desired health outcome. Advantages are:-These fixes fundamentally understand that the “software” is often more important that the “hardware” in achieving desired health outcomes.-If the behavioral change can be implemented, the intervention is permanent without any need for maintenance-If the behavioral understandings are used to inform the implementation of hardware, the success of projects is usually more sustainable (Talk about the empowering of women to manage the Ayole pump since water fetching was traditionally women’s domain, and its effect on keeping the pump running)-If behavioural impulses are better understood, it is easier to drive adoption of the intervention. E.g. marketing latrines in Benin as a lifestyle rather than health item. problems-These solutions often fail for several reasons. One is even when attempting to understand behavior, it is easy for the interventionist to make assumptions that make the program to be fundametally flawed. (Talk about Davis & Pickering study  about the effect of knowledge on Household Water Management, Hygiene Behaviors, Stored Drinking Water Quality, and Hand Contamination in Peri-Urban Tanzania, how the implicit assumption was increased knowledge would promote positive health outcomes, how that simply didn’t happen. How although knowledge, and handwashing increased in the informed group, hand bacterial contamination was back to baseline level by the second follow up visit, and store water contamination increased. )-Often the behavioural reasoning behind the actions of the group with the health problem directly contradict with the intervention that will give desired health outcome, making it very difficult to integrate the two ideas. Eg. (someone gave this example in a reading response) Cultures that believe drinking very little when experiencing diarrhea is the best course of action-Tanzanian hospital at the intersection of modern and traditional medicine—Internal/International greed:-Aswan High Dam-showed that Egypt was independent and powerful -nationalist pride, defiance, tame nature -The High Dam has resulted in protection from floods and droughts, an increase in agricultural production and employment, electricity production and improved navigation that benefits tourism. Conversely, the dam flooded a large area, causing the relocation of over 100,000 people and submerged archaeological sites, some of which were relocated as well. The dam is also blamed for coastline erosion, soil salinity and health problems-Kariba Dam- zambizi river -promised would generate lots of electricity & bring development (irrigation) -didn’t create a better life for all, it flooded a vast area of the river valley to generate electricity (electricity went to copper mines and white settlements) –Kleptocracy-a government or state in which those in power exploit national resources. Common in the resource rich decolonized regions like Angola-Sugar: 16th-18th centuries: sugar was an incredible commodity-mildly addictive, source of pleasure and comfort -unusual commodity b/c- very large bulky crop that needs to be harvested, go through mills, and go through furnacing process within 48 hours of harvesting-created plantations: place where large investments of capital were necessary for producing facilities for creating product (sugar), needed vast amounts of labor b/c of the large work and lethality of it -labor is backbreaking, mortality spikes during harvesting -life expectancy of a slave on a sugar plantation was 7 years –Volta River Project– outside contracts- allowed by Kwame Nkrumah and neo-colonialism -wanted to create the largest lake in the world to use more power -site independent Ghana and build aluminum there themselves -designed to move Africa out of the rural stage they were in –Western Intervention:-Villagization plays into the idea of “good intentions.” As stated in Seeing Like a State Nyerere’s plan for villagization was essentially a continuation of colonization. Foreign officials came in to make decisions about what would most benefit the country, and imposed this on communities. Though the project aimed to control the poor by reassigning them to specific villages for a new living situation, the villages failed. Zulu State.-Both villagization and Millennium Village projects used generic, “ideal” plans, but it came at the cost of the homogenization of cultures and peoples. Deaton discusses how the Millennium Villages create “poverty traps,” that do not allow for the poor to remove themselves from their situation. –Slavery:-Anthony Benezet-early critic of slavery -created a school for African children-founded the first anti-slavery society-observations on the importing and purchasing of negroes-Code of-Hammurabi– oldest set of laws, example of slavery as old as human-kind-Plantations- See sugar-Thomas Clarkson– was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave tradein the British Empire. He helped found The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade(also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Actof 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.-Religion:-William Wilberforce- a crucial English abolitionist. he became an Evangelical Christian and joined Thomas Clarkson Evangelical Christianity-the most Christian continent in the world is Africa -Christianity is an African religion today (this has unfolded in 200 years)-David Livingston (his father was one of the first missionaries in Africa)- missionaries overlapped with explorers –Oluadah Equiano-wrote narrative of slave trade in first person, some debate if he was born Africa (S. Carolina), but 1st person account built sentiment-planters preferred slaves from his hometown for their “hardiness, intelligence, integrity, and zeal”. He was an Igbo-One of 15 existing first person accounts out of 12.5 million slaves-Becomes activist, helps enact the Slave Trade Act of 1807.-Rodney/Fage Debate: about the origins of slavery in Africa-Rodney: slave trade did not appear until Africa’s sustained contact and interaction with Europeans. Slave trade increased the number of slaves being held in Africa and intensified their exploitation. Slave trade essentially forced on unwilling African participants, through commercial and military inequities. –Fage: slavery already existed and was widespread in African society, Europeans simply tapped into existing market and Africans reponded to incraesed demand by providing more slaves. Were not forced into participating against their will. -Other: