The Interrelationships between Western Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Africa

Abstract

This research work studies ‘The Interrelationships between Western Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Africa’. The developed countries of the Northern hemisphere of the world especially Western Europe and the United States of America (USA) have been at the gaining end of the parasitic and asymmetrical relationship between the North and the impoverished South, this asymmetric relationship is what is today known as imperialism. Thus this study focuses on discovering how imperialism has led to economic, socio-cultural and political underdevelopment in Africa. This work is guided by a mix of the dependency theory and an analysis of Rostow’s five stages of economic growth from a structural-functional perspective. This work hence discovers that underdevelopment in Africa is the direct consequence of continued imperialism of the Western capitalist nations on African states and the weak economic, political and socio-cultural structures created by colonialism and sustained by imperialism-in-continuum. This work finally concludes by making recommendation on how the adverse impacts Western imperialism can be combated on the long run.