Colonial, postcolonial, neocolonial?
Germany’s economic and educational
strategy for Africa
by Armin Hofmann
At the end of the 19th century,
Germany was late entering the scramble for Africa in competition with France,
Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium. Within just two decades
almost all areas of the African continent had been occupied by European powers.
The governments sent missionaries, explorers and adventurers, the ones in order
to christianise the African tribes and peoples – whereby their ethos often had
a mitigating effect –, the others to explore the remaining “white spots” on the
map. Ever new areas were captured, in order to exploit raw materials and “human
resources”, to expand trade or to make use of strategically favourable
geographic locations.
It was only in the 1960s, that around fifty of the former colonies had achieved their independence, after long and sometimes bloody uprisings. The postcolonial period had arrived. Nevertheless: Civil wars, some of which had been instigated by the Western powers in order to maintain their influence, AIDS and other epidemic plagues, as well as famine, kept Africa down. Till far in the 1980s, Africa was the ”forgotten continent”. This has changed. – The scramble for Africa has recommenced.
“States lead not only military wars
[…] they also lead cultural wars and educational wars to achieve their economic
and power policy goals. The influence with the means of foreign cultural,
linguistic and educational policy belongs to the so-called ‘soft power’.”
A “Marshall Plan for Africa”
