The Ripple Effect of Colonialism: How Africa Was Taught to Forget Itself
BY OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Colonialism did not end when the flags were lowered and the constitutions rewritten. It simply changed its garments—from overt conquest to covert persuasion, from the violence of whips and rifles to the seduction of schools, churches, and television screens. It reshaped the African mind to see itself as incomplete, to believe salvation lay in imitation, not innovation. And thus began a new enslavement—an enslavement of the psyche, more enduring than the chains of iron ever were.
We were told that our past was primitive, our gods demonic, and our customs barbaric. The conquest was never just of land, but of the narrative—of who we were allowed to believe we were. In classrooms, the names of our ancestors were replaced with those of foreign philosophers. Our history was truncated to begin at the arrival of ships, and everything before that was deemed “dark.” The word civilisation was taught to us as something imported, never born from the soils beneath our feet.
By the time independence swept across the continent, Africa had already been conditioned to seek its reflection in Western approval. The colonial master had departed in body, but remained in mind and policy. The colonised intellect became the most valuable commodity of the new age. Our brightest children were sent abroad to “learn” civilisation, carrying the sacred promise to return and rebuild their nations. Yet, unknown to many, the education they received was not designed for liberation, but for alignment—to replicate the systems of their teachers rather than resurrect the wisdom of their own ancestors.
1. The Indoctrination of Aspiration
From childhood, the African dream was rewritten. Success meant departure. Every household, rich or poor, measured its pride by how many of its children had crossed the oceans. We were told, “Go to the West, acquire knowledge, then return to build your homeland.” But this dream, beautiful in rhetoric, was built on illusion. When we arrived in Europe or America, we found that our hosts did not share the philosophy of shared humanity that had been preached to us back home.
Instead, we met walls—walls of subtle exclusion, overt and institutional discrimination. We found that our worth was often measured not by our intellect, but by the shade of our skin and the accents of our tongues. The dream of a globalised world, one where merit transcended race, collapsed at the border of colour. We were told to “go back to where you came from,” even as our labour, art, and intellect were harvested to sustain systems that never welcomed us as equals.
And yet, those back home continued to see the Western world as a paradise. The illusion persisted. The ones abroad who tried to speak the truth—to warn their kin that the West was not the utopia they imagined—were dismissed as selfish or envious. They were accused of withholding opportunities. But how does one explain the hollowness of being both needed and rejected? How does one describe the ache of being foreign everywhere, even in the lands of your ancestors with colonial divided borders?
2. The Silent War of Neocolonialism
Neocolonialism no longer carries the scent of gunpowder—it smells of perfume, policies, foreign-aid, resource extractions, and progress. It arrives through economic aid tied with invisible strings, through media that glorifies Western life while ridiculing African traditions, through education that shapes Africans to become efficient servants of global markets rather than sovereign innovators of the revival of their own indigenous systems.
Even language—our most intimate tool of thought—has become the battlefield. To speak in one’s mother tongue in professional spaces is seen as regression. To bear an English or French name is to appear educated. To pray in Hebrew, Arabic, or Latin is to appear enlightened. Thus, colonialism found immortality in culture.
Meanwhile, our spiritual systems—Ifá, Vodun, Dagara, ma’at, and others—were demonised, rebranded as superstition. The priests became outcasts, the diviners became mockeries. The colonisers understood what we did not: to erase a people’s gods is to erase their order, their morality, their self-worth. Once the sacred was gone, all else became negotiable.
3. The Mirage of Globalisation
Globalisation was sold to us as a noble pursuit—the unification of humanity under shared progress. We were told that through trade, education, and cultural exchange, we would become one world. But “one world” was never truly meant to mean equality; it meant assimilation. It meant that others would define the standards of civilisation, while we would be measured by how closely we mirrored them.
And yet, while Africa sought to globalise, others quietly rebuilt their roots. The Chinese, once scattered across continents, returned home to invest, to build, to transform their land into the epicentre of their destiny. They reclaimed their cultural pride while mastering modernity. Meanwhile, Africa still seeks external validation—still exports its brightest minds and richest resources, only to import the very products and ideologies born from them.
Conclusion: The Lost Memory and the Path to Restoration
Today, most Africans no longer know who they were before the world told them who to be. The line between the sacred and the secular has been blurred; our festivals commercialised, our ancestral wisdom reduced to folklore, our sacred artefacts and temple gods are now foreign museum relics. We chase currencies, not communities. We measure wealth in possessions, not legacies. The spiritual architecture that once sustained entire ethno-governed communities—built on balance between the seen and unseen—has been replaced with foreign dogmas that offer salvation but steal identity.
Yet, even in this fog of forgetfulness, the spirit of remembrance whispers. There are those who return—not always physically, but spiritually—to rebuild what was dismantled. They are the thinkers, priests, artists, and rebels of our time who see that the true liberation of Africa will not come from adopting another’s system, but from remembering our own.
To rebuild Africa is not to mimic the West—it is to rediscover the codes written in our own soil. It is to revive our spiritual centres, restore our educational philosophies, and reinstate our communal ethics that saw leadership as service, not dominion.
For indeed, Africa must renamed itself. What we call progress must be rooted in remembrance of Kemet, or else it will forever be the reflection of modern Egyptians. The restoration of Africa begins not in policy or politics, but in the reawakening of our collective memory.
Let the West remain the West. Let Africa, once more, become herself.
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