殖民国家至今仍坚持认为，它们所到之处都带来了好处。在非洲，受殖民心态影响的历史学家往往津津乐道于殖民主义所谓的积极方面，例如基础设施和教育的发展。而殖民者所犯下的种族主义、剥削乃至种族灭绝罪行，却continues to be 被一笔带过。殖民者认为，非洲以及其他被殖民的民族若没有欧洲人的帮助，就无法生存。

The Colonial nations continue to hold the view that they brought benefits wherever they went. In Africa, historians affected by the colonial mentality tend to describe the so called positive aspects of colonialism such as the development of infrastructure and education. The racism, exploitation, and, genocide committed by the colonialists continues to be glossed over. Colonialists view that Africa as well as other colonised people were incapable of surviving without the help of the Europeans.

非洲巨大的资源和丰富的矿产吸引了许多西方国家对这块大陆进行殖民。欧洲列强为瓜分战利品而相互竞争。因此，毫无疑问，欧洲各国在争夺非洲殖民地时竞争之所以如此激烈，其目的是剥削非洲人民使其沦为奴隶，并掠夺这块大陆的自然财富。民主和西方价值观的传播几乎不存在。

The immense resources and rich minerals in Africa attracted many Western nations to colonise the continent. European nations competed with each other over the spoils. Hence there should be no doubt that the severity of competition between Europe over the colonisation of Africa was in order to exploit the people for slavery and steal the continents natural wealth. The propagation of democracy and Western values hardly existed.

欧洲国家曾动用军队直接殖民非洲的大片地区。今日的布隆迪、卢旺达、坦桑尼亚和纳米比亚的部分地区曾由德国统治。意大利瓜分了厄立特里亚和索马里的部分领土。西班牙在西非建立了立足点。葡萄牙保有安哥拉、莫桑比克以及其他一些较小的领土。比利时残酷地统治刚果，英国则在整个东非以及今日的苏丹、加纳、赞比亚、津巴布韦、马拉维和尼日利亚等地设立了其托管地。法国在十几个西非国家中建立了统治，包括塞内加尔和科特迪瓦，还包括乍得、马达加斯加和科摩罗。

European nations directly colonised whole swathes of Africa using their armies. Parts of what are now Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Namibia were ruled by Germany. Italy carved up parts of Eritrea and Somalia. Spain established a foothold in Western Africa. The Portuguese held onto Angola, Mozambique, and other smaller territories. Belgium brutally ruled over the Congo and Britain created its mandates throughout East Africa and in what is today Sudan, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Nigeria. France set itself up in a dozen West African nations, including Senegal and the Ivory Coast, as well as in Chad, Madagascar and the Comoros.

几十年来,非洲为他们提供了开放的商品市场。更重要的是,非洲还向欧洲人提供了廉价的、在许多情况下甚至是免费的原材料,如棉花、橡胶、茶叶和锡,当然还有通过奴隶贸易获得的免费劳动力。传教士的不受阻碍的传教活动也助长了这一切,他们帮助安抚“土著”对欧洲殖民者存在的抵触情绪。这块大陆因西方国家之间的竞争而深陷血腥的军事冲突之中。这场争夺导致各国支持独裁者、发动政变,并以贷款换取忠诚。这种竞争使非洲大陆的债务超过了3700亿美元,占整个大陆国民总收入的65%。

For decades, Africa provided them with open markets for goods. More importantly Africa also supplied the Europeans with cheap or in many cases free raw materials such as cotton, rubber, tea, and tin and of course free human labour through the slave trade. All of this was aided by unhindered missionary efforts to help pacify the presence of European colonisers among the ‘natives.’ The continent was afflicted with bloody military disputes because of the competition between the Western nations. The struggle resulted in various states supporting dictators, carrying out coup d’états and giving loans for loyalty. Such competition has resulted in the continents debts surpassing $370 billion, which represent 65% of the total national income of the entire continent.

这种斗争与竞争甚至导致非洲被埋设了超过3000万枚地雷，占全世界埋设地雷总数的25%。

Such struggle and competition has even resulted in more than 30 million land mines being planted in Africa, which is 25% of all land mines planted in the entire world.

在瓜分非洲的过程中，欧洲列强展开了一场大规模的领土争夺，划定边界以确保各自的主张不被其他列强夺走。这种通过划定边界将领土与其他殖民列强的领地隔开的做法，产生了一个后果：原本相连的政治群体被分割开来，或是迫使世代为敌的群体毗邻而居，中间没有任何缓冲。在瓜分非洲之前，刚果河是天然的地理界线，河两岸都有使用相同语言、拥有相同文化的群体。比利时与法国占领者沿河瓜分土地，使这些群体彼此隔绝。那些在撒哈拉以南非洲生活、并几个世纪来穿越整个大陆进行贸易的人，发现自己跨越的边界只存在于欧洲人的地图上。 为了管理当地人并确保殖民统治的持续，列强实施了一系列政策。在罗得西亚（今津巴布韦）和南非等欧洲人聚居规模可观的地方，设立了二等公民制度，使欧洲人获得远超其人口比例的政治权力。在刚果，当地居民遭受非人道的待遇，地位几近奴隶。

In colonising Africa the European imperial powers engaged in a major territorial scramble, creating borders ensuring their claim was not usurped by other powers. This insistence of drawing borders around territories to isolate them from those of other colonial powers had the effect of separating otherwise contiguous political groups, or forcing traditional enemies to live side by side with no buffer between them. Prior to the scramble for Africa the Congo River was the natural geographic boundary, there were groups living on both sides that shared a language and culture. The division of the land between Belgium and French occupiers along the river isolated these groups from each other. Those who lived in Saharan or Sub-Saharan Africa and traded across the continent for centuries found themselves crossing borders that existed only on European maps. In managing the natives and ensuring continued colonial supremacy a number of policies were carried out. Places that had substantial European settlements, such as Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, systems of second-class citizenship were set up in order to give Europeans political power far in excess of their numbers. In the Congo the native population was submitted to inhumane treatment and a near slavery status.

欧洲人甚至改变了当地的权力平衡，在原本并不存在族群分裂的地方制造了族群分化。在今天的卢旺达和布隆迪所在地区，胡图族和图西族在德国殖民者于19世纪控制该地区时，已经融合为一种文化。由于数百年来的相互交往、通婚以及文化习俗的融合，早已消除了明显的文化分界，两个族群不再因族群身份而区分。

Europeans even altered the local balance of power by creating ethnic divisions where there had never been any. In what is now Rwanda and Burundi, two ethnic groups the Hutus and Tutsis had merged into one culture by the time German colonists had taken control of the region in the 19th century. They were no longer divided by ethnicity since intermingling, intermarriage, and merging of cultural practices over the centuries had long since erased visible signs of a culture divide.

然而,比利时在接管该地区后推行了种族隔离政策,因为基于种族的隔离是当时欧洲文化的一个固有特征。"胡图"一词最初指从西方迁入今卢旺达和布隆迪地区、以农业为生、讲班图语的民族,而"图西"一词则指后来迁入该地区的东北部以养牛为业的民族。这两个词原本描述的是一个人的经济阶层:拥有大约10头或更多牛的人被视为图西人,拥有较少牛的人则被视为胡图人,而与祖先历史无关。比利时人引入了一套种族主义制度,认为肤色较浅、身材高大、鼻梁狭窄等特征更符合理想的"含米特人"特征,属于在血统上与图西人最接近的人群;于是他们被赋予了在被殖民民族中的权力。

However, Belgium instituted a policy of racial segregation upon taking control of the region, as racially based segregation was a fixture of the European culture of the time. The term Hutu originally referred to the agricultural-based Bantu-speaking peoples that moved into present day Rwanda and Burundi from the West, and the term Tutsi referred to North-eastern cattle-based peoples that migrated into the region later. The terms described a person's economic class; individuals who owned roughly 10 or more cattle were considered Tutsi, and those with fewer were considered Hutu, regardless of ancestral history. The Belgians introduced a racist system, whereby features such as fairer skin, ample height, and narrow noses were seen as more ideally Hamitic, and belonged to those people closest to Tutsi in ancestry; they were then given power amongst the colonised peoples.

虽然一些本地人担任了高级职务，但几乎在所有情况下，这都是欧洲人挑拨部落之间矛盾的策略，而非为了招募有才能的人。文森特·卡波亚（Vincent Khapoya）在其评估欧洲人所谓发展非洲之说法的著作中对此作了概述：“比利时的殖民统治使大量财富从扎伊尔（比属刚果）转移到比利时。非洲人只接受了有限的教育，这种教育只能让他们阅读《圣经》，高效地听从传教士的指令，充其量在殖民行政机构中担任文书。”

Although some of the natives made high office, in almost all cases this was a strategy by the Europeans to cause friction between tribes rather then recruit skilled individuals. Vincent Khapoya outlined this in his book which assessed European claims of developing Africa: ‘Belgian colonial rule saw massive transfers of wealth from Zaire [the Belgian Congo] to Belgium. Africans received only limited education, which would allow them to read the Bible, take orders efficiently from the missionaries, and function, at best, as clerks in the colonial bureaucracy.

Khapoya 还阐述了欧洲对非洲发展所做贡献这一神话：“所有殖民强国都极为关注经济状况。这包括：攫取土地、强制劳役、引入经济作物（甚至以牺牲粮食作物为代价）、中断殖民前时期的非洲内部贸易模式、从印度引入劳工等，以及使非洲继续作为欧洲工业原料的来源地，因此不被允许实现工业化。”

Khapoya also explains the myth of European contribution to Africa’s development: ‘all colonial powers exercised significant attention to the economics of the situation. This included: acquisition of land, enforced labour, introduction of cash crops, even to the neglect of food crops, halting interAfrican trading patterns of pre-colonial times, introduction of labourers from India, etc. and the continuation of Africa as a source of raw materials for European industry, therefore a continent not to be industrialised.

非洲至今仍在饱受欧洲殖民者政策的伤害。十九世纪时，英国是主导力量，如今到了二十一世纪，它们已被美国所取代。

Africa continues today to bleed from the policies of the European colonialists. Where Britain was the dominant force in the 19th century they have simply been replaced by the US in the 21st century.

自1960年代起，殖民者撤离非洲大陆，殖民统治也仅仅是从直接控制转变为通过独裁者、武器、贷款和经济霸权进行控制。非洲之所以持续动荡，并非殖民者的撤离所致，而是殖民者近两百年的干涉造成的；正是对这片大陆资源的贪欲，使非洲不断流血。

The departure of the colonialists from the continent since the 1960’s has merely seen colonialism change from direct control to control through dictators, arms, loans and economic hegemony. It is not the departure of the colonists that has caused instability in Africa; it is the interference of the colonialists for nearly 200 years that has caused Africa to continue bleeding due to the thirst for the continents resources.