Africa's economy was more advanced than Europe's before European contact — and the transatlantic slave trade deliberately destroyed that advantage. That's the argument from Kweku Darko Ankrah, a historian at the University of Ghana.
Speaking at the ongoing Next Steps Conference on Reparatory Justice in Accra, Ankrah said archival materials — including Gold Coast-era newspapers — show African societies were economically ahead of Europe before colonisation. He pointed to records describing how in Elmina, you couldn't find a single orphan on the streets, unlike Amsterdam and other European capitals where child homelessness was widespread.
"If you go back to history when Europeans came for trade, the economy wasn't far more advanced than that of Africa," Ankrah said. "If you read a book by any of the Gold Coast scholars, they wrote that 'Here in Elmina, you cannot find a child who is an orphan on the streets as we see it on the streets of Amsterdam, as we see it in European capitals. Here, everybody is taken care of, and families take care of everybody.'"
According to Ankrah, Africa's pre-colonial economy was largely agrarian and self-sufficient. Families could meet their basic needs and maintain stable livelihoods. Europe, meanwhile, faced serious social and economic problems — including labour shortages and widespread child homelessness — which he said drove its later push for external resources and labour.
The turning point, he argued, was the transatlantic slave trade. Millions of able-bodied Africans were forcibly taken to work on plantations and in households abroad, draining the continent of the very labour that powered its agrarian economy.
"When the slave trade occurred, what happened was that the African strong men who ought to work in the agrarian sector, because Africa's economy was highly propelled by the agrarian sector, were taken to Europe, that labour was used in the farms and plantations in Europe, and as a result, it boosted the economy of these Western places while they were able to get the consumable outcomes from their sweat," he noted.
Ankrah made these remarks as part of a broader global push for historical justice, which gained fresh momentum after the adoption of UN Resolution A/RES/80/250. That landmark decision has intensified international debate on the legacy of slavery and reparatory justice.
The Accra conference, convened under President John Dramani Mahama, has brought together global leaders, scholars, and policymakers to discuss pathways for addressing historical injustices linked to the transatlantic slave trade. The conference continues through the week.
Ankrah's argument challenges the long-standing colonial narrative that Africa was a backward continent that needed European intervention. Instead, he says, the evidence shows Africa was doing fine on its own — until external forces dismantled its systems for their own gain.