By Olakunle Agboola – A recent conversation with my British neighbour left me thinking about how history is taught, and how much of it is often left out.
He is thoughtful, educated and widely read. Five years ago, he admits, his answer would have been immediate if someone had asked him a simple question:
“Can the West ever leave Africa alone?”
“No.”
His reasoning reflected a familiar narrative. Africa receives aid. Western countries provide investment, security support and development assistance. The relationship appears straightforward. The West helps, Africa benefits.
That was the story he had grown up with.
The more he read beyond the history he had been taught, the less certain he became that this explanation captured the full picture.
What struck him was not simply how much aid Africa receives, but how rarely discussions focus on how much wealth, labour and resources have flowed out of the continent over centuries.
Over time, he arrived at a question that unsettled assumptions he had carried for most of his life.
More Than Aid
Much of the modern discussion about Africa is framed around assistance. Governments, charities and international institutions often highlight what is directed into the continent.
Those contributions are real and, in many cases, important.
They do not tell the full story.
The relationship between Africa and the West did not begin with aid programmes. It was shaped by centuries of trade, conquest, extraction and political influence.
The transatlantic slave trade remains one of the clearest examples. Historians estimate that around 12.5 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic, with approximately 10.7 million surviving the journey. Their labour generated enormous wealth across Europe and the Americas, helping to fuel industries, commercial expansion and financial systems that became central to Western economic development.
In ports such as Liverpool, Bristol and London, entire commercial ecosystems developed around slave-linked trade, insurance, shipping and finance. Wealth was not merely extracted from Africa. It helped finance the foundations of Europe’s industrial rise.
For my neighbour, this raised a difficult question.
If Africa was primarily a recipient in this story, why does so much of Western prosperity appear tied to African labour and resources?
Empire’s Shadow
By the beginning of the twentieth century, European powers controlled most of the African continent.
Colonial administrations built railways, ports and infrastructure, but these systems were largely designed to move raw materials outward rather than develop integrated local economies.
One example often illustrates this logic. In the Congo under King Leopold II, rubber extraction operated through a brutal system designed to maximise export revenue for European industry. The wealth generated flowed outward, while local populations bore the human cost. It remains one of the clearest illustrations of extraction-driven governance.
Political borders were drawn according to imperial interests, often cutting across existing cultural, ethnic and historical realities. Many of those boundaries remain in place today.
This does not mean every challenge facing modern African states can be traced solely to colonial history. Governance failures, corruption, conflict and domestic political decisions also matter.
History still shapes the structures we inherit.
The economic and political systems established during colonial rule influenced the conditions that followed independence.
Even today, international institutions continue to highlight illicit financial flows, profit shifting and capital flight from African economies.
In some years, these outflows have exceeded the value of aid entering the continent.
That is where my neighbour paused. The simplicity of the story he once knew no longer held.
What Was Forgotten
One aspect of his reading surprised him more than anything else.
He realised how little he had been taught about Africa before European colonial expansion.
The question is not whether precolonial African societies were perfect. No civilisation in history was.
The idea that Africa lacked sophisticated systems of governance, commerce and scholarship simply does not stand up to scrutiny.
The Mali Empire maintained extensive trade networks across West Africa. Timbuktu became a renowned centre of learning, attracting scholars from across regions. The Kingdom of Benin produced artistic achievements that continue to command global respect today.
These were not isolated achievements. They emerged from structured societies with institutions, economies and intellectual traditions.
Africa was not a continent waiting to be civilised. It was already home to complex civilisations long before European expansion.
For my neighbour, this was not a rejection of Western history. It was a recognition of omission.
New Forms of Power
The conversation gradually shifted from history to the present.
Formal colonial rule has ended, but competition for influence has not disappeared.
Africa holds some of the world’s most important reserves of critical minerals, essential to modern technology, renewable energy systems and global manufacturing.
As a result, major powers continue to compete for access and influence.
Western nations remain heavily engaged. China has expanded its economic presence rapidly. Russia, Turkey, India and Gulf states have all increased their involvement across different sectors.
The actors have changed. The interests remain.
Military intervention has largely given way to investment, trade agreements, debt arrangements and security partnerships. Influence today is rarely direct, but it is still influence.
This brings us back to the central question.
Can the West ever leave Africa alone?
A Changed Perspective
As our conversation drew to a close, my neighbour shared a reflection that stayed with me.
His instinctive reaction to immigration had changed over time.
When he sees Black and Brown migrants in Britain today, he no longer sees only people arriving from elsewhere. He sees histories that have been intertwined for centuries.
“We entered their world first,” he told me.
“That is the part of the story I never really considered.”
For much of his life, immigration appeared to be a one-way movement, people arriving from elsewhere to build lives in Britain. What he had rarely considered was that history itself had travelled in the opposite direction long before that. European powers crossed oceans in search of territory, labour, resources and influence long before migrants crossed oceans in search of opportunity.
That does not mean every migration story can be reduced to colonial history. It cannot. Human movement is shaped by conflict, opportunity, governance, family ties and individual decisions.
History remains part of the picture.
As we parted that evening, what stayed with me was not the conclusion he reached, but the willingness behind it.
He had chosen to question assumptions that once felt settled. He had looked beyond familiar narratives and explored perspectives largely absent from his education.
In an age when inherited beliefs are often defended more fiercely than they are examined, that willingness may be one of the rarest qualities of all.
The more my neighbour learned about Africa, the less he found himself asking why Africans come to Europe.
Instead, he found himself asking a different question.
Why is Europe surprised that they do?
