African Cultures and Traditions

Media and the Preservation of Culture in  Africa The colonial expansion of European states in Africa was usually accompanied by missionary efforts to proliferate Christianity and European civilization. A kind of benevolent tutelage of the `inferior native' populations occurred that was particularly well-illustrated in Rudyard Kipling's The White Man's Burden. The direct consequences of the colonial expansion ranged from the genocide that wiped out large segments of the population to the subtle destruction of African cultures. Every culture has a dual tendency, a tendency toward stability and a tendency toward change. What is the contribution of culture to the development process? Surprisingly, on numerous occasions, even normally intelligent Africans erroneously and inadvertently conceptualize culture as `drumming and dancing and therefore fail to see any contribution culture makes or made to the struggle for socio-economic development. It must be noted, however, that cultu...