By Matata Mercy
Recently, I have been wondering what this motherland continent that I live in would be like if all the events that happened in history did not actually happen.
Image credit:An illustration of traditional African man firing a rocket.
Slave trade took away a lot of man power from Africa.
Able bodied men and women from Africa were shipped to Europe, United States and Middle East not out of their will but the greed and ambitions of the chiefs and leaders of the African society.
Intelligent men and women who had great ideas and potential in this continent were shipped away, these men who have been the inventors of technologies that would revolutionize the African society.
Forget about the printing press, the steam engine and the world wide web that were invented by the people in Europe and the United States.
I do believe if Africa had been left alone as an untouched continent, we would have invented our way out of the problems that we face.
Imagine what we did before the Arabs and Europeans came to this great continent.
Africans had discovered fire and we're already making tools and weapons like spear from iron through iron smelting.
Different kinds of writing had already been invented in Egypt using papyrus.
In the field of medicine, we had different ways of treating different illnesses and ailments already in existence and even the practice of surgery was already beginning to be done.
In the engineering field, as Africans, we had progressed from living under trees to constructing our homes which were grass thatched huts during that time.
And I do believe that since we had already learnt about iron, it would not take long for us to eventually invent the iron sheets which would be more durable than the grass used for roofing the huts.
Let us not forget about the pyramids of Egypt, one of the wonders in the world which up to today people do not understand how they were built.
The knowledge and technology that were used to build these magnificent structures is yet to be known.
In the education sector, I recently learnt that the first university in the world was found in Africa, a place called Timbuktu in west Africa.
This is evidence enough that without the Europeans who came to Africa, the continent would still have a great education system and who knows probably it would have been far better and more efficient than the system brought here by the Europeans.
The African education system was based on competence and apprentice, parents and elders in the society taught the kids how to smelt iron and make spears, shields.
Other kids were taught about farming, how to take care of animals like goats, cows and chickens.
Also the growing of crops like maize, cassava, and others was prominent in the African society although the tools used might not have been technologically advanced since hand hoes were being used for digging.
African homes had granaries where harvests from the crops were being stored including the seeds that would be used in the next planting season.
It is a very different reality today from those days where farmers have to buy seeds or the government has to give them seeds to plant.
The problem we have today is that the seeds have now been genetically modified and they do not last long.
It is depressing that some of these genetically modified seeds can only be planted for one season.
If a farmer tried to plant these seeds again, they would not germinate. In the past, African societies had seeds for different plants that were of good quality and therefore they would be kept for future use in the granaries.
Without interference from science, we would still have our original varieties and I do think that Africans would have fought better ways of dealing with crop farming to produce high yields and also the different diseases.
In the field of communication, Africans had invented the drums that were used for informing people about the different events in the society like a meeting, death announcement and even wedding ceremonies.
If left untouched, then by now the African continent would have already invented sophisticated technologies used for communication.
I do believe that we would have invented the telephone, televisions and even social media. Guess what, we would have a Mark Zuckerberg coming out of Africa and how would that be.
May be even our communication technologies would be better than Facebook, Google and others out there.
The question is, what kind of technologies would we have invented for communication?
Truth is I do not know. Politically, Africans were already organized and we had kings and chiefs that ruled our societies, made decisions on behalf of their people.
Europeans were shocked to find an organized mornachy in Buganda when they arrived. That was the morale of our political advancement.
I ask again, how would Africa have been if it was left untouched?
I have no idea and I do believe no one has an idea but what I know is that since we had the resources inform of raw materials, we would have developed technologically and improved this continent in anonymous ways.
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