M.H.H. Nkunya
Greetings and Tributes from the 1st Annual Symposium of The Walter Rodney Foundation
Walter Rodney became best known for his masterpiece How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. This study was a manifesto of the generation. Indeed, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa epitomized the ‘Dar es Salaam School’. African initiative, choice and adaptation enshrined the clarion call for African independence. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa insisted that the world should be seen through the eyes of the oppressed themselves. Its purpose ‘…is to try to reach those who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation rather than to satisfy the standards set by our oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world.’ The key concept in the book is underdevelopment, the reproduction of unequal relationships on a national terrain. Underdevelopment makes sense only as a means for comparing levels of development. The force responsible for African poverty was colonialism.
Prof. M.H.H. Nkunya served as Chief Academic Officer at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.