Question

what are the effect of colonialism in African societies

Answer 1

Although the European colonial intrusion into Africa had roots that stretched back to the Portuguese enclaves of the sixteenth century and the Dutch East India Company’s South African colony in the seventeenth century, the colonization of the continent as a whole could be said to have begun with the French invasion of Algeria in 1830; it lasted until Namibian independence in 1990.
Within this 160-year time span, European governments both consciously and unconsciously caused massive changes in African politics, economies, societies, cultures, and religions.

In keeping with nineteenth–century ideas about the role of government, European powers in Africa set up administrations whose main focus was the maintenance of order rather than any type of economic or social development.
At the same time, there was a notion that the colonies should be made to pay for themselves; European powers wanted the colonies but did not want them to become economic burdens.
As a result, during the early years of colonialism European governments either kept relatively small colonial staffs or contracted out the duties of governance to chartered companies (as with the British Royal Niger Company in northern Nigeria).
In either case, the European administrations needed to make alliances with elite groups in the colonial population to ensure effective governance (e.g., the Barotse in Northern Rhodesia, the Baganda in Uganda, the Fulbe in northern Nigeria, and the coastal Swahili peoples in German East Africa).
These types of alliances had the effect of favoring certain groups over others, often creating or exacerbating ethnic and tribal divisions (e.g., Belgian support of the Tutsi vis-à-vis the Hutu in Rwanda and Burundi).
They also resulted, in many instances, in the creation of a privileged class from which the colonial governments drew their indigenous administrators, police, interpreters, and clerks.

While a small minority of peoples were privileged by colonial rule, a vast majority suffered.
Groups that refused to cooperate with the colonial regime, as well as traditional enemies of the now-privileged groups, quickly found themselves frozen out of the power structure in the colonies.
Examples of groups who resisted, rather than cooperated with, colonial rule are numerous.
The Ndebele and Mashona in Southern Rhodesia revolted against the white colonizers several times in the late nineteenth century; these groups lost their lands and were forced onto reservations, often deprived of their livestock, where they lived in new circumstances in societies broken up as a result of war and forced migration.
In Uganda, British favoritism toward the Baganda met with resistance from the latter’s traditional enemies, the Bunyoro; British rule included giving Bunyoro lands to the Baganda, deposing the Bunyoro ruler, and insisting upon the Bunyoro appointing Baganda administrators.
In German Southwest Africa (Namibia), the Herero revolt resulted in two-thirds of the Herero population being killed, all their lands seized by the colonial state, and the government forbidding survivors to own livestock...