During the "scramble for Africa," European nations divided the continent into dozens of territories. Each nation sent settlers and businessmen to discover the continent's resources, and their actions radically affected Africans. Does colonization benefit or hurt people who live in a colonized territory?

Generally speaking, colonization hurt people who live in a colonized territory because essentially, colonization led to the destruction of former economic and cultural models. Also, those who live in colonized territories (indigents) were mostly not permitted to express criticism, and were sometimes treated as sub-humans and reduced to forced labor by the colonial administrations, whose violence and cruelty were highly traumatizing to the people.