Africa and the global order: fighting against its past

But Africa remains the "forgotten continent", according to Rabia Balewa of development group Abantu. "Africa disappears from the agenda unless there is a disaster. There is a tendency to always view the continent in negative terms, even when there is something positive happening there," she said.

EU officials working in the field echo this concern. "Africa gets less and less attention," said one. "There is a widespread view that it is nothing more than a bunch of countries fighting each other."

"Leaders aim to put 'forgotten continent' top of the agenda"

In the global political and economic order dominated by the West, the continent continually overlooked as a stake player has been Africa.

Often described as the "forgotten continent", leaders of 53 African countries gathered at the China-Africa summit recently in Beijing to work with the continent's biggest investor and supporter to help build a new Africa with its 1.4 billion people - about the same as China - overcome the underdevelopment and poverty that has blighted the potential of 18% of the world's population.

Described by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the "largest diplomatic event" the country has hosted in recent years with the highest attendance of foreign leaders, the summit focused on industrialisation, agriculture, infrastructure, education, health and a host of other sectors important to the region's development.

Besides the individual country and project agreements, the most important outcomes for the "forgotten continent" include:

• China's duty-free tariff treatment to 100% of the tariff lines of products from 33 African countries
• China's 360 billion yuan in financial support to Africa over the next three years
• Joint initiatives covering learning, trade, industrial chain cooperation, connectivity, development cooperation, healthcare, rural revitalization and people's wellbeing, people-to-people exchanges, green development, and common security.

Western media have been quiet or dismissive of the summit with many consigning the news to an inconspicuous section of the paper or stressing how China has engineered the event to further enhance its access to Africa's raw materials and extend its 'baleful' influence over Africa.

West: primary factor in Africa's underdevelopment

This reticence is to be expected. The historical record is that Africa was never a "forgotten" continent though labelled as such. In the last two centuries, multiple European nations including the most powerful at their time - Belgium, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal - scrambled, conquered and divided up Africa in their 'new' imperialism aimed at exploitation of African labour and natural resources. They left behind traumatised communities, plundered economics, artificial states and recurring cycles of violence, poverty and authoritarianism whose effects are still to be found today. The same too happened with aboriginal communities in Australia as their marginalisation and cancellation continues in many aspects of mainstream Aussie society and life.

Africa was never "dark", "mysterious" or "forgotten" to Europe and Europeans. On the contrary, it was an open, much sought after and enduring source of loot and countless wealth. Estimated by some economic historians to run into the hundreds of trillion dollars simply in monetary value, this colonial extraction which wrecked the societies of pre colonial Africa has played a key part in laying the foundation for the affluent modern Europe as we know it today but which many Europeans and other people in the West appear oblivious of.

This history is one that has been glossed over or omitted by Europe and its United States and other allies in their efforts at neo-colonial exploitation of Africa. What we see is continuing pressure to ensure that Africa remains tied to the west in whatever changes take place, especially in the mining, energy, transport and industrial sectors where western corporate interests have long been entrenched and where the colonial legacy with its poverty trap continues.