What are the positive effects of imperialism in Africa?

If you were to call the effects of any kind of imperialism
as positive, it would be more in the sense of considering it to be the "white man's
burden" to civilize the developing world.

It cannot be
denied that in geographical areas around the World, like Africa, Asia, Australia, there
were only small states created by individual tribes and due to the result of the
animosity between them progress was slow and limited. But that was the situation that
Europe was in to start with, wasn’t it?

Imperialism never
had an objective of benefiting the areas that were being conquered. It was always done
in the quest of resources, like mineral wealth, land, laborers, resources from animals
and plants that were in short supply, etc.

If one were to
look at civilizations around the World before they were imperialized, a majority of them
had a great amount of knowledge of science, mathematics, technology, medicine, etc.
Examples abound to prove this.

Similarly, in Africa, though
one could say that progress has been limited to only a few nations and this was mainly
the effects of Imperialism, and in most of the continent the areas which have been freed
are now in a dire state, it would not be entirely correct to give Imperialism all the
credit.

If the continent had been left alone, eventually
the small states would have consolidated and grown larger; there would have been a
reduction in tensions between them; and the results helped by the immense natural
resources available in the continent would have resulted in tremendous
progress.