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Haiti and Africa, Long Before Columbus

Haiti always had a special relationship with Africa.  Contrary to popular belief, this special relationship did not start with the transatlantic slave trade; it actually started with the honorable trade in gold and agricultural products. According to Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, in They Came Before Columbus: African Presence in Ancient America, Haiti was the first Caribbean country to engage in pre-Columbian trade with Africa, where Africans cultivated the banana crop and established settlements in Haiti.  Dr. Van Sertima states that from 1307 to 1312, Abu Bakr III, Emperor of Mali, commissioned West African merchants, the Sarakole, who were also the founders of the ancient empire of Ghana, to establish trading posts in Haiti.

In these trading posts, the West African merchants introduced the gold trade and the art of alloying gold with copper and silver to the natives in Haiti. In addition to the gold trade, Van Sertima asserts that by 1462, West Africans and Haitians were involved in trading cotton in its natural state from Guinea, the birthplace of  Francois Mackandal and Jean-Jacques Dessalines as claimed by most historians.

Nevertheless, despite this lucrative interaction and transfer of good and services, Haiti and Africa ultimately became impoverished by transatlantic slave trade. With 80 percent of its population living in poverty, Haiti is now the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere. Due to the fact that Haiti exercises a free market economic system where agriculture is the main sector of Haiti’s economy, Haiti does not produce enough food crops and livestock to feed its people. Haiti imports 60 percent of the food it needs including 80 percent of the rice it consumes. Moreover, Haiti’s agricultural system has been devastated by environmental disasters.

Past environmental disasters, along with the advent of last fall’s Hurricane Sandy have flooded agricultural land in Haiti which resulted in the loss of corn, bean, and banana harvest where 3.3 million Haitians are without food. The 2010 earthquake with about 52 aftershocks measuring at 4.5 or greater injured about 3 million Haitians with an estimated of 230,000 people being killed, and 1 million rendered homeless. Moreover, roughly 250,000 residential areas and 30,000 commercial businesses were seriously damaged or destroyed.

As a result, various nations in Africa have pledged their financial and social support to Haiti. For instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo pledged $2.5 million to assist Haiti in recovering from the environmental devastation. In addition, the Senegalese government extended their land and universities as social safety nets where displaced Haitians could take shelter and reside. By 2011, the government of Haiti set forth a vigorous marketing campaign to attract foreign direct investment by way of Africa, where sustainable development and sovereignty could be injected and maintained

CONTINUES: http://www.haitiantimes.com/haiti-joins-the-african-union-a-special-relationship-endures/

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