āCopper was Africa's chief mineral export. Being an excellent conductor of electricity, it became an indispensable part of the capitalist electrical industry. It is an essential component of generators, motors, electrical locomotives, telephones, telegraphs, light and power lines, motor cars, buildings, ammunition, radios, refrigerators and a host of other things. A technological era tends to be defined by the principal source of power. Today, we speak of a Nuclear Age, since the potential of nuclear power is shown to be immense. The Industrial Revolution in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries was the Age of Steam. In a parallel manner, the colonial epoch was the Age of Electricity. Therefore, the vital copper exports from Congo, Northern Rhodesia and other parts of Africa were contributing to the leading sector of European technology. From that strategic position, its multiplier effects were innumerable and were of incalculable benefit to capitalist development.
In the context of a discussion of raw materials, special reference must again be made to the military. African minerals played a decisive role both with regard to conventional weapons and with regard to the breakthrough to atomic and nuclear weapons. It was from the Belgian Congo during the second world war that the U.S.A. began getting the uranium, which was a pre-requisite to the making of the first atomic bomb. In any case, by the end of the colonial period, industry and the war-machine in the colonising nations had become so intertwined and inseparable that any contribution to one was a contribution to the other. Therefore, Africa's massive contribution to what initially appears as peaceful pursuits such as the making of copper wire and steel alloys ultimately took the shape of explosive devices, aircraft-carriers, and so on.ā
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