In the Global North, we still sometimes hear about the benefits of colonialism, how it brought roads and hospitals and schools to colonized regions, but this perspective is not supported by strong evidence. In 1950, life expectancy in Britain was sixty-nine. In Sierra Leone, after 150 years of colonial rule, life expectancy was under thirty, relatively similar to the life expectancy of premodern humans who lived five thousand or fifty thousand years ago. In general, colonial infrastructure was not built to strengthen communities; it was built to deplete them.
