Lord Frederick Lugard :Founder of Nigeria writes about the average African of his time

“In character and temperament, the
typical African of this race-type is a
happy, thriftless, excitable person.
LACKING IN SELF-CONTROL, DISCIPLINE,
AND FORESIGHT. Naturally courageous,
and naturally courteous and polite, full of
personal vanity, with little sense of
veracity, fond of music and loving
weapons as an oriental loves jewelry. HIS
THOUGHTS ARE CONCENTRATED ON THE
EVENTS AND FEELINGS OF THE MOMENT,
and he suffers little from the
apprehension for the future, or grief for
the past. His mind is far nearer to the
animal world than that of the European
or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the
animals’ placidity and want of desire to
rise beyond the State he has reached.
Through the ages THE AFRICAN APPEARS
TO HAVE EVOLVED NO ORGANIZED
RELIGIOUS CREED, and though some
tribes appear to believe in a deity, the
religious sense seldom rises above
pantheistic animalism and seems more
often to take the form of a vague dread
of the supernatural”
“HE LACKS THE POWER OF
ORGANIZATION, and is conspicuously
deficient in the management and control
alike of men or business. HE LOVES THE
DISPLAY OF POWER, but fails to realize
its responsibility… he will work hard with
a less incentive than most races. He has
the courage of the fighting animal, an
instinct rather than a moral virtue… In
brief, the virtues and defects of this race-
type are those of attractive children,
whose confidence when it is won is given
ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser
superior and without envy…Perhaps the
two traits which have impressed me as
those most characteristic of the African
native are HIS LACK OF APPREHENSION
AND HIS LACK OF ABILITY TO VISUALIZE
THE FUTURE.”

—Lord Frederick John Dealty Lugard, The
Dual Mandate, pg.70 (1926)
*sadly some of these traits are what keeps Africans from developing the continent