I will agree with you about the state of Africa, however, before significant Euro/Western interference (which did indeed cause damage like the relatively recent Benin Expedition) there was much damage done by Islam. That said, as I understand it, pre-European but post-Islamic Ethiopia was a terrible place of civilization full of ethnic racism and slavery. In this regard, even the more developed parts of the continent were as terrible as other places in the world at the time, without foreign or Western influence.