"During my 12 years in the US army, I got to work on 2 UN missions (what eye openners those were to the UN corruption) but the interesting thing is, I met a lot of educated black africans and all of them admitted they wished the empires had not left Africa. They were better off as colonies."
Not surprising in light of the monstrous regimes that sprung up in Africa after independence (Idi Amin, Mobutu, Bokassa, Mugabe, etc.). Actually I mentioned in my post that there were Empires that did a lot of good for the world. I.e. British Empire has overall quite a mixed record, but for a number of places in Africa it did a lot of positive things, like building Railroads, schools, bridges and providing world class education in its colonies.
Very true. Central Asia and the Caucus never lived so well as they did under the empire, even the Soviets, while the Russians (under the Soviets) in the core provinces (Russians, Ukrainians, Belaruss, N. Kazakstan) suffered. That explains why 1 million Georgians moved to Russia after the SU collapsed and Georgia became independent. I guess after everything it was Moscow feeding Tbilisi not Tbilisi feeding Moscow