Africa’s colonial encounter with Europe was the most disruptive in African development history. This chapter exposes the motivations for Europe’s colonisation of Africa, the methods used, and the implications of this encounter for the agriculture sector and Africa’s prospects of recovery and industrialisation. The aim is to highlight how Africa’s colonial past did not only alter the continent’s development trajectory but also to show how the same disrupted past can be revived as the basis for contemporary effort towards development. Based on secondary and archival sources obtained in both grey and academic literature, this chapter shows that land expropriation by Europeans not only disrupted livelihoods but also shattered prospects for autonomous development and industrialisation. Colonialism wrenched the means of production from Africans and turned them into cheap labour providers to serve Europeans. The chapter concludes that understanding Africa’s development and industrialisation challenges in the post-independence period is vital first to understanding the continent’s history.