[ChuckNorris89]

>Most European and U.S. consultants/business people that I met basically treated Africa as a lesser continent to be exploited.

Not just Africa. For US/Western Europe even their close Eastern European neighbors are seen as a lesser continent to be exploited.

An Austrian colleague kept boasting how his dad made a fortune buying illegally chopped wood from Ukraine.

That pretty much sums up how most of the western countries are wealthy today, by exploiting less fortunate countries.

Like you said, it's a modern form of colonialism except it's done with money instead of bullets.