For all his contradictions, inconsistencies, and sometimes outright blunders, one issue Blyden follows through with iron consistency is the belief in the need for Africa to move in the direction of modernity. And the modernity he has in mind is primarily Western. This view makes him support the European colonial enterprise wholeheartedly, assuming that it will bring Africa closer to the degree of civilization attained by the West.

In the collection West Africa before Europe, published in 1905, Blyden writes that imperialism is “deficient in spirituality… . Its most successful work for aliens must be on its material side. Well regulated police supervision, technical and industrial schools, hospitals and dispensaries, are its proper and more effective instruments for civilizing and building up backward races.”

Blyden believes that human nature is “everywhere the same. You will find everywhere the incapable, the indolent, and the lazy! ‘The dignity of labour’ is, I am afraid, only an ornamental phrase, without meaning in the eras of undignified humanity; and a very large proportion of the human race are unfortunately undignified.” Based on such premise, he writes the following unbelievable description of Africans:

This is the central prejudice of the colonial racist paradigm, the idea of the “lazy native,” which Blyden approvingly appropriated.

The “father of African nationalism,” the author of the idea of the “African Personality,” was pleading with European powers to “help” Africa move in the direction of achieving “development.”