Most times when you talk about imperialism and colonization in Africa, the European empires are in a very bad light. So my question is, is this justified?
Was colonialism bad for Africa and the countries that emerged from it? I mean Ethiopia was colonized for a very short period of time and you can see it's not the shining beacon of light in Africa, while South Africa that was colonized by the British for a very long period of time is definitely not a failure of a country.
So this is not a terribly black and white question. There will be people who say it was unequivocally awful, while others will say that there were numerous benefits and that overall this was a positive thing.
In my mind, the best way to answer the question, at least as a place to start answering the question comes from Fred Cooper's Africa Since 1940 (I wrote a post about it yesterday here)
Cooper's book lays out the ways that different anti-colonial movements manifested throughout the continent (well throughout sub-Saharan Africa, there is a debate in the community as to whether North Africa is a part of Africa when we talk about the continent as a whole). By using a variety of examples from across the continent, he constructs what he calls the "Gatekeeper Theory."
The Gatekeeper theory, to take from my previous post, basically states that "the colonial governmental structures in Africa were set up as exploitative ventures, both in terms of resources and human capital. With the sudden rush of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, states became self-governing, but the the methods of government remained exploitative, thus leading to the extreme corruption issues."
To apply this to your question, yes, Europeans undoubtedly brought new things to Africa that had positives effects, from medicine to technology, but the most lasting impact comes through the structures of government they left behind. Power was centrally located and focused and the apparatuses to distribute wealth towards public works projects or even infrastructure and food programs just did not exist. Thus, despite Africans now leading these countries, they were, for the most part, leading through similar exploitative methods. Unfortunately African history in the 20th century is littered with populist rulers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who came to power and began to show signs of despotism.
So was it really bad? Yeah, yeah it was. There were some positives, but the negative was and is rather all encompassing.
And just to touch on your Ethiopia v. South Africa point, its very difficult to compare a landlocked country that, while it was not formally colonized, was certainly occupied (by the Italians), and a diverse coastal settler colony through which international sea trade from Europe to Asia had to go through for centuries.