This year, 2022, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. This paper revisits this seminal text and asks whether the book is now merely a historical document or whether it has any contemporary relevance. The discussion reconstructs Rodney’s main arguments and the extent to which Western colonial capitalism, which started with Western Europe, suffocated socio-economic productivity in Africa. It argues that the old problems that Rodney addressed in his book are still with us and have in many ways intensified over the years. Africa is more underdeveloped today than it was in 1972, shattering the myth that Africa is developing. The paper concludes that the book is perhaps more relevant today than it ever was since it was published.