TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 Statement Of The Problem
1.2 Purpose And Scope Of The Inquiry
1.3 Method Of Research
1.4 Literature Review
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 THE GLOBALIZATION PROCESS
2.1 The Historical Evolution Of
Globalization
2.2 Globalization In The Contemporary
Era
2.2.1 Concept Of Globalization
2.2.2 Basic Features Of Globalization
2.2.3 Current Framework Of
Globalization
2.2.4
Major Instruments Of Globalization
2.2.5
Key Players In Globalization
CHAPTER
THREE
3.0 IMPERIAL INFLUENCE ON AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT
3.1 Contextual Understanding Of
Development
3.1.1 Concept Of Development
3.1.2 Concept Of Underdevelopment
3.1.3 Concept Of Sustainable Development
3.2 Africa’s Development In
History
3.3 Stages Of Imperial Influence On African
Development
3.3.1 Slavery In Africa
3.3.2 Colonization In
Africa
3.3.3 Neo-Colonization In Africa
CHAPTER
FOUR
4.0 CRITICAL EVALUATION
4.1 Impacts Of Globalization On
Africa
4.1.1 Positive Impacts Of Globalization
4.1.2 Negative Impacts Of
Globalization
4.2 The Implications Of Globalization To
Sustainable Development In Africa
4.2.1 Economic
Implications
4.2.2 Political Implications
4.2.3 Social
Implications
4.2.4 Cultural
Implications
4.2.5 Environmental Implications
CHAPTER
FIVE
5.0 GENERAL CONCLUSION
5.1 Globalization With A Human Face
5.2 Africa’s Self-Determination
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER
ONE
GENERAL
INTRODUCTION
1.1
STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM
Human quest for sustainable development
can be traced back to the very onset of human existence. This explains why human history is replete with
various attempts by man to better his conditions at various points in time.
In
our own time, this noble quest has assumed a more generic status in an attempt
to transform the whole world into a global
village, where humanity would share a common developmental experience. This emerging global order, known as Globalization, is a continuous process
and no one can claim to possess a full knowledge of its dimensions or even to
exist outside its influence.
While
its proponents have stressed the opportunities and benefits of this phenomenon,
there is also increasing disillusionment towards it among many schools of
thought in both developed and developing nations. The rationale behind these changing
perceptions and attitudes includes lack of tangible benefits to most developing
countries especially those in Africa.
Hence,
there are myriads of questions that challenge the philosophy of globalization
and the authenticity of its numerous claims and promises. This explains why a critical inquiry into the
intricacies of the current globalization process is not only pertinent but also
inevitable.
1.2
PURPOSE
AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY
Expectedly,
many scholars have pondered and are still pondering on the overall effects of globalization
on the entire human race. These studies
are not only necessitated by the controversy hovering around the phenomenon, as
explained above, but by the apparent marginalization and increasing
impoverishment of its less privileged participants.
I,
therefore, wish through an existential inquiry into the dynamics and the
philosophical background of the current globalization process, to expose its
contents. This would then enable us to extrapolate its possible implications to
the quest for sustainable development in Africa.
As
a philosophical inquiry, this study would try to analyze the raison d’etre of the current
globalization process. My major contention is that sustainable development is
all about human beings and business is about ethics. Hence, the terminus ad quem of globalization should be the holistic
development of humanity in ways that are sustainable for people of all races
and for all generations.
1.3
METHODOLOGY
OF RESEARCH
I
wish to employ both expository and evaluative approach to this study. Thus, we shall delineate the philosophy of
globalization vis-à-vis the
existential status of Africa. These would
serve as the premises for extrapolating the implications of globalization to
African development.
In general, the work is made up of five chapters.
Chapter one offers a synoptic view of the entire work as well as the views of
various scholars on globalization. The second chapter exposes and examines the
concept and nature of globalization as it pertains to this study. The notion of
sustainable development and its current status in Africa
is discussed in chapter three, while the fourth chapter carefully extrapolates
the implications of globalization to sustainable development in Africa. Then, as a
finishing touch, the fifth chapter critically evaluates the whole intellectual
exposure.
With
genuine humility, I do not intend to undertake an exhaustive inquiry into this
topic: globalization and African development. Therefore, my research will be in
tandem with those already carried out by erudite scholars on the subject.
1.4 LITERATURE
REVIEW
Globalization
is certainly at the heart of the contemporary age as an indispensable factor in
its developmental process. Hence, our
effort in this brief literature survey is to explore how some scholars conceive
the globalization process vis-à-vis
its implications to sustainable development in Africa.
Obviously,
many scholars see globalization as a mere economic phenomenon, involving the
increasing interaction or integration of national economic systems through the
growth in international trade, foreign investments and trans-border capital
flow. However, one can also point to the
rapid increase in cross-border socio-cultural and technological exchange as
important and integral dimensions of globalization. In this light, Anthony
Giddens, a renowned sociologist, simply defined globalization as the
“decoupling of space and time.” He emphasized that through
instantaneous communication, knowledge and culture can be shared around the
world simultaneously.
This
idea is more explicitly portrayed by Rund Lubbers, a Dutch political economist,
who defined globalization as
A
process in which geographic distance becomes a factor of diminishing importance
in the establishment and maintenance of cross-border economic, political and
socio-cultural relations.
In
agreement with the afore-mentioned scholars, David Held and Anthony McGrew, in
their entry for Oxford Companion to
Politics, made a subtle attempt to characterize globalization and its
effects on socio-cultural as well as on political structures. They conceived
globalization as
A
process (or set of processes), which embodies a transformation in the spatial
organization of social relations and transactions, expressed in
transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction
and power.
Observably,
a common denominator here is the optimism of these scholars about
globalization. For them, it is a universal process of transforming humanity
into a single society or what Marshall McLuhan termed the global village.
This transformation, for Henry Alapiki, is usually accompanied by the
intensification of universal social relations “which link distant localities in
such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away
and vice versa.” In fact, Jan Scholte
expressed this view more elaborately when he wrote that:
Globalization
refers to processes whereby social relations acquire relatively distanceless
and borderless qualities, so that human lives are increasingly played out in
the world as a single place … Globalization is thus an on-going trend whereby
the world has - in many respects and at a generally accelerating rate – become
one relatively borderless social sphere.
While
these scholars view globalization from a “social relations” perspective, others
emphasize a more specific economic dimension. The tendency here is to view
globalization as a rapid increase in cross-border socio-economic exchange under
the conditions of capitalism. A typical
representative of this school is Prof. Oyejide who states that:
Globalization
refers to the increased integration, across countries, of markets for goods,
services and capital. It implies in turn
accelerated expansion of economic activities globally and sharp increases in
the movement of tangible and intangible goods across national and regional
boundaries. With that movement,
individual countries are becoming more closely integrated into the global
economy. Their trade linkages and investment flows grow more complex, and
cross-border financial movements are more volatile. More importantly, globalization has been
created, and continues to be maintained by liberalization of economic policies
in several key areas.
However, the
anti-globalization schools view the phenomenon as a worldwide drive towards a
universal economic domination by supranational institutions that are not
accountable to democratic processes or national governments. Thus, from the perspective of international
“political economy,” Aja Akpuru- Aja and A.C. Emeribe argue that:
The
engineering mechanism of globalization remains the revolution in science and
technology, particularly as it affects transportation and electro-communication
systems. The net result is the creation
of a global village, a single market system, a global factory and a global
office. One result of globalization is
grotesque and dangerous polarization between peoples and countries benefiting
from the system and those that are merely recipients and reactionaries of the
effects.
Against this
backdrop, one can rightly adduce that globalization seems to transcend mere
flow of trade or social relations to perpetrate some form of economic,
political and socio-cultural imperialism. This may imply a sort of
donor-recipient polarism. In this case,
globalization cannot be a benign force since it would certainly create a world
of winners and losers. This explains why
its implications to developing countries, especially those in Africa,
appear to be precarious.
Yet, the pro-globalization thinkers maintain that:
There
is mounting evidence that inequalities in global income and poverty are
decreasing and that globalization has contributed immensely to this turn around
… The gap between rich and poor is also shrinking with most nations in Asia and
Latin America. The countries that are
getting poorer are those that are not open to world trade, notably many nations
in Africa.
The
basic logic here is that poor countries that have lowered their tariff barriers
have gained increases in employment and national income.
Sequel
to this, the World Trade Organization argues that “trade liberalization helps
poor countries to catch up with rich ones and that this faster economic growth
helps alleviate poverty.” Succinctly put, Professor
Ron Duncan of the Australian
National University
argued point blank that:
Although
globalization may increase inequality in some countries, this can be remedied
with structural responses. A rise in
poverty among the poorest countries results from their not taking part in
globalization.
But
are we really to blame the poverty in Africa
and other under-developed countries on their abstinence from
globalization? Certainly this is not the
view of some thinkers, who maintain that globalization is even responsible for
the increasing impoverishment and marginalization of the so-called “Third World.” The most frequently used data are those
from the UNDP 1999 Development Report. This report shows that the past decade,
the decade of the most intense globalization, has shown increasing
concentration of income, resources and wealth among people, corporations and
countries.
Situating these findings to the African setting,
Yash Tandon, a Ugandan political scientist, argued that:
Anybody
with any degree of intellectual integrity would see that the globalization of
Africa or the integration of Africa into the global economy from the days of
slavery to the contemporary period of capital-led integration has on balance of
costs and benefits been a disaster for Africa, both in human terms and in terms
of the damage to Africa’s natural environment… it is also a measure of their
(World Bank/IMF officials) intellectual dishonesty or ideological brainwashing
that they cannot see the connection between globalization and Africa’s poverty.
This
judgment is in indeed harsh, but it seems to represent the views of many
thinkers. For instance, Obiora F. Ike, a theologian and social philosopher,
affirms the veracity of this judgment when he questioned and answered thus: “Is
globalization good for Africa’s future? Not at
all. I would argue that its present form
has been exaggerating the gap between Africa
and the so-called developed world.”
Thus,
Mbaya Kankwenda, a Congolese scholar, concludes that:
Globalization has
a strong dogmatic and doctrinal dimension.
In this respect it concerns the globalization of market fundamentalism
and its paradigm, which in reality is nothing but the keeping in step of
developing countries, hence Africa, taking the continent as an object rather
than a subject and partner.
This
is why he considers the globalization of Africa
as a forced insertion into the global community through developmental aid
conditionalities, resulting in harsh economic and political reforms in Africa.
Surely,
the Church is not passive to the dialectics of globalization since it sees
humanity as a single family. Thus, in Centesimus Annus the church opines that:
It is necessary
to break down the barriers and monopolies, which leave so many countries on the
margins of development and to provide all individuals and nations with the
basic conditions, which will enable them to share in development. (Centesimus
Annus, no. 35).
This
view was expressed in the caveat by Pope Benedict XVI (while a cardinal), that:
“The economic inequality between the northern and southern hemispheres of the
globe is becoming more and more an inner threat to the cohesion of the human
family.”
The danger of this threat is already portrayed in the new forms of
terrorism in the international arena, which paradoxically are the products of,
as well as a problem to globalization.
However,
the Church appears to be very optimistic about the possibility and advantages
of globalization, since its dangerous tendencies can be easily eschewed. Thus, in his 2004 World Day of Peace Message,
Pope John Paul II repeatedly stressed the fundamental but very simple principle
that must guide all our reflections on globalization. According to him,
Humanity, however much marred by
sin, hatred and violence, is called by God to be a single family … this
recognition can give the world as it is today - marked by the process of
globalization - a soul, a meaning and a direction.
He,
therefore, expresses optimistically that: “Globalization, for all its risks,
also offers exceptional and promising opportunities, precisely with a view to
enabling humanity to become a single family, built on the values of justice,
equity and solidarity.” In this way,
the Church addresses the question of globalization and its effects on the unity
and sustainable development of humanity.
As
can be deduced from the above expressions, the Church is especially concerned
about inequalities as well as the alienation of individuals and communities
from economic and social progress.
Indubitably, these seem to summarize the major predicament of Africa in the current globalization process.
To
this extent, we have tried to highlight the views of various schools of thought
on globalization vis-à-vis its
impacts on Africa. Certainly they contribute
to our understanding of the phenomenon.
Yet, it is obvious that more elucidations are still necessary for us to
appreciate the existential implications of the current globalization process
towards sustainable development in Africa. This will be our pre-occupation in the
subsequent chapters.
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