GLOBALIZATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

GLOBALIZATION
AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

(A
Dialectical Inquiry)

 

TABLE OF CONTENT

Title
page……………………………………………………………………….

Certification…………………………………………………………………….

Dedication…………………………………………………………………….

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….

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.”[1]  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.[2]

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.[3]

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.[4]
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.”[5] 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.[6]

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.[7]

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.[8]

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.[9]

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.”[10] Succinctly put, Professor
Ron Duncan of the AustralianNationalUniversity
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.[11]

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.[12]

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.[13]

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.”[14]

 

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.[15]

 

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).[16]

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.”[17]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.[18]

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.”[19]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.