My blog taday talked a little bit about the globalization of Africa and its effects on the devestated African economy. I went onto a couple web sites and this was the information I found…
For the most part, the experts agree that its cruicial that Africa must globalize in order to truelly rise from poverty, but that the methods of globalization must occure in a slow process, drasticlly different to that which has occured in the past.
This is difficult for several reasons. First of all, Africa does have a long history of globalization, manifesting itself through the vehicle of imperialism, arguable up the present day. This lends to a natural distrust of outsiders, often justifyably. One example of this is the affects of the oil industry in Nigeria which left the African nation with both poor working conditions, and enviornmental conditions so devestated that even clean drinking water is hard to come by. Within recent history, Africa has moved from having a food surplus, to becomming food deficient, the affects of industry bieng a major factor in this transformation. Clearly, industry will not always regulate itself. Imperialism has also set up a political and ecconomic climate where neither a truely African ecconomic base nor political autonomy really formed. The resulting instability tends to ward away any true ecconomic gains. Autonomy of the African nations is a chief concern in dealing with globalization. It is only through autonomy that long term political and ecconomic stability can occur, creating the road way for possitive globalization. These changes, along with increased education, will alow africa to to follow in the footsteps of Asia.
Right now African ecconomies are enacting reforms; streamlining their trade and currency through intercontinental organizations, and focusing on exporting basic goods such as food. While organizations such as the UN reccomend outside aid and trade (hey, that rhymes), thay also reccomentd that this be secondary to exports and inter continental trade. People nead job security, even in Africa.
I havn’t yet read what Friedman has to say about third world countries and the developing world, it will be interesting to see his perspective. Comments? Questions? Please respond
sgreenla said,
September 11, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Nice blog posting! What were the websites you looked at to get this information? One really book that addresses the question of poverty in Africa is Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty, which I have if you want to take a look I have in my office. It’s an interesting read.