Our discussion on Pan Africanism, Regional Integration and Markets, cannot proceed without a deep reflection on the global environment in which the integration efforts have to unfold. “Global environment” has its heart, the phenomenon of contemporary Globalization. Our major assertion today, is that contemporary Globalization has a constraining and debilitating effect on our efforts – which effect we must comprehend in its totality, and which we must decisively deal with. The discussion today provides the locational setting for the subsequent discussions on Pan Africanism, Regional Integration and Markets.
According to its supporters and proponent, Globalization refers to the “increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity”. It includes discussion of the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through the supposed reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import quotas. Globalization is further supposed to have contributed to economic growth in developed and developing countries through increased specialization and the principle of comparative advantage. The world, these points of view contend, has become a “global village”.
My friends and senior Compatriots (both now deceased) from the University of Dar es Salaam, Professors Mwesigwa Baregu and Chachage Chachage, did not agree. Prof. Baregu averred that the much vaunted “global village” remains in reality a “global jungle”. Prof. Chachage described the equally hyped “villagization” of the world, as its continued “pillagization”. More about this later.
The term “Globalization” was first employed in a publication entitled Towards New Education in 1930, to denote a holistic view of human experience in education. In the 1960s the term began to be used by economists and other social scientists. The term reached the mainstream press in the latter half of the 1980s. Since its inception, the concept of globalization has inspired competing definitions and interpretations, with antecedents dating back to the great movements of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean from the 15th Century onwards.
Not to be out done, the IMF in 2000 identified what they described as “four basic aspects of Globalization”:
Trade and Transactions: Developing countries increased their share of world trade, from 19 percent in 1971 to 29 percent by 1999 … But there is great variation among the major regions. For instance, the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) of Asia prospered, while African countries as a whole performed poorly …
Capital and Investment Movements: Private capital flows to developing countries soared during the 1990s, replacing “aid” or development assistance which fell significantly after the early 1980s. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) became the most important category …
Migration and Movement of People: In the period between 1965-90, the proportion of the labor forces migrating approximately doubled. Most migration occurred between developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) …
Dissemination of Knowledge (and Technology): Information and Technology exchange is an integral aspect of globalization …
Now, to the views of Professors Baregu and Chachage, we must add those of Prof. Stephen Gill, in “International Political Economy”, 1996. “Globalization” is not some “neutral” or “evenhanded” process of “increasing interdependence” or “integration” of world economies.
Contemporary globalization, (according to Prof. Gill)), can specifically be traced to the “onset of the global economic crisis in the early 1970s, subsequent to which a particular model of capitalist development – Anglo-American and neo-liberalist – has tended to prevail on a world scale. This has been more so since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Globalization from the point of view of revolutionary political economy, has had in its essence:
The information technology revolution of the last decade or so …
Neo-liberal discourse and triumphalism promoting a Social Darwinist (survival of the fittest) reconfiguration of priorities, policies and outcomes …
The promotion, (via the World Trade Organization), etc., of “Free Trade – meaning the removal of all barriers to trade and investment. This is given the lie by a fundamental protectionism and unfair trading practices on the part of the United States, the European Union, Japan, etc., – undermining AGOA, the Cotonou Agreement and any other openings given to the poor countries by the rich countries …
Intensification of cutthroat international competition, not only between firms, but states as well – in their ability to attract and retain flows of mobile capital and investment …
The attempts to address the resultant conflicts have been dominated by corporate interests, mainly from the G-8 countries. The major thrust of negotiations here, has been the reinforcement of the property rights and entry/exit options of transnational corporations …
The agricultural negotiations, similarly, have been conducted in ways, which are designed to protect wealthy agro-business in the rich countries …
The conditionalities of the Structural Adjustment Programs, which include deregulation of currency markets, privatization of public enterprises, retrenchment of public employees, cuts in welfare programs, etc. …
Cultural domination of the world by Western values, including the emergence of the English language as the world’s lingua franca …
Our states therefore, remain largely creatures of the world market … We remain largely producers of essentially unprocessed products, a source of free or cheap raw materials, slave or cheap labour and a market for manufacturers … Our products are subject to permanently volatile prices on the world market …
Worse, this continuing vertical integration into the world economy via the export of primary products has had the effect of locking up the African population in the country side, in rural peasant enclaves around the production (no value addition) of commodities like coffee, cotton, tea, tobacco, etc., for the world market. The point here is not simply the production and reproduction of a cyclical and structural poverty. It is also the maintenance of a mother bed for the production and reproduction of localism, provincialism, parochialism and sectarianism of the worst kind …
This militates against the national integration of the nascent statal formations created by Colonialism … It is also the material basis for the production and reproduction of a flabby and fragmented political class and elite, with no sense of responsibility or allegiance to the emerging Common Good …
Next week, we look at hard headed Pan Africanism, Regional Integration and new Internal Markets – the key out of the dilemma, and trigger to the fundamental and qualitative transformation of Mother Afrika.
K. David Mafabi
Senior Presidential Advisor/Political Affairs (Special Duties)
State House
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