Africa and the New Globalization

George Klay Kieh, Jr.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754671381
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317184539
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Globalization is not a new phenomenon in the international system. However, the various phases of globalization have had divergent scopes, actors, dimensions and dynamics - that is, each of the phases of globalization can be differentiated according to these terms. Against this background, this book focuses on the 'new globalization', a phase that emerged when the Cold War ended and which is, significantly, the most expansive and technologically advanced of all the phases of globalization. The contributors identify and discuss many of the frontier issues in Africa that are being impacted by the dynamics of this new globalization - debt, human rights, development, state sovereignty, the environment, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The volume will hold particular interest for students, scholars and researchers of African and development politics.

Chapter 1

Introduction: From The Old to the New Globalization

George Klay Kieh, Jr.

Introduction

The end of the Cold War witnessed the singing of a requiem for the previous global order and its attendant ideological rivalry that handcuffed cooperation and interdependence. The disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union robbed Stalinist socialism of its pre-eminent “heavyweight,” and removed the major ideological, economic, political and military-security barriers to the consolidation of the global capitalist order as the systemic suzerain. Thus, the stage was set for the consolidation of global capitalism in virtually every corner of the world. The emergent nascent global order referred to as the “new globalization” has taken the world by “storm,” since its inception in 1990. As Halliday (2001, p. 60) observes,” Globalization has become from the early 1990s onwards the central topic of debate in social sciences and in much public debate, in both developed and developing societies.” Similarly, as Kiggundu (2002, p. ix) notes,

Globalization has come to characterize the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new millennium. It makes and unmakes individuals, families, organizations, communities, and nation-states. Some think it will save the world; others are convinced it will destroy it.

The new globalization has unleashed a whirlwind in virtually every area of human endeavor. For example, there is the dawning of new technologies, dramatic medical advances, an information explosion, and a rapidly growing global economy (Watch Tower, 2000, p. 2). Adams et al. (1999, p. 1) capture the essence of the cascading effects of the new globalization thus:

Globalization is the defining characteristic of our time. The modern system of independent nation-states and distinct national economies is being replaced by a single transnational political economy. Power and authority are steadily shifting to global institutions and corporations. National governments have seen their sovereignty and control over domestic political and economic affairs rapidly diminished.

In effect, the dominant thinking in development today sees globalization as a matter of life or death for less developed countries (Heredia, 1997, p. 383). If embraced, it is argued, globalization will quickly propel developing nations into modernity and affluence; if resisted, it will either crush them or throw them by the way side (Heredia, 1997, p. 383). The bottom line is that the new globalization makes and unmakes individuals, families, organizations, communities, and the nation-states (Kiggundu, 2002, p. ix). Some think it will save the world; others are convinced it will destroy it (Kiggundu, 2002, p. ix).

However, on the other hand, the new globalization is confronted with daunting challenges. There is burgeoning increase in the incidence of civil wars and the associated humanitarian crises. Particularly, in the case of Africa, this reflects a deepening crisis of the neo-colonial state. By the year 2020, non-communicable diseases are expected to account for seven out of every ten deaths in the developing regions, compared with less than half today (Watch Tower, 2000, p. 2). Some experts claim that by 2010, 66 million few people will be alive in the 23 countries with the most severe AIDS epidemic (Watch Tower, 2000, p. 2).

Against this background, the purpose of this chapter is three-fold. First, the chapter will examine the nature, dynamics and effects of the old globalization on Africa. The rationale is to situate the new globalization in Africa within the appropriate historical crucible. Second, the objectives of the book will be discussed. Third, the various chapters in the book will be summarized.

The Old Globalization

Background

The old globalization developed in three major phases concurrent with the evolution of the international capitalist order. The motor force was the union of industrial and bank capital into monopoly capital and its spillover across the boundaries of European states, and the consequent creation of a world order which closely linked the economies of various countries (Nnoli, 2003, p. 1). The first phase, which Roskin and Berry (2002, p. 259) refer to as the “Victorian globalization,” started in 1960 and declined in 1914. This initial phase was the formative epoch of the global capitalist order. It commenced with the inception of the industrial revolution. The resultant technological capacities introduced by the industrial revolution boosted economic production unprecedented in the annals of human existence. The productive process requires the availability of raw materials and markets to sell the products. In turn, these imperatives necessitated efforts to expand the ambit of the Euro-centric international system, the undertaking of colonial and imperialist adventures in the developing world and the efforts to promote global trade. The imposition of colonialism on the peoples of the Third World was the highlight of the project of conquest and control. However, the formative phase was aborted by the eruption of the First World War.

The end of the First World War witnessed the intensification of efforts to complete the formation of the international capitalist order and to extend its tentacles to virtually every corner of the globe. Accordingly, the signing of the Versailles Treaty in 1919 commenced the expansionist phase of the old globalization. This era witnessed efforts to create a “global village” principally through the acceleration of trade and investment. However, the “Great Depression” and the Second World War derailed the expansionist phase of the old globalization.

With the end of the Second World War in 1945, the second phase of the old globalization began. This epoch was propelled by improvement in communications, increased international investments, especially by American corporations in Western Europe and increased trade. The second phase (1945–1990) had several distinctive features. At the vortex of the emergent global political economy was capitalist suzerainty, despite the ideological challenge posed by Stalinist socialism. In other words, the capitalist mode of production and its attendant structures, relations and processes constituted the kernels of the overarching framework of the old globalization. Another major feature was the reconfiguration of global power relations: Power shifted from continental Europe to the United States and the Soviet Union, as the two superpowers. The two superpowers became locked in an intense rivalry for global domination. The rivalry occasioned, inter alia, the burgeoning increase in the global arms race, including the two superpowers’ respective nuclear arsenals. Similarly, both superpowers engaged in unprecedented arms transfers especially to client regimes and groups. Also, the superpower rivalry had a deleterious impact on the promotion of international cooperation, since states were forced to align with one power bloc or the other. Ultimately, the globalization project was handicapped by the existence of two competing international economic systems: The global capitalist and the global Stalinist socialist systems. The former, which was under American leadership, had several major features. Trade in the “American orbit” was conducted under the framework of the Generalized Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Also, financial and economic relations were managed through the “Bretton Woods Institutions” comprising the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) or the “World Bank Group.” By the 1950s, the ambit of the capitalist sphere was expanded to incorporate the emerging independent states in the periphery. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) served as the “security shield” against the Soviet Union and its allies. On the other hand, the Stalinist socialist system was under Soviet leadership. It primarily consisted of the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Union states. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) served as the framework through which economic relations between and among the members states were coordinated. At the military-security level, the Warsaw Treaty Organization served as the countervailing force to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The old globalization ended in 1990, with the collapse and subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union. Also, the various Soviet client states in Central and Eastern Europe abandoned the Stalinist socialist path to development and decamped to the American-led capitalist bloc. Moreover, even China, the self-appointed guardian of so-called “pure scientific socialism” shifted its mode of production from “Maoist socialism” to capitalism. The end of the second and final phase of the old globalization came with the end of the ideological rivalry between capitalism and Stalinist socialism.

Africa and the Old Globalization

Africa’s relations with the old globalization proceeded in various stages. Africa’s initial contact with the old globalization was made in the sixteenth century through trade relations with various European imperial agents. From their inception, Afro-European relations were conducted under a framework of unequal exchange and exploitation, prompting Palmberg (1983, p. 5) to characterize these relations as “the extension of [European] piracy that was going on along the Mediterranean coast.” Basically, the Europeans traded inferior goods that were no longer marketable in Europe for high quality African goods. The resultant “system of unequal exchange” was propelled by the European traders’ abilities to cajole and deceive backed by their reliance on their home countries’ repository of force.

Enticed by the lucrative nature of the “system of unequal exchange,” the Europeans made the determination that Africa was endowed with substantial human capital. Hence, based on the exigencies of their dominant feudal mode of production, especially the need for physical labor, the Europeans decided to use African slave labor. Accordingly, the Europeans established a diabolical slave system replete with the trappings of cruelty, barbarity, exploitation and abuse as the dues ex machina for obtaining cheap labor from the continent. Importantly, the slave system was designed to rob Africa of the cream of its human capital; thus, the Europeans focused on Africans between the ages of 16–25. Operationally, the Europeans used various methods. One major instrumentarium was kidnapping. Like brigands and criminal gangs, the Europeans roamed various communities on the continent and abducted young men and women. Another method was so-called “purchasing.” Under this arrangement, Europeans “bought “African as slaves from African political elites. Importantly, the impetus for the establishment of the slave selling industry in Africa was provided by the European slave traders. That is, to use the capitalist parlance, the European slave traders’ “demand” for slaves stimulated the “supply” in Africa.

So, Africans who were kidnapped and “purchased” by European slave traders were chained and packed into ships bounded for Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean to work as slaves on various European-owned plantations. Given the horrendous conditions, scores of Africans died during the journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Similarly, against the backdrop of the inhumane conditions on the various plantations, thousands of Africans also died. Significantly, those Africans who survived the recurrent cruel and inhumane treatment provided the free labor that was epicentral to the production of the wealth that constructed European states and the United States.

Excited by the immense profitability of the “system of unequal exchange” and slavery, the Europeans decided to formally colonize Africa. But, there was a major conundrum: Since the European states had data about the economic topography of Africa, all of them were desirous of colonizing these lucrative areas. Accordingly, fierce competition emerged based on a “zero sum game”. As Fetter (1979, p. 7) argues, “By 1884, competition for the … territories of Africa had become so intense that the rulers of the colonizing nations concluded that it was necessary to regulate the process of annexation by international agreement.” Accordingly, under the German-French initiative, the various colonial and imperialist powers met at the Berlin Conference (1884–1885) to develop a framework for regulating the process of territorial conquest and annexation in Africa. Under the framework appropriately dubbed the “scramble for Africa,” the various colonial and imperialist powers carved up the territories of Africa in a manner akin to hunters dividing meat after a hunting expedition.

Having carved up African territories, the imperialists sent armies to Africa in order to turn the boundaries on their maps into frontiers on the ground (Birmingham, 1995, p.3). Owners of the land who resisted the arrival of the self-styled force of “civilization” were to be “pacified “by conquest (Birmingham, 1995, p. 3). With the process of territorial conquest and annexation completed, the imperialist powers than established what Kieh (2007, p. 3) calls the “Berlinist state.” Although the “Berlinist state” had variations – Belgian, British, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish –, its single raison d’etre was to serve as the “Leviathan” for facilitating imperialist plundering and pillaging of Africa. The Berlinist state had several core features, prominent among which was its absolutist character. Ake (1996, p. 2) provides a comprehensive summation of the pedigree of the totalitarian colonial state:

The colonial state redistributed land and determined who should produce what and how. It attended to the supply of labor, sometimes resorting to force labor; it churned out administrative instruments and legislated taxes to induce the breakup of traditional social relations of production, the atomization of society; and the process of proletarianization. It went into the business of education to ensure that workers could do the jobs they were required to perform and would remain steadfast in the performance of their often tedious and disagreeable tasks…Indeed, it controlled every aspect of the colonial economy tight to maintain its power and domination to realize the economic objectives of colonization.

Despite the ubiquity and brutality of the colonial state, Africans in the various colonies organized broad-based movements as the vehicles for waging the struggle for independence against the colonialists and the imperialists. The struggles assumed several forms in the various colonies – ranging from protest to the armed struggle. Characteristically, the colonial and imperialist powers responded to the agitation for independence with increased repression. However, a confluence of factors – the toll of the pro-independence struggles; the devastation visited on the economies of the imperialist powers by World War Two; the consequent domestic pressure within the various imperialist powers urging a shift in focus form empire building and maintenance to national reconstruction; and the shift in the global “balance of power” from Europe to the United States and the Soviet Union – forced the imperialist powers to give up their respective colonies. Accordingly, the 1960s was Africa’s annus mirabilis evidenced by the wave of “flag independence” that began to sweep across the continent. However, the Portuguese remained intransigent in their refusal to dismantle their colonial empire on the continent, until 1975.

Significantly, the end of colonialism did not mean the end of imperialist control over the continent. As Okigbo (1993, p. 29) observes, “Having lost direct authority… the colonial powers sought to retain colonial control through a series of undeclared protocols: economic and political ties and traditions linking the colonial territories to the metropolis…” Within the broader context, the newly independent African states were formally incorporated into the “old globalization” as peripheral players with the continuing responsibility of serving as plantations for the production of raw materials – agricultural, mineral and oil – to cater to the insatiable appetite of the industrial-manufacturing complexes of the metropolitan powers. Domestically, with very few exceptions, the newly emergent ruling classes within the various African states failed to deconstruct, rethink and democratically reconstitute the colonial state. Instead, they adopted the colonial state in its neo-colonial incarnation.

Overall, the “old globalization” robbed Africa through its insidious “system of unequal exchange,” slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Specifically, African was stripped of the human and material resources exigent for national development. Instead, these resources were stolen by the imperialist powers and used to promote development in their respective countries. So, during the “old globalization,” in dialectical terms, the underdevelopment of Africa facilitated the development of European states and the United States. In essence, with the collusion between the Africa ruling classes and their patrons in the metropolis, the “old globalization” was pivotal to the development of the multifaceted crises of underdevelopment that engulfed the continent from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The Transition to the “New Globalization”

Background

As has been indicated, the “new globalization” emerged beginning in 1990, replacing the “old globalization.” The transition was necessitated by the various changes that were taking place in the international system. At the vortex was the phenomenal advancement in technology and its consequent impact on virtually all spheres of human activities. The other major factors included the end of the Cold War and the so-called “triumph” of capitalism; the absence of a global challenge to capitalist hegemony; the availability of the old “Soviet sphere of influence” and the People’s Republic of China for incorporation into the global capitalist system; and the resultant emergence of “new enclaves” to serve the profit-maximization agendas of multinational corporations and the other suzerains of the international capitalist system. Against this background, the “old globalization” was deemed incapable of dealing with these new developments.

The Incorporation and Re-incorporation of African States into the Global Capitalist System

On the African continent, all of the states that were charting non-capitalist paths to development virtually crumbled under the “weight” of the “new globalization.” Accordingly, all of them adopted the peripheral capitalist mode of production and its associated political economy. As for the “old” peripheral capitalist African states, they were simply re-incorporated into the international capitalist order. Interestingly, outliers such as Mauritius and Libya that experimented with social democracy and Arab socialism respectively have also been fully incorporated into the international capitalist system. In short, all of the states in Africa have become appendages of the “newly globalized capitalist system.”

Against this background, the “new globalization” has set into motion the second phase of neo-colonial domination, plunder, pillage and exploitation in Africa. Given its unbridled hegemony, the “new globalization” is rendering African states incapable of designing and implementing their own independent national development agendas, and controlling the various transactions – economics, etc – that are taking place within their respective territories. To make matters worse, African states have failed to develop the requisite structures and policies to effectively tackle the multiple cascading effects of the “new globalization.” Even in cases where such architectures are developed, they tend to reinforce Africa’s subordinate role in the “international division of labor” and the other structures of the “new globalization.” For example, the “New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is a recipe for cementing the dependency relationship between the developed capitalist states and African states (Kieh, 2003). This is because NEPAD accepts the unjust international capitalist system and its vagaries as givens (Kieh, 2003). Unchallenged and emboldened by the subservience of the r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• About the Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgement
• 1 Introduction: From The Old to the New Globalization
• 2 The New Globalization: Scope, Nature and Dimensions
• 3 The African Debt Crisis and the New Globalization
• 4 Human Rights and the New Globalization in Africa
• 5 The Norms of Displacement: NGOs, Globalization and the State in Africa
• 6 State Sovereignty and the New Globalization in Africa
• 7 The Environment and the New Globalization in Africa
• 8 The New Globalization and HIV/AIDS in Africa
• 9 Weaving Together the Threads of the New Globalization: The Lessons
• Index