Preface and acknowledgements

Abstract

5 Preface and Acknowledgements Is globalization beneficial to Africa? Does it open infinite opportunities for economic growth, development and social transformation of the continent? So far, the controversy regarding globalization’s implications for the continent has raged from platforms whereAfrican voices are drowned byan orchestrated chorus of voices of academics, politicians and technocrats from the developed world who parade policy corridors of African states as experts, combining the role of advocates as well as public policy doctors prescribing solutions to African governments. A common prescription for the development crisis facing the continent is that African governments must pursue policies that would effectively adjust their economies into the global economy. The alternative to adjustment to the logic of the global economy is the calamitous collapse of the continent’s economy, political and social institutions. Clearly, the triumph of the Western idea of human progress is forcefully articulated by Western scholars who dominate existing spaces for research and scholarship, and marginalize African voices. African researchers and scholars are unable to compete effectively on this global stage with alternative diagnoses of Africa’s development crisis, enunciate alternate thinking about the continent’s condition, and propose alternative paradigms for solving the crisis. Hence, the relevant academic and policydiscourse persistentlyrepresent globalization as panacea to Africa’s development crisis. Its principal proponents conveniently ignore the fact that globalization benefits the most powerful; and leaves the weak ones in a quagmire of crisis. The contributions in this volume are intended to complement the emerging African voices in the discourse, academic and policy discourse, on globalization and Africa. The collection has had a long and chequered history. It was originally commissioned bytheAfricanAssociation of Political Science (AAPS) months before it went into coma. Since then several of the authors have had opportunity to revise and update their contributions. Others have not; because in the interregnum we lost contact. Preface and Acknowledgements 6 Globalized Africa I am grateful to AAPS for its initial support of this idea of an anthology interrogating globalization with respect to Africa. I must also commend the contributors for responding to the invitation to prepare a chapter for the collection, and to the good number of them who kept faith and in diverse ways encouraged this publication. I share their faith in the timeless value of the contributions. Kwame A. Ninsin May 9, 2012. ...