Tackling Africa's developmental dilemmas: Is globalization the answer?
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Date
2003-03
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Journal of Third World Studies
Abstract
The overall objective, is to examine the extent to which globalisation has impacted on state capacity, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. State capacity is narrowly construed as the ability to take autonomous decisions without undue covert or overt external promptings. It equally implies the capacity to choose from varying alternatives of development strategies or amend a given development paradigm to suit domestic conditions. I argue that it would take Africa several years to extricate itself from its deplorable development labyrinth on account of globalisation's conscious weakening of state-capacity. Globalisation has made national economic policy a weak regulatory mechanism of development in Africa. More often than not, national leaders present externally imposed or influenced policy decisions as policies originating from domestic deliberations. The reduced centrality of the state in public policy decision-making has, therefore, contributed to Africa's developmental dilemmas. It ought to be noted that from a historical perspective no state can develop if it is not capable; and if its power to take decisions is constricted by exogenous forces, the state's ability to develop becomes even more tortuous. This position is strengthened, by and large, by the growing developmental chasm between the North and the South, the inequity in the distribution of foreign direct investment in Africa, the mounting debts, the crushing weight of debt service, and the frightening erosion of state capacity. Therefore, if the processes of globalisation are to be of benefit to African development, then, the state must be seen to be in control but not subject to the whims and caprices of faceless external interests whose sole objective is the reaping of oligopoly profits. Since globalisation is assumed by its proponents to impact positively on development in general, the question arises as to the state of Africa's development since this phenomenon came to represent holus bolus all that is necessary to enhance African integration in the global economy and thereby ensure accelerated growth.