Outward Bound, Tangled Nightmares: Rereading Globalization in Contemporary Nigeria

Abstract

Developments in the global economy since the 1980s have made significant inroads into the Third World. These have inevitably influenced the direction and extent of economic growth and social change in several developing countries. Thus, while the global flows of ideas, doctrines, philosophies and peoples have become central to any discussion of globalization and its inequalities, it is appropriate to note that some of the ideas and policies adopted in the wake of global flows have wrought a fundamental disequilibrium in the economy and societies of many developing countries. Unfortunately, all too often, developing countries have failed to grasp the peculiar nature of their economies, particularly the transmission mechanism of major macroeconomic variables (Ajayi 1989, p. 3).

Africans are patient and long-suffering to an extent probably unparalleled on earth, except in Buddhist countries. Indeed, anyone who knows the daily lives of most Africans must marvel that only 20 percent of the continent’s people are still in civil turmoil. And those wars are largely the result of small groups vying for control of a nation’s resources rather than mass movements of protests against unjust governments […]. But Africa has suffered grievously over the last 30 years. It has more than doubled its population and lost half its income. Disease is spreading. School attendance is dropping. Vaccination programs are sporadic. Food security is uneven […].

(Calderisi 2006, pp. 85–6)