Reflecting on Africa and declining globalisation

There is some evidence that Africans continue to be outward-looking and internationally minded, unlike in the West where the British vote to exit the European Union and the surprising result of the recent US presidential election are a symptom of popular disenchantment with globalisation. Three things seem to bother the West that Africa is only beginning to wake up to: the disruptive force of globalisation, the decline of traditional work and the rise of populist nationalism. The apparent rise of populism is a direct consequence of globalisation, while the ostensible decline of traditional work is at the altar of technological advancement. This underlies the nationalist sentiments being fanned by right-wing political parties scapegoating immigration across Europe and the US. In the meantime, while there is lingering nationalism in Africa, including in the East African Community (sample the disunity playing out on the Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU), the decline of conventional work is still some way off. And this is despite the chipping away at work’s traditional foundations by the likes of Uber and the many digital business variants whereby goods, services and labour are being exchanged with little need for any intermediaries in premises of the brick and mortar model. On the other hand, one is not quite sure whether the nationalistic tendency in the region intent of integrating is populist or projections of governments yet to fully warm up to one another. What is discernible is that we are still in our infancy with all the optimism and pull of globalisation shining in our EAC and African eyes. Some evidence bears this out. Pollsters GlobeScan recently questioned more than 20,000 people in 18 countries, among them Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, to catch a glimpse of our perceptions of the global outlook as citizens of the world. More than half of those asked – 56 per cent on average in emerging economies, including the three African countries – saw themselves first and foremost as global citizens rather than national citizens. Nigeria topped at 73 per cent. The trend in the industrialised nations emphasised that a lot less than half of its population view themselves as global citizens, more so stoked by the right-wing populists to mistrust outsiders with fears on the impact their embrace will have on the welfare state. The irony is that the backlash against globalisation in the West may have been foreseen. A close reading of history shows that globalisation has tended to generate great prosperity with the global movement of goods, money and people. This was observed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth, as well as after the Second World War and again in the present. The prosperity has, therefore, been cyclical, with the only draw-back being persistently attendant rise in inequality that has led to the tumult of fierce resentment and anti-globalisation sentiments among the vast majority left behind in the prosperity: Note the “truism” that the minority rich elite have always tended to grossly benefit of globalisation’s good fortunes at the expense of the vast, toiling proletariat. The backlash is, therefore, not new, though there’s a change in migration patterns. Presently, as The Economist recently pointed out, the flow of people is slowing. Despite the flood of refugees into Europe, net migration from poor to rich countries decreased to 12 million between 2011 and 2015, down by four million from the previous five years. It also remarks on the continuing sharp fall in the price of capital goods, with the suggestion that the overall effect in places with large pools of cheap labour, such as India or Africa, they will find it harder to break into global supply chains, as China did so speedily and successfully. However, even as we appreciate that global “connections are fraying, tensions are spreading and my-nation-first populism is gaining,” history also reminds us that since the Second World War, few nations have escaped poverty without a huge lift from exports, and that raising trade barriers can only make it harder for developing countries to do that. For this reason Africans should continue to be outward-looking and internationally minded, even as they struggle to entrench their regional economic communities by removing the barriers between them.

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Reflecting on Africa and declining globalisation