4.1 Origin and Growth
4.2 Major goals and aims
4.3 Organsiational institutions of SADC
4.4 Problems of SADC
4.5 SADC and post Apartheid south Africa
5. ECOWAS
Introduction
5.1 General objectives
5.2 Problems of ECOWAS
5.3 ECOMOG
6. THE AFRICAN UNION
Introduction
6.1 Aims and objectives
6.2 An overview
6.3 Government of the AU
6.4 Human rights
6.5 Regional communities
6.6 Foreign Relations
6.7 Challenges and problems
6.8 The way Forward
7. GLOBALIZATION
7.1 Introduction and Background
Globalisation describes a process by which regional economies, societies and cultures have become integrated through a global network of communication, transportation and commerce. Economic globalisation refers to the integration of national economies into the international economic system through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flour, migration and the spread of technology. However, globalisation is usually recognised as being driven by a combination of economic, technological social-cultural, political and biological factors. The term can also refer to the translational circulation of ideas, languages or popular culture through a process of acculturation. The term, globalisation, though a new concept in the economic and literary world achieved a wide-spread use in the media by the late 1980s. since then, the concept of globalisation has inspired numerous competing definitions and interpretations dating back to the great movement of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean form the 15th Century1.
Globalisation is a widely used term that can be defined in a number ways. When used in an economic context, it refers to the reduction and removal of barriers between national borders in order to facilitate the flow of goods, capital, services and labour. Globalisation is not a new phenomenon. It began in the late 19th century but showed down following the World War I. The slow down was as a result to the in-ward looking policies pursued by a number of countries at the period in order to protect their respective industries. Globalisation however picked up rapidly from the mid 1970s. According to Saskia Sassen,
…A good part of globalisation consists of an enormous variety of micro-process that begin to de-nationalise what had been constructed as national whether policies, capital, political subjectivity, urban epaces, temporal frames or any other of a variety of dynamics and domains2…
Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute defines globalisation as
…The domination or elimination of State-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production that has emerged as a result…3
Thomas Friedman examined the impact of the fallowing of the world and argues that globalise trade, outsourcing, supply-chining and political forces have changed the world permanently, for better and Norse. He further argued that the pace of globalisation is quickening and will continue to have a growing impact on business organisations and practice4.
Takis foto populous holds the view that globalisation is the result of systematic trends manifesting the market economies’ grow-or die dynamic, following the rapid expansion of translational corporations. Because these trends have not been offset by counter endercies that could have emanated from trade union action and other forms of political activity, the outcome has been globalisation. This is a multi-faceted and irreversible phenomenon within the system of the market economy and it is expressed as (a) economic globalisation, namely, the opening and deregulation of commodity, capital and labour markets which led to the present form of neo liberal globalisation (b) political globalisation, which is the emergence of a trans national elite and the phasing out of the all-powerful nation-state of the statistic period, and (c) cultural globalisation, which involves a world-wide homogenisation of culture, they are ideological globalisation technological globalisation and social globalisation.
History of Globalisation: The historical origins globalisation remain the subject of debate. Some scholars place the origin of globalisation in the modern era while others regard it as phenomenon with a long history. Ander Gunder Frank, an economist of the dependency theory school holds the view that a form of globalisation has been in existence since the rise of trade links between the summer and the Indus valley civilisation in the third century5. an early form of globalise economy and culture existed during the Hellenistic age when commercialised urban centres were focused around the axis of Greek culture over a wide range that stretched form India to Spain with such cities as Alexandria, Athens and Antioch as its centre. Trade was wide-spread during this period, and it is the first time the idea of a cosmopolitan culture emerged. Others have perceived an early forum of globalisation in the trade links between the roman empire, the Pathian empire and the Han Dynasty. The increasing articulation of commercial links between these powers inspired the development of the silk Road, which started in western china, reached the boundaries of he Parthian Empire and continued onwards to Rome.
The Islamic golden age was also an important early stage of globalisation when Jewish and Muslim traders and employers established a sustained economy across the old world resulting in a globalisation of crops, trade, knowledge and technology. Globally significant crops such as sugar and cotton became widely cultivated across the Muslim world in this period wile the necessity of learning Arabic and completing the Haji created a cosmopolitan culture.
The advent of the Morgol Empire though destabilising to the commercial centres of the middle East and China greatly facilitated travel along the silk Road. This made it possible for travellers and missionaries to journey success fully from one end of Eurasia to the other. The so-called pax-mongolica of the 13th century had several other notable globalising effects. It witnessed the creation of the first international postal service as well as the rapid transmission of epidemic diseases such as bubonic plague across the newly united regions of central Asia6.
The Age of discovery brought a broad change in globalisation during the first period in which Eurasia and Africa engaged in substantial cultural, material and biological exchange with the new world. It began in the late 15th century when the two kingdoms of the Liberians peninsula-Portugal and Cas tile sent the first exploratory voages around the Horn of Africa and to the Americas discovery in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. The early 16th century saw Portuguese traders establish trading posts form Africa to Asia and Brazil to deal with the trade on local products like gold, species and timer. These traders introduced an international business centre made a rural monopoly, the House of India7.
Global integration continued with the European colonisation of he Americas initiating the Columbian exchange. This was a period of wide spread exchange of plants, animals, food, human populations (including selves), communicable diseases and culture between the Eastern and western hemisphere. It was one of the most significant global events concerning econology, agriculture, and culture in all history. This phase is sometimes known as proto-globalisation. It was characterised by the rise of maritime European empires in the 16th and 17th centuries, first the Portuguese and Spanish empires, and later the Dutch and British empires. In the 17th century, globalisation because also a private business phenomenon when chattered companies like the British East India Company (founded in 1600) often described as the first MNC as well as the Dutch East India company founded in 1602 ere established. Became of the large investment and financing needs and high risks involved in international trade, the British East India company became the first company in the world to share risk and enable joint ownership of companies through issuance of showers of sock: an important driver for globalisation.
19th century great Britain became the first global economic super power because of superior manufacturing technology and improved global communications such as steamships and railroads. The 19th century witnessed the advent at globalisation approaching its modern form Industrialisation allowed cheap production of household items using economies of scale while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities. Globalisation at this period was decisively shaped by 19th century imperialism. After the opium wars and the completion of the British conquest of India, vast populations of these regions became ready consumers of European exports. It was in this period that areas of sub-Sharan Africa and the pacific islands were incorporated into the world system. Mean while, conquest of new parts of the globe, notably, sub-Saharan Africa by Europeans, yielded valuable natural resources such as rubber, diamonds, and coal, all these helped find trade and investment between the European imperial powers, their colonies and the United States.
The first phase of modern globalisation’ began to break down at the beginning of the 20th century with the first world war. V.M. yeasts criticised the financial forces of globalisation as a factor in creating World War I8. The final death knell for this phase during the gold standard crisis and great depression in the late 1920s and 11039s. in the middle deceases of the 20th century, globalisation was largely driven by the global expansion of MNCs based in the US and Europe, and World Wide exchange of new developments in science, technology and products, with most significant ingestions of this time having their origins in the western world. World wide exports of western culture through new mass media-films, radio, television and recorded music. Development and growth of international transportation and telecommunications played a decisive role in modern globalsiation9.
In the late 2000s, much of the industrialised world entered into a deep recession. Some analysts say the world is going through a period of de-globalisation after years of increasing economic integration. Kp to 45% of global health had been destroyed by the global financial crisis in less than 18th months10.
7.3 Modern globalisation: Since World War II, globalisation is largely the result of efforts by politicians to break own the border and related issues which hampers free trade. The belief here is that increased prosperity and greater interdependence would decrease the chances of wars in the future. This effort led to the Brettonwoods conference where world leaders laid the framework for international commerce and finance through the founding of several international institutions intended to oversee the processes of globalisation. These institutions include the IBRD, the WB and the IMF. Globalisation has been facilitated by advances in technology which have reduced the costs of trade and trade negotiation rounds originally under the auspices of GATT which led to a series of agreements to remove restrictions trade.
Since World War II, barriers to international trade have been initiatives based on GATTs and WTO arrangements. These have included issues such as
1. promotion of free trade
2. elimination of tariffs, creationo f free trade zones with small or no tariff.
3. Reduced transportation costs especially resulting from development of contaririzationof ocean shipping.
4. Deduction or elimination of capital controls
5. Reduction, elimination or harmonisation of subsidies for local business.
6. Creation of subsidies of global corporations.
7. Harmonisation of intellectual property laws across the majority of states, with more restrictions.
8. supranational recognition of intellectual property restrictions e.g patents granted by china would be recognised in the Unions States.
7.4 Cultural Globalisation
Driven by communication technology and the world wide marketing of western cultural industries wad under stood at first as a process of homogenisation, as the global domination of American culture at the expense of traditional diversity. However, a contrasting trend soon became evident in the emergence to the defense of local uniqueness, individually and identity but largely without success.
The Uruguay round (1986-1994) led to a treaty to create the WTO to mediate on trade disputes and set up a uniform platform of trading other bilateral and multilateral trade agreements including sections of Europe’s Maastricht treaty and the Nor the American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have also been signed in pursuit of the global reduction of tariffs and barriers to trade.
7.5 Measuring globalisation
Looking specifically at economic globalisation demonstrates that it can be measured in different ways. There centre around the four main economic flows that characterise globalisation: these are
1. Goods and services, e.g exports plus imports as a proportion of national income or precipitate of population
2. Labour/people, e.g net migration rates, inward or outward migration fours weighted by population
3. Capital, e.g inward or outward direct investment as a proportion of national income or per head of the population
4. technology e.g international research and development flows; proportion of population and rates of charge thereof using particular inventions especially “factor neutral” technological advances such as the telephone, motorcar, broad band.
7.6 Effects of globalisation
Globalisation has various aspects which affects the world in several different ways such as:
1. Industry – Emergence of world wide production markets and broader access to a large number of foreign products for consumers and companies, particularly movement of material and goods between and within national boundaries. International trade in manufactured goods increased more that a hundred tines from & 95 billion to $12 trillion in the 50 years since 195510. China’s trade with Africa role sevenfold during 2000-2007.
2. Financial: The emergence of worldwide financial markets and better acess to external financing for borrowers. By the early part of the 21st century, more than $ 1.5 trillion in national currencies were traded daily to support the expanded levels of trade and investment. As these world wide structures grew more quickly than any transactional regulatory regime the instability of the global financial infrastructure dramatically increased as was evidenced by the financial irises of 2007-2010.
3. Economic linkage: The realisation of a global common market based on the freedom of exchange of goods and capital. The interconnectedness of these markets, however meant that economic collapse in any one region or country could not be contained.
4. Health Policy: On the global scale, health systems becomes a commodity, which in developing nations, in particular, are fragmented and privatised under the demands of structural adjustment programmes. Global health policy makers have shifted during the 1990s form UN players to financial institutions. This privatisation fragments health policy by crowding it with many players with many private interests.
5. Political – Some use globalisation to mean the creation of a world government which regulates the relationships among governments and guarantees the rights arising form social and economic globalisation. Politically, the US has enjoyed a position of power among the world powers, in part became of its strong economy. With the influence of globalisation and with the help of the united states own economy, the people’s republic of china has experienced some tremendous growth within the part decade. China has recently surpassed Germany as the world’s largest exporter and it china continues to frown at the rate projected by recent trends, it is very likely that in the next 20 years, there will be a major re-allocation of power among the leading countries of the world. Became china will have enough wealth, industries and technology to rival the US as a leading world power11.
6. Information: Increased information flow between geographically remote locations. Arguably, this is a technological change with the advent of fibre-optic communications, satellites, and increased availability of telephone and the internet.
7. Language: The most popular language is mandarin followed by Spanish and English at the ratio of (a) 35% of the world’s mail, telezes and cable are in English (b) 40% of the world’s radio programms are in English (c) 50% of all internet traffic uses english12.
8. Competition: survival in the new global business market calls for improved productivity and increased competition. Due to the market becoming world-wide, companies in various industries have to up grade their products and use technology skilfully in order to face increased competition.
9. Ecological: The advent of govern environmental challenges that might only be solved with international co-operation such as climate change, cross boundary water and air pollution, over, filling of the ocean, and the spread of invasive species. Since many factories are built in developing countries with less environmental regulations, globalise and free trade may increase pollution.
10. Cultural: The growth of cross-cultural contacts, advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion, the desire to increase one’s standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas, adopt new technology and practices, and participate in a “world culture” affects people in very significant ways. (a) Some people consider such imported culture a damager since it may supplant the local culture, causing reduction in diversity or even assimilation. Others consider multiculturalism capable of promoting peace and understanding between people. A third position is the notion that it tends towards a new form of monoculture in which no destructive differences exist and ever one just shifts between various life styles in terms of music, clothing etc. the other variant of cultural assimilation is the obliteration of culture as we know it today.
(b) Greater international travel and tourism. WHO estimates that up to 500,000 people are on planes at any one time. In 2008, there were over 922 million international tourists, arrivals with a growth of 1.9% as compared to 2007.
(c) Greater immigration including illegal immigration. There is an estimate of more than 200 million migrants around the wrld today. Newly available data show that remittance follows to developing countries reached $328 billion in 2008.
(d) Spread of local consumer products (e.g food0 to other countries often adapted to their culture.
(e) World wide fads and pop culture such as poleman, sugoku Numa Numa, origami, idol series, you tube, orkut, face book and my space. These are accessible to those who have internet or television, leaving out a substantial sequent of the earth’s population.
(f) World wide sporting events such as if world cup and the Olympic games.
(g) Incorporation of MNCs into new media. As the sponsors of the AU-blacks rugby team, Adidas, etc had created a parallel website with a down loadable interactive rugby game for its fans to play and compete.
11. Social Development: If the system of non-governmental organisations as main agents of global public policy including humanitarian aid and developmental efforts.
12. Development of a global information system, global telecommunications infrastructure and greater trans border data flows, using such technologies as the internet, communication satellites, submarine fibre optic cables and wireless telephones.
13. Legal/ethical bases: globalisation has led to the ceation of the International criminal court and international justice movements. This is aimed at creating awareness over global criminal activities and encouraging co-operation among governments and securities agencies in fighting cross-border crimes.
14. Religion: There has been an increase in the inter-relational behaviour of various religious groups, ideas and practices which helps provides wearing and values to the belief system of various groups. This interrelationship help in enhancing tolerance levels while reducing the capacity for conflict and disagreement.
7.7 Cultural effects: “Culture” which is defined as the patterns of human activity has to do with what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold on to and their general ways of life globalisation has joined different cultures and made it into something different. As Carla Zwingle states, … when culture receives outside influences, they ignore some and adopt others, and then almost immediately start to transform them…13
The internet breaks down cultural boundaries across the world by enabling easy, nearer instantiates communication between people any where in a variety of digital forms media. The internet is associated with the process of cultural globalisation because it allows interactions and communication between people with very different life styles and from very different culture. Photo-showing websites allow interaction even where language would otherwise be a barrier.
7.8 Negative effects of globalisation
Globalisation has one of the most highly debated topics in international economics over the past few years. Globalisation has also generated significant international opposition over concerns that it has increased inequality and environmental degradation. In the mid western united States. Globalisation has eaten away at its competitive edge in industry and agriculture, lowering the quality of life in locations that lack the opportunity to adapt to the changes. Some also view the effect of globalisation on culture as negative. Along with globalisation of economics and trade, culture is bring imported and exported as well. The concern here is that the weather, bigger countries may overrun the smaller ones blighting their cultures and values while imposing new ones. Globalisation has led to the Americanisation of many countries and cultures in the last few decades.
7.9 Negative effect of economic liberations. The world today is so inter-nected that the collapse of the subs prime mortgage market in the US has led to a global financial crisis and recession on a scale not seen since the create depression. Government deregulation and failed regulation of Wall Street’s investment banks were import contributors to the sub prime mortgage crisis. A flood of consumer goods such as television, radio, bicycles and textiles into the United states, Europe and Japan has helped fuel the economic expansion of Asian tiger economies in recent decades.
Brain drain: Opportunities in richer countries drives talent away form poorer countries, leading to brain drains. The brain drain phenomena has cost Africa huge sums of glen Rowden argues that the IMF’s monetarist approach towards prioritising price stability (Lowinflation) and fiscal restraints (low budget deficiets) was unnecessarily restrictive and has prevented developing countries form being able to increase long –term public infrastructure and health care. Rowden claims that the consequences of these and other neo-library policies have led to chronically under funded public health systems, dilapidated health infrastructures.14 inadequate number of health personnel and demoralising working conditions that have fuelled the ‘push factors” driving the brain drain of sectors and nurses migrating from poor countries for rich ones, all of which have undermined public health systems, including the fight against HIV/AIDS in developing countries.
Effects on the environment: Research has revealed that the bowing economies of china and India are planetary powers that are shaping the global biosphere. In 2007, china overtook the US as the world’s biggest producer it CO2. At present rates, tropical rainforest in Indonesia would be logged out in 10 years. Paua New Guinea in about 16 years. A major source of deforestation is the logging industry driven spectacularly by china and Japna. Thriving economies such as Chain and India are quickly becoming large oil consumers. There has been a stay rise in the price of oil in recent years, and the pollution effect that go with it is immense. It is said that if china and India were to consume as much resources precipitate as US or Japan in 2010. Together, they would require a full planet earth to meet their needs. In the long term, these effects can lead to increased conflict over dwindling resources and in the worst case scenario a Malthusian catastrophe.
Food security: the head of the international Food policy research Institute stated in 2008 that the gradual changes in diet among newly prosperous populations is the most important factor underpinning the rise in global food prices. Growing populations, falling energy sources and food shortages will create the “perfect storm” by 2030. the world will have to produce 70 % more food by 2030 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people and as income rises, the UN food and Agricultural origination (KAO) warned. Social scientists have warned of the possibility that global civilisation is due for a period of contraction and economic reconciliation, to the decline in fossil fuels and resulting crisis in transportation and food production.
Disease spreads: Globalisation, the flow of information, goods, capital and people across political and geographic boundaries, has also helped to spread some of the dead list infections diseases known to humans. Starting in Adia, the Black Death killed at least one-third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. About 90% of the population of the civilisations of the New world such as the Aztec, maya and luc were killed by small pox brought by European colonisation. Modern modes of transportation allow more people and products to travel around the world at a faster pace. They also open the airways to the trans contivental movement of infections diseases. One example of this is HIV/aids. Approximately 1.2 million persons are living with HIV/aids in the US and aids remain one of the leading causes of death among African American women between the ages of 25 and 35. Due to immigration, approximately 500,000 people in the US are believed to be infected with changes disease. These diseases are transmitted across national boundaries as people more form one corner of the world to others.
Drugs and illicit goods: The United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issue a report that the global drug trade generates more than $320 billions a year in revenues. World wide, the Un estimates that there are more than 50 million regular users of herein, cocaine and synthetic drugs. The international trade on endangered species in second only to drug trafficking. Traditional Chinese medicine often incorporates ingredients form all parts of plants, the leaf,. Stem, flower, root and also ingredients form animal and minerals. The use of parts of endangered species such as seas horses, rhinoceros horns, saiga antelope horns and tiger bones and claws have created controversy and resulted in a black market of poaches who hunt restricted animals.
Pro-globalisation: Supporters of free trade claim tht it increases economic prosperity as well as opportunity, especially among developing nations, enhances civil liberties and leads to a more efficient allocations of resources. Economic theories of comparative advantage suggest that free trade leads to a more efficient allocation of resources with all countries involved in the trade benefactors in general, this leads to lower price more employment, higher output and higher standard of living for those in developing countries.
Proponents of laissez-faire capitalism say that higher degrees of political and economic freedom in the form of democracy and capitalism in the developed world are ends in themselves and also produces higher levels of material wealth. They see globalisation a the beneficial spread of liberty and capitalist.
Supporters of democractic globalisation are sometime called pro-globalises. They believe that the first phase of globalisation which was market oriented, should be followed by a phase of building global political institutions representing the will world citizens. The difference form other global lists is the then do into define in advance any ideology to orient this will but would leave it to the free choice of these citizens via a democratic process.
Anti-globalisation: the anti-globalisation movement is a term used to describe the political group who oppose the new-liberal version of globalisation, while criticisms of globalisation are some of the reasons used to justify this groups stance. Anti-globalisation ay also involve the processor actions taking by a state or its people, goods and beliefs, particularly free market deregulation, encouraged by organisations such as the IMF and the WTO.
Some people who are labelled “anti-globalists” or “sceptics” consider the term to be too vague and inaccurate. The term anti-globalsiaton could be seen as a misnomer since the group represent a wide reange of interet and issues and many of the peopleinvolved in the ant-globalsiaton movement of support closer ties between the various peoples and cultures of the world through. For example, aid and assistance for refugees and global environmental issues. Some activities aligned with this view point prefer instead to describe themselves as the “global Justice Movement’.
Critics of the current ware of economic globalisation typically look at both the damage to the planet in terms of the perceived unsustainable harm done to the biosphere, as well as the perceived human costs, such as poverty, inequality, miscegenation, injustice, injustice and the erosion of traditional culture which, the critics contend, all occur as a result of the economic transformations related to globalisation. They challenge directly the metrics, such as GPD, used to measure progress promulgated by institutions such as the world bank and look to other measures such as the Happy planet index, created by the New Economics foundation. They point to a “multitude of inter connected fatal consequences such as social disintegration, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration for the environment, the spread of new diseases, increasing poverty and alienation which they claim are the unintended but very real consequences of globalisation.
Critics of globalisation further raise the following issues.
1. Poorer countries are disadvantaged: while it is true tht globalisation encourages free trade among countries, there are also negative consequences because some countries try to save their national markets. The main export of poorer countries are usually agricultural goods while the beggar countries subsidise their farmers. The EU common agricultural policy lowers the market price for farmers’ crops compared to what it would be under free trade.
2. Exploitation of foreign impoverished workers: the absence of protection for weaker nations has resulted in the exploitation of the people in those nations to become cheap labour. Due to this lack of protection, companies form the in detribalised countries are able to offer workers enough salary to entice them into enduring extremely long hours and unsafe working conditions. Though it is ungues that these workers one fues to leave their jobs the truth is that leaving the job may mean starvation for the worker and possibly a good number of his family member that are dependent on his wages.
3. Weak labour unions: The surplus in cheap labour and the ever growing number of companies in transition has caused a weakening of labour unions in many countries. Unions lose their effectiveness when their membership begins to decline. As a result, Unions hold less power over corporations that are able to easily replace workers often for lower wages, and have the option not to offer unionised jobs any more.
4. Increased exploitation of child labour – Increase in labour demand often lead to greater demand in child labour and child exploitation. Some companies also specialise in the use of children, e.g quarrying, salvage, cash cropping, etc. Others include trafficking in children, children in bondage, forced labour, prostitution, prmography and other illicit activities.
5. Others: The critics of globalisation typically emphasise that globalisation is a process that is mediated according to corporate interests and typically raise the possibility of alternative global institutions and policies which they believe address the moral claims of poor and working classes through out the globe, as well as environmental concerns in a more equitable way.
The movement is very broad, including church groups, national liberation movements, peasant unionists, intellectuals, artists, protectionists, anarchists, supporters of relocalisation and others. Same are reformists, arguing for a more moderate form of capitalism while others are more revolutionary and argue for what they believe to be a more human system.
6. Human Trafficking and forced labour
7.9 Pro. Globalisation require
7.10 Anti globalisation
7.11 Further issues on globalisation