WESTERNISM, AMERICANISM, UNIPOLARISM, GLOBALISM AND AFRICA'S MARGINALITY

INTRODUCTION

It has become fashionable for contemporary political scientists and development theorists to attribute the problems of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa to political violence, including destructive ethnic conflict, high population growth rates, unmanageable external debts, poorly developed infrastructures, military intrusion in politics, and several others. This perspective on Africa's inability to develop is enhanced by the ascension of a dominant school of thought sponsored by Western-centered social science scholarship that evolved particularly during the Cold War. The ease with which this scholarship is foisted on the rest of the world is evident in the seeming universality of viewpoints being promoted by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other multilateral institutions (e.g., the World Trade Organization). The perspectives of these institutions on poor economic performance in Africa during most of the post-independence period are essentially Western in texture, content and import.

It is this thinking that has spurred an awareness of a linkage between the processes thrown-up by Europe's colonization of Africa with all its resultant consequences, and the new age imperialism that has been promoted by the United States since the end of World War II. This paper seeks to examine the various ideologies that have dominated global thinking on development during the last half century and their contribution to the marginalization of Africa. The ideologies examined are Westernism, unipolarism, Americanism, and globalism.

How these concepts are perceived is often dependent on whether the individual is located in the developed industrial West or in a relatively underdeveloped Third World country. For example, while an American scholar may consider globalization as enhancing the quality of life in the Third World, an African policymaker is likely to view its influences as detrimental to the development effort in the continent. Westernism portrays European values and orientations as the standard of human evolution and civilization, and consigns a significant portion of humanity and its values to the dustbin of history. Non-western peoples are considered incapable of self-discovery and their values are seen as irrelevant. Hence, modernization is seen as synonymous with westernization. Such an idea-system informed and was responsible for the "civilizing missions" embarked upon by the European colonial adventurers of the mid-to-late 1800s. These missions, of course, resulted in the establishment of numerous European colonies in Africa not for the purpose of helping Africans improve their living conditions, but to enhance the ability of European mercantile companies to exploit Africans and their enormous resources for the benefit of the metropolitan economies. As Europeans greedily scooped African gold, diamonds, timber, and other natural resources for export to the metropolitan economies, even the most diehard believers in the civilizing mission came to recognize colonialism for what it was-an opportunistic mission to enrich Europe at the expense of Africa and its peoples.

Unipolarism explains the political and strategic dominance of the United States in world affairs following the collapse of the socialist order in Eastern Europe. In the years that followed the disintegration of the USSR and the subsequent demise of socialism, the United States became the sole superpower and Americanism has since then become the most important ideology governing international affairs and the global economy. Since the late 1980s, many multilateral organizations, which were established after WW II to enhance global trade, economic growth and development, especially in the former European colonies in Africa, Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, and the Middle East, have espoused American values and interests. Global institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO are now seen by the peoples of the Third World as essentially dominated by American interests, especially given the fact that many of the policies promoted by these organizations, especially with respect to global trade, are identical to those espoused by U.S. policymakers.

Globalism is the systematic portrayal of the world as a single village that offers all countries an opportunity to engage in trade beneficial to its citizens. Hence, globalization advocates a removal of all man-made impediments to trade (e.g., tariffs and quotas) to allow trade to flow freely across national borders. The administrator of such free trade is the WTO-all countries which are signatories to the treaty establishing the WTO are required to remove all their trade restrictions and enhance trade within this global village. Free traders believe that the process will generate benefits for both poor and rich countries alike.

HOW WESTERNISM EMASCULATED AFRICAN IDENTITY

European colonialism was a cruel and exploitative system designed to enhance the ability of the Europeans to exploit African resources for the benefit of the metropolitan economies. Although Africans resisted colonialization, they were eventually defeated by the Europeans' superior military and police forces, deceit, and some assistance from Western religious organizations. Although many apologists for colonialism have often argued that the Europeans came to Africa to "civilize" the people and save them from their backward and dangerous ways, as well as offer Africans the benefits of the Christian religion, the evidence points to colonialism as a purely economic mission.1 The search was not for an opportunity to help Africans improve their lives but to secure (1) natural resources to feed European industrial production; (2) slaves for European plantations in the Americas (and Caribbean); and (3) markets for excess output from metropolitan factories. Christian missions often paved the way for further colonization and domination of Africans.2