Globalisation and Developing Countries

Abstract

IntroductionFollowing the new world order propagated by the US government, economies of the world had taken a new dimension that now adopt the philosophy of Western economists situated in globalisation. Globalisation is a paradigm shiftfrom autarchy to trade liberalisation which encourages nation-states to open their borders from the obstacles and hindrances that hitherto prevented movements of goods, services and peoples into their territories. Thus, globalisation 'summaries a number of international features of the world economy; rapid advances in communication and transportation technology, expanding geographical scope for business activities of private corporation and financial institution, the integration of markets across national borders, and higher degree of uniformity in policy and institutional environments that set the rules of the game for economic actions and interactions on the part of private agents based in various countries (Court and Yamagihara, 1998, cited in Alimi and Atanda, 2011, 345).While this indeed is a paradigm shift, it denied the developing selfdevelopment, self-reliance, self-growth, self-independence and self-absolutism eroding the powers, initiatives, autonomous and autochthonous for growth and development. For decades now globalisation and its branches like privatisation, commercialisation, deregulation and trade liberalisation have become global philosophy and currency that virtually all use to run their economies. No thanks for the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989.Developed economies have imbedded the philosophy of globalisation, the developing are not leftout, from Asia to Africa and to Latin America are scrambling for globalisation since global financial institutions such as World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organisation (WTO) tied their supportive measures to this currency. Globalisation has encouraged 'international mobility of capital, result from advances in communications technology and liberalisation of financial markets has intensified as the world economy witnesses the unleashing of market forces' (Onwuka and Eguavoen, 2007, 45).Therefore, globalisation encourages the deregulation of domestic markets across the board in the name of privatisation and commercialisation of governmental owned enterprises. The spirit of globalisation is toward trade liberalisation of the world and domestic economies across the board encouraging foreign experts to invest domestically in economies of less developing countries. Thus, globalisation is about bringing: financial capital, investments, experts, technical know-how, technology, markets, services and goods into the less advanced with aim to ensure that these imbibe or accept in totality foreign goods and services, while at the same time discouraging local productions, local experts, local industries and other services as incapable of being produced by the host or peripheral countries.However, the politics of globalisation has two dimensions within one world. The trade debate between the North and South (Adeniran, 1983) produced different views for the one world. Adeniran commented that Bretton Woods system was created to ensure 'monetary stability and economic expansion of the North-the North in this context implying the industrially more developed areas of the world, to the disadvantage of the South which comprises of the nations from the Third World' (1983, 154). Thus, globalisation has continued to create asymmetrical relationship between the North and South. For instance, the North as a result of advancement and quantum resources dictated economic and developmental strategies for the South. Such strategies included: good governance, democracy, accountability, transparency, Structural Adjustment Programme which had severe consequences on some in the South. According to Blake and Walters 'the benefits of such international economic relations between rich and poor states are distributed asymmetrically in favour of the rich. …