Globalization and De-Industrialization: South-South Neo-liberalism and the Collapse of the Nigerian Textile Industry

Abstract

This study examines the impact of globalization, as exemplified in exterminatory Chinese export competitiveness, on the Nigerian textile industry. It discusses the phenomenal upsurge in Chinese textile trade in Nigeria and explores the debilitating nature of the business activities being carried out in Chinatown, a Chinese specialized goods markets in Lagos, on the Nigerian textile industry. By narrowing down its focus to a significant sector of the Nigerian economy, the paper represents a refreshing departure from the prevailing broad, continental or thematic approach that seems to have become the vogue in most scholarly analyses of the impact of China's economic activities in Africa. Our central hypothesis is that as far as the Nigerian textile industry is concerned, China has been pursuing a policy of de-industrialization. The paper concludes that while Chinese investments in the areas of infrastructural development could be crucial to Nigeria's socio-economic development, the skewed trading relationship that has turned Nigeria into a dumping ground for Chinese inferior and sub-standard textile products has wrecked havoc on the Nigerian textile industry and stifled the development of Nigeria's indigenous enterprise.