Third World Countriess Marginal Position in the Contemporary Global Economy: An Assessment

Abstract

It is ironic that today as in the past, despite the process of a globalizing world order; the Third World economies have remained marginalized from active participation in the benefits of growth and sustainable development. This paper aims at assessing why and how the countries of the South have remained marginal actors in the world economic system despite their efforts to arrest the trend. The article is driven by the need for a sustained normative and pragmatic representation of existing paradigmatic discourses within the field of political economy. To achieve this objective, the article leaned heavily on the content analysis of available literary materials in both the humanities and the Social sciences, linking the discourse to the failure of the countries of the South to emancipate their economies from marginalization in the global economy. The paper argues that, given the countries of the South’s massive fertile landmass, they could maximize the potentials at their disposal by perfecting the practices in the agricultural industry through which they would develop vibrant value chains of locally produced products thereby entrenching their economies as indispensable actors in the global economy.