GLOBALISM, GLOCALIZATION AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA: GAUGING THE GULF BETWEEN SLOGANEERING, APPEARANCES AND STARK REALITIES OF DETERRITORIZATION AND DEMOCRATIZATION
Abstract
In the present age, it is possible that the term ‘globalization’ is the most frequently occurring lexical item in any economic, political or social discourse. While its virtues are extolled by many including those with very limited (and even impaired) understanding of its various denotative and connotative significations, dimensions and dynamics, attention has been repeatedly drawn by a critical segment of the intelligentsia to the obvious injuries as well as the potential dangers of the trend especially to the economies, policies, and politics of underdeveloped regions of the world predominantly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Though economic globalization has been on for centuries in the course of Western capitalist expansion of empires, the present wave was accentuated by radical advancements in electronic technologies of information and communication and the development of supersonic modes of transportation which have all led to the virtual annihilation of physical space. A second factor is the liberalization of trade and investment policies adopted by many modern states. The process of globalization equally created other semantic companies such as globalism, glocalization and grobalization, and these affiliated concepts are in essence estuaries of the same phenomenon. The implications of the liaisons between these global trends and the pursuit of democracy and development in Africa will be closely scrutinized in this article. It is hoped that the numerous discrepancies between the political and economic posturings on the one hand and the stark realities of the African situation on the other will be better apprehended in the end, with the ultimate aim of identifying how best the continent can be reclaimed from the numerous clutches that have historically hindered her stability and prosperity.
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