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

INTRODUCTION

It has become fashionable for contemporary political scientists and unfolding theorists to attribute the puzzles of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa to political violence, including destructive ethnic conflict, high population increase rates, unmanageable external debts, poorly disentangleed infrastructures, military intrusion in politics, and several others. This perspective upon Africa's inability to develop is enhanced by dint of the ascension of a dominant academy of thought sponsored by Western-centered social science scholarship that evolv particularly during the cool War. The ease with which this scholarship is foisted upon the rest of the world is evident in the seeming universality of viewpoints being promot by the agency of international institutions such as the International Monetary capital (IMF), the World Bank and other multilateral institutions (eg the World Trade Organization). The perspectives of these institutions upon poor economic performance in Africa during greatest in quantity of the post-independence period are essentially Western in fabric content and import.

It is this thinking that has spurr an awareness of a linkage between the processe thrown-up through Europe's colonization of Africa with all its resultant results and the new age imperialism that has been promot by dint of the United States since the extreme point of World War II. This paper look afters to examine the various ideologies that have dominated global thinking upon development during the last half hundred and their contribution to the marginalization of Africa. The ideologies examined are Westernism, unipolarism, Americanism, and globalism.

How these universals are perceived is often pendent on whether the individual is located in the evolveed industrial West or in a relatively underdevelop Third World geographical division 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 unfolding 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 clans are considered incapable of self-discovery and their values are seen as irrelevant. Hence, modernization is seen as synonymous with westernization. similar an idea-system informed and was responsible for the "civilizing missions" embarked on by the European colonial adventurers of the mid-to-late 1800 These missions, of course, followed in the establishment of numerous European colonies in Africa not for the drift of helping Africans improve their living conditions, on the other hand 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 empty with a scooped African gold, diamonds, timber, and other natural resources for export to the metropolitan economies, flat the most diehard believers in the civilizing mission came to recognize colonialism for what it was-an opportunistic mission to enrich Europe at the outlay 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 later demise of socialism, the United States became the solitary superpower and Americanism has since then become the greatest in quantity important ideology governing international affairs and the global economy. Since the late 1980 many multilateral organizations, which were established after WW II to enhance global trade, economic development 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 like as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO are now seen by the agency of the peoples of the Third World as essentially dominated through American interests, especially given the fact that many of the policies promot by the agency of these organizations, especially with think highly of to global trade, are identical to those espoused through U.S. policymakers.

Globalism is the systematic portrayal of the world as a single village that tenders all countries an opportunity to engage in trade beneficial to its citizens. Hence, globalization advocates a removal of all man-made impediments to trade (eg tariffs and quotas) to allow trade to stream freely across national borders. The administrator of of the like kind free trade is the WTO-all countries which are signatories to the treaty establishing the WTO are required to dislodge all their trade restrictions and enhance trade within this global village. at liberty traders believe that the proces will generate benefits for the couple poor and rich countries alike.

HOW WESTERNISM EMASCULATED AFRICAN IDENTITY

European colonialism was a dire 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 dint of the Europeans' superior military and police forces, deceit, and a certain quantity of assistance from Western religious organizations. Although many apologists for colonialism have many times argued that the Europeans came to Africa to "civilize" the clan and save them from their backward and dangerous ways, as well as tender Africans the benefits of the Christian religion, the evidence points to colonialism as a genuinely economic mission.1 The search was not for an opportunity to help Africans improve their lives on the other hand to secure (1) natural resources to fe European industrial production; (2) slaves for European plantations in the Americas (and Caribbean); and (3) markets for exces output from metropolitan factories. Christian missions many times paved the way for further colonization and domination of Africans.2