Book Description

Essay from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - Region: Africa, grade: 8,0 von max 10, University of Amsterdam (FMG), language: English, abstract: As a participant of the course ‘Abandoning Development: Africa and the Contemporary Economic International Political-Economic System I am asked to write a final paper about an issue that was dealt with in the course and which is also based on the literature, that was provided. Since I am a Political Science student, who specialized in International Relations, I deliberately chose the course mentioned above to learn about the global economicpolitical system and its impact on whole regions. The case of Africa, in particular of Sub Saharan Africa, provides the participant with some understanding of the relationship between the developed and the developing countries, it’s inequalities, dependencies and perspectives, that I came across in other subjects like International relations, International Political Economy, the Political economy of the Middle East, etc. In that sense I feel that this case of an entire unprivileged region, like Sub Sahara Africa, fits into that context which I have already studied. At the international level, the fate of Sub Saharan African countries is highly relevant not just for its 45 countries hosting 500 million people. The De-humanization of Africa, as Manuel Castells refers to, goes in line with the rise of information/global capitalism by the beginning of seventies in the last century. Consequently many of its states disintegrated, societies collapsed, causing famine, epidemics, civil war, and social/political chaos. If one perceives these deteriorating developments as structurally conditioned then one can easily see the link to the global economic system and imagine the consequences, leading to several scenarios that the global community will have to deal with. But rather than developing these scenarios, this paper deals with the issue, whether recent policies and tools to ameliorate the economic situation of many African countries are suitable and eventually led to improvement in economic and social terms. Since the early eighties neoliberal policies were introduced by US-president Reagan and the UK-Prime minister Margaret Thatcher. [...]