NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
Globalisation: An Impediment to Sustainable Educational Development in Sub-Saharan African Countries?
By Emefa Takyi-Amoako, St Anne?s College, University of Oxford
Email: emefa.amoako@st-annes.ox.ac.ukKeywords
Globalisation, Sustainable Educational Development
Summary
This article argues that globalisation represents a hindrance to the sustainable development of any sector in most developing countries because it fails to promote social equity and economic growth, both of which are necessary preconditions for a sustainable development of the education sector.
Presently, globalisation fails to address and rather deepens the social and economic disparities that exist between people, nations, regions and continents, creating many more losers than winners in the process. More specifically, in its current form, it is an obstacle to the development of a sustainable education sector in developing countries, particularly the sub-Saharan African nations whose economic resources?though by no means its natural ones?are significantly restricted. In order to understand how globalisation affects education it is necessary to outline the key aspects of globalisation, to acknowledge the forces that shape its processes and consequences, and to evaluate its results, not only in terms of economic growth and affluence, but also in terms of its positive and negative effects on society as a whole: what is also called distributive outcomes (Petras 1999; Stromquist 2002; Abdi, Puplampu and Dei 2006) [1].
Globalisation, an intricate phenomenon that defies a simple definition, could be understood as a process which allows global exchange of goods, services and capital, but which brings substantial benefits to some while very few to others. Sustainable (educational) development enables countries or citizens to meet their fundamental (educational) needs and enjoy a good standard of living in a manner that will not jeopardise the essential (educational) needs and good quality life of future generations. However, the impact of globalisation on countries in sub-Saharan Africa has been otherwise. It is a complex phenomenon that has been made even more so by the effects of imperialism, neo-colonisation and neoliberalism, all of which have contributed to the dismantling of sovereignty and cooperative machinery (Abdi 2006; Stromquist 2002). As a result, the market (along with other hegemonic powers in the case of sub-Saharan African countries) usurps states? control of education and differentially transforms their economic and political authority (Stromquist 2002). While developed countries seem to benefit immensely from this alteration, the developing ones emerge as the unfortunate ones experiencing imperialistic tendencies in their relations with the former [2]. Abdi (2006) argues that globalisation in this sense evolves from colonialism, which demolished the appropriate indigenous systems of education in Africa, and imposed an incongruous and inadequate western systems of education designed not to engender personal/human development, but serve as an instrument that maintains the scheme of colonialism. To him, globalisation represents ?current imperialism?, a ?benign colonialism? that continues to undermine the development of Africa and Africans and therefore, ?not designed?to develop the African people, and its educational prescriptions are making the situation worse for African children and other learners?? (23).
Most developing nations, particularly those in Africa, have a weak political and economic position in the geography of globalisation, and are unable to compete with the powerful nations of the industrialised world. In other words, they are made powerless before an overpowering force (Stromquist 2002), although Dale (1999, 2007) would like to suggest otherwise. The social role of developing states in different sectors, such as education, should normally be geared towards mitigating social costs and protecting the marginalised or vulnerable masses, but it is often severely undermined. The neo-liberal macro-policies (including the current Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)) prescribed by the World Bank / IMF with the support of bilateral donors and Northern non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for a number of countries in Africa, demand that governments curtail their spending on higher education while enforcing cost-sharing (Puplampu 2006). This has led to the commodification and privatization of education and the fact that it is no longer seen as a social benefit but an economic advantage, only from the point of view of profit that can be gained by investors in education. The result is a restriction of access of the poor to higher education, hence undermining poverty reduction, and a weakening of the role of tertiary institutions as mind trainers and knowledge generators for Africa?s development. The disinvestment of the state undermined not just educational opportunities, but also knowledge production in general, which has an impact on Africans being able to develop their own paradigms of development and social change. Unfortunately, the uncritical adoption of neo-liberal macroeconomic policies is a precondition for donor-recipient relations in most African countries. These policies under neoliberalisation, a process Harvey (2005) considers ?hegemonic? and labels ?creative destruction?, constitute a blatant and concrete example of the imperialistic elements in globalisation. Some critics have argued that the elements of participation and ownership, which have been claimed to be the bastion of the PRSPs, remain ?technologies of control?, given that both in effect blur and depoliticise the power dynamics between rich-poor, winner-loser, lender-borrower and donor-recipient [3] relations (Fraser 2005; Brown 2004; Craig and Porter 2003). As one writer puts it, the rhetoric of participation and ownership seems to be forging a nervous alliance between international financial institutions (IFIs), international donors and Western NGOs whose quest probably is to transform African nations ?in their own self-image? with the aim of guaranteeing, ?a stable consensus for liberal systems of economic and political management, and legitimating the increasingly intrusive supervision of African political communities by Northern actors? (Fraser 2005: 319). Significantly, a World Development Movement study of the PRSPs of fifty countries revealed that seventy per cent of them (PRSPs) included trade liberalisation measures, which weakened the economic freedom and growth of these countries (WDM 2005; Stewart and Wang 2003). Regrettably, the egoism and corrupt activities of most African governments prevent them from operating from a moral and critical base in an attempt to perceptively analyse this situation in order to challenge it and make sound (educational) choices so as to protect the interests of ordinary citizens in their nation-states. Tikly (2003: 550) puts it succinctly: ?the complicity of local elites in externally driven reform agendas; and, the weak capacity of the state to play a more proactive role in defining alternative strategies? represent some of the problems that need to be tackled.
Essentially, globalisation in its current condition represents a hindrance to the sustainable development of any sector in most African nations because it fails to promote social equity and economic growth, both of which are necessary preconditions for a sustainable development of the education sector. The ability to develop any sector of contemporary society effectively and in a sustainable manner depends largely on the amount and efficient management of resources available. However, globalisation, in its present form is mainly controlled by its powerful agents, and tends to sap the economic, political and intellectual energy of most sub-Saharan African countries. Nevertheless, this pessimism could be transformed if most leaders of sub-Saharan African nations would sit up and take notice, find ingenious ways of recasting and re-culturing the theory and praxis of African education, as well as identifying and firmly adapting aspects of the globalisation process that could work in their countries? favour (Abdi 2006). Perhaps, it is not all doom and gloom after all!
Notes
[1] See Stromquist (2002) and Abdi and others (2006) for a more comprehensive definition of globalisation in relation to education in the developing world or African countries.
[2] There is no doubt that globalisation creates vulnerable populations in the developed world too. However, the potential to mitigate the social costs it incurs within this context is stronger than in the developing countries. This is due to the fact that developed nations are powerfully positioned economically and politically.
[3] Dichotomies tend to render simplistic notions but these facilitate our comprehension of the powers that engender the processes and interrelated corollaries of globalisation.
References
Abdi, A.A. (2006) ?Culture of education, social development, and globalization: historical and current analyses of Africa? in A.A. Abdi, K.P. Puplampu and G.J. Dei (eds.), African Education and Globalization: Critical Perspectives. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Brown, D. (2004) ?Participation in poverty reduction strategies: Democracy strengthened or democracy undermined?? in S. Hickey and G Mohan (eds.), Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? London: Zed Books.
Craig, D and Porter, D. (2003) ?Poverty reduction strategy papers: A new convergence?, World Development, 31 (1), 53-69.
Dale, R. (2007) ?Specifying globalization effects on national policy: A focus on the mechanisms? in B. Lingard and J. Ozga (eds.), The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education and Politics. London and New York: Routledge.
________(1999) ?Specifying globalization effects on national policy: A focus on the
mechanisms?. Journal of Education Policy 14 (1), 1-17.
Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fraser, A. (2005) ?Poverty reduction strategy papers: Now who calls the shots??, Review of African Political Economy, 104/5, 317-340.
Petras, J. (1999) ?Globalization: a critical analysis?, Journal of Contemporary Asia 29 (1), 3-37.
Pupulampu, K.P. (2006) ?Critical perspectives on higher education and globalization in Africa?, in A.A. Abdi, K.P. Puplampu and G.J. Dei (eds.), African Education and Globalization: Critical Perspectives. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Stewart, F. and Wang, M. (2003) ?Do PRSPs empower poor countries and disempower the World Bank, or is it the other way round??, QEH Working Paper Series- QEHWP 108.
Stromquist, N.P. (2002) Education in a Globalized World: The Connectivity of Economic Power, Technology, and Knowledge. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Tikly, L. (2003) ?The African Renaissance, NEPAD and skills formation: An identification of key policy tensions?, International Journal of Educational Development 23, 543-564.
World Development Movement (WDM) (2005) ?9 out of 10 World Bank Poverty Reduction Programmes Demand Privatisation?. Online. Available Online(accessed 18 October 2005).
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