Introduction: Africa in a Global Age

The wish of potters is for the ground to turn to clay.

Yoruba Proverb

The epigraph to this introduction comments on the selfishness and parochialism of a dominating or hegemonic perspective. It lampoons the attempt of a group that is interested in entrenching only its view point or discourse at the expense of other discourses.¹ The Yorubas are definitely not undermining the importance of pottery in the society with the proverb because pottery was a very highly valued profession in traditional Yoruba society. Potters in the society used clay to showcase early African expertise in the production of different cultural artifacts that now reside in several museums all over the world. One unique thing about potters was that they could not do their work without good clay, which was not readily available everywhere. To achieve the ultimate goal of uninhibited access to the raw material needed for their work, the proverb above suggests that potters wished that the whole ground would turn to clay. This would obviously have guaranteed increased production and monumental profit for them, but at what cost? It would have been at the expense of others who also needed the land to build houses and other infrastructures or to farm. It would also have been at the expense of animals that needed the land to graze and live on. More crucially, it would have been at the expense of the general balance of the ecosystem. The Yorubas are not necessarily critical of economic prosperity in the proverb, but are concerned about unmitigated penchant for wealth by either some potters or some self-absorbed people in the society. To avoid ruining the whole society, therefore, the potter's fantasy of turning the whole ground to clay ought not to be fulfilled.

In the spirit of fairness implicit in the epigraph to this introduction, the essays collected here evaluate different aspects of globalization as they affect Africa and question the dominating nature of globalization. Long before this current wave of globalization and the popularity of the term, however, there have been many major attempts by European powers to expand territorially and economically and literally conquer the world. Like the epigraph to this introduction suggests, the goal was to turn the whole world into Europe's territory, to globalize the world to satisfy Europe's political and economic agenda and in achieving its physical and economic expansion, Europe saw Africa as a major viable space to take over.²

Slavery was one of the major initial efforts of European powers to globalize their economy at the expense of Africa. Around 12 million people were captured from various African countries and shipped to Europe and the Americas.³ A major economic implication of the tragic trade was that European powers extended their frontiers and made other people work for them and propel their pre-industrial economy. The benefits that came from what became the trans-Atlantic slave trade was mainly to Europe and America, though some scholars have argued that certain African economies also benefitted from the trade. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for example, claims that "[f]or Africans the profits of the trade were deceptive, short term, and ultimately pernicious" (206). This claim has generated a lot of controversy.⁴ What seems to be incontrovertible in the controversy, however, is that the trade was initiated by Europe as part of its goal of territorial and economic expansion. As Gates puts it, "[i]n simple terms, money was the driving force behind slavery's logic, but the structure of that logic was in fact quite complex" (197).

Another major European effort at globalization in relation to Africa was the Berlin Conference of 1884–85. The goal of the conference that took place in Berlin, Germany was to partition Africa among European countries. At the conference, subsequent negotiations, and on the battle field, several European countries got several parts of Africa. Belgium, for example, got Congo. Britain got colonies like Nigeria and Ghana, France got colonies like Cote d'Ivoire and Dahomey, and Germany got Cameroon, Togo, German Southwest (Namibia) and German East Africa (now part of Tanzania) but...