ABSTRACT
There is scarcely any country in the contemporary world where improvement in the living conditions of the population is not a desirable goal for both the rulers and the ruled. However, with the increasing global economic interdependence and interconnectedness, there has been growing scholarly and public debates on what should be the appropriate response of underdeveloped societies towards preserving local production activities. Globalization as a phenomenon is a process that manifests itself in different forms. Africa’s incorporation into it dated back to the fi fteenth century (Jegede, Bankole, and Adejumo 2003: 29). As an economic phenomenon, Andre Gunder Frank noted that “the economy has been global since 1492” (Frank 2004: 607). Interactions between some Africans south of the Sahara and the Europeans began in the early fourteenth century with voyages sponsored by the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who set himself the task of bypassing the Arabs that controlled North Africa and of establishing direct trade, in particular with the great kingdoms of West Africa (Keim 1995: 115). Trading ships had arrived at Cape Verde by 1460, then reached the Gold Coast (1471), Kongo (1483), and the Cape of Good Hope (1488). In 1497, Vasco da Gama reached the Indian Ocean and the Swahili towns of East Africa, and sailed onward to southern India (Keim 1995: 116).
