ABSTRACT
Africa’s marginalisation in the global economy is of continuing concern to African leaders and the international community. Past promises of genuine partnership between Northern actors and Africa have failed to materialise into positive measures to alleviate the long-term economic problems facing the continent. Indeed, poverty on the continent is an ongoing challenge for African states. The facts on Africa’s poverty are sobering: 31 million Africans – one in two survive on less than one dollar a day; 184 million – 33% of the African population – suffer from malnutrition; and, the average life expectancy in Africa is 41 years.1 It is going to be a major challenge for Africa to halve the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day by the year 201 as a quantifiable target under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) outlined by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000. As with other developing countries, the continent suffers from severe commodity dependence as well as restrictive international trade policies. A particularly pernicious concern is the impact of agricultural subsidies in the developed countries on the trade prospects of Africa. It is estimated that in 1999 these subsidies amounted to $361 billion, which constituted more than the entire gross domestic product of sub-Saharan Africa.2 While it is customary to blame Africa’s economic marginalisation on adverse global economic conditions, as well as a nexus of internal problems, it is also important to focus on the lackluster approach to continental integration by successive African leaders, and their ineffective management of relations with former colonial powers and other Northern actors. Africa’s marginalisation is largely due to its lack of countervailing power in the international system. Successive postcolonial African leaders have attempted to address this lack of power by forging collective action through subjective self-understandings – ideational principles with roots in panAfricanism as well as the norms underlying the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
