The world is very angry with the UK for voting to leave the European Union. Or so it seems. World leaders have lined up to express their disappointment at what they see as a decision to self-harm. Major media outlets are surfeit with condemnation of those who voted for Brexit as xenophobic, or at least gullible to the deceit of right-wing populists. The global business community has also been ferocious in its lashing out at the UK, tumbling down the value of UK stocks and crashing the value of the British Pound. However, with world leaders increasingly disconnected from the people they lead, the media distracted by its pursuit of ratings and global business leaders often more interested in profits than in the wellbeing of their workers, it is easy to see how unrepresentative of the world these power blocs may be. In fact, as evidenced by the Brexit vote, it is much more likely that in reverse, much of the world, like the Brexit voters, are angry at how the world is being run.
Aside from their anger at immigration or whatever mistruths they may have been fed by the leaders of Brexit, the real motivation for the Brexit voters lay in their frustration with an economic model of globalisation that hasn’t delivered the promise of lifting living standards. “Europe has failed to fulfil the historic role allocated to it. Jobs, living standards and welfare states were all better protected in the heyday of nation states in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been in the age of globalisation,” Larry Elliot wrote in the Guardian, shortly after the vote. “Unemployment across the Eurozone is more than 10 percent. Italy’s economy is barely any bigger now than it was when the Euro was created. Greece’s economy has shrunk by almost a third. Austerity has eroded welfare provision. Labour market protections have been stripped away.”
From the Greek anti-austerity protests to the anti-immigration marches across Europe, anger at globalisation was already brewing long before David Cameron accepted to hold a referendum on Brexit. The rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the US – as well as Podemos and Front National in Spain and France respectively – are further examples that anti-globalisation is a bolstering wind on both sides of the political divide. However, this rising wave of anti-globalisation has remained, to a large extent, a western phenomenon, for now at least; but it will rise in Africa if the leaders of the continent make the same mistakes of their western counterparts.
Globalisation is still a very welcome darling in Africa, especially because of its promise of driving up economic growth, developing societies and improving the general standard of living. The fruit of globalisation is evidenced in the rapid transformation that several African cities have gone through, particularly in the last decade. From the reintroduction of Lagos as the commercial nerve centre of Africa’s largest economy to the entrance of Nairobi as the nexus of the business-attractive East African collective, the continent is serving up vibrant rendezvous for international trade and investments. Africa needs both (trade and investments) in even much greater volumes to climb out of its deep economic and developmental challenges. But while globalisation seems the best bet to achieving the aforementioned, it could also — like in the current case of the West — go wrong.
Globalisation, for all its amazing potential to prosper societies, promote diversity and produce never-before-imagined breakthroughs, can also lead to greater poverty and societal strife as well as stifle productivity and innovation. The West, for example, now at its height of globalisation, is struggling with the increasing phenomena of xenophobia, racism and economic distress. Signs of such are already pervasive in South Africa, Africa’s most globalised economy, with the rise of xenophobia and economic problems such as inequality, stagnation and unemployment. Nigeria, Kenya and several other rapidly transforming African countries are also witnessing the dual effects of globalisation with multiculturalism rising alongside inter-ethnic conflict and economic growth accompanied by rising inequality.
However, the problem does not rest with globalisation as much as on the model upon which it is built. The current model of globalisation has always been accused of prioritising the profits of corporations over the welfare of workers and the value added to society. For example, international trade deals, which are basically the term papers of globalisation, have often been heavily slanted towards protecting and propagating the interest of the corporations involved against guaranteeing the rights of workers and addressing the concerns of local communities. Ultimately, such deals lead to socio-economic discontent as is now prevalent in the West and chiefly led to the Brexit vote. It is only necessary that African countries learn this lesson in order to prevent the wind of anti-globalisation from blowing off their countries as it has now done the UK.
