Colonialism and its impact on world economic order

Have you ever wondered why African countries are still underdeveloped or developing. Most of the former colonies still lag behind in technological development and their economies are not yet mature.

So, we'll try to understand the post-colonial world economic system from Marxist perspective.

First will try to understand what is colonialism ?

The policy of acquiring political control of a country and exploiting it in such a way that it completely alters the economic structure of that country and destroys its industries, manufacturing and trading sector and the country remains only the supplier of raw material with all other sectors disabled.

How the sectors were destroyed is a topic of discussion for another article. Explaining briefly, the colonizers used to gain the political control of the colony, procure the raw materials from the territory and send it to their country to manufacture finished goods while barring the entry of all other European traders into their colony for trading and the indigenous manufacturers while exporting were levied exorbitant export duty making them uncompetitive and destroying their manufacturing industry.

In the contemporary world there are three kinds of countries. Core, periphery and semi periphery.

Core countries: Have surplus money for investment in R&D, have access to new technologies and actively innovate, contribute to international institutions, Importer of raw materials and exporter of finished goods, invests into the industries of other countries. e.g USA, France, Germany.

Periphery: No surplus money for investment, No innovation, Poor welfare services, Importer of finished goods and exporters of raw materials. e.g Sudan, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana etc.

Semi-periphery: Having characteristics of both Core and Periphery, like India.

The industries of the colonized countries were destroyed, and they acted mostly as the source of raw of material leaving them with meagre or no surplus money to even carryout welfare schemes let alone investment into high tech research or skill development. With the capital inflows from core countries into their indigenous industries the profit got shared with whatever the business they had leaving them with miniscule surplus and this vicious cycle continued. Those periphery countries are now dependent on core or semi-periphery even for their basic needs.

The African continent being rich in natural resources are just supplying raw materials or unskilled labours to the developed countries and even the companies involved in the extraction of raw materials are mostly American, Chinese or European. So, these countries are mostly serving the economic interests of developed countries and since their industries are not getting exposure, enough funds, protection they are bound to remain behind the rest of the world.

Are you wondering why India is an exception?

The answer lies in its economic and foreign policy but will keep this for my next article till then keep learning.