Globalization in Africa

Globalization represents a process of rapid intensification of broad economic, political, and cultural interconnectedness among the different actors in the global system. The process is qualitatively different from the global expansion of product markets that is inherent to the capitalist socioeconomic system and emerges during certain epochs of capitalism under conditions of political and economic hegemony and a balance of power among social classes that is decisively tilted in favor of capital at the global level. A confluence of these two conditions, which are not always present in the capitalist system, sets in motion a vision of capitalism that aims to integrate national economies into a single economic space through various institutional arrangements and policy instruments crafted along the liberal ideology.