Africa in the World Economy and Its Prospects for Socio-Economic Development

Abstract

The basis for international trade is to improve a country’s domestic economy and trade, this is because no single state or country enjoys the monopoly of human and natural resources, technology, science or even military strength, that is why this study is set out to examine Africa in the world economy, The problematic of this study is to simply establish the fact that the African continent, despite her prospects and abundant resources, has been short changed in the world capitalist economy since she cannot compete favourably with the developed capitalist countries of the world due to several reasons that are discussed in this paper. The World System theory by Wellestine was employed to drive the study, The world system theory view the world-economy as a large geographic zone within which there is a division of labour and hence significant internal exchange of basic or essential goods as well as flows of capital and labour, furthermore a world economy is not controlled by a single political structure but instead, has many “political units” which are bound together in an “interstate system”  The paper also did a critical appraisal of the prospects of Africa in the World Economy and examined the challenges confronting Africa in the World global and capitalist economy and made some recommendations for both the academics, researchers and policy makers as well.