IMPACT OF CORPORATE IMPERIALISM ON THE AFRICAN ECONOMY.
The colonization of Africa has a long history comprising of phases from the European Scramble for Africa during the late 19th and early 20th century to the Soviet Scramble in the late 20thcentury. Both Western and Soviet imperialism in Africa were evil. However, during the cold war, Western imperialism in Africa might be said to be relatively imperialism with a human face when compared to Soviet imperialism that simply supplied Africans with only arms and Western imperialism supplied food and medicine in addition to arms. Africa experienced major culture clashes which derived from the impact of economic, political, social and religious factors on the indigenous societies of Africa.
Colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably, but they are two different words having different meaning. As both colonialism and Imperialism means political and economic domination of the other, scholars often find it hard to differentiate the two.Imperialism as defined by Alexandra Hrituleac is “the process of establishing colonial (formal) and neo-colonial relationships (informal)”. In a colonial relationship, the people and resources of one country called the colonized country are subjected to the power, authority and control of another of country called the colonial master; usually a ‘servant-slave’ relationship whose human and material resources primarily serve the interest of the master. A neo-colonial relationship on the other hand is more subtle where the people and resources of a country has the outward appearance and trappings of an independent country but poor and relatively weak subjected indirectly and informally to the power, authority and control of the rich and powerful states of the world.
Therefore, corporate imperialism can be concluded to mean “a business takeover of big-rich (or in this case, developed) countries like Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Soviet Unionover small poorer countries like Africa and Latin America and Asia”. The impacts of corporate imperialism by “imperialists” in Africa over the years and even at recent times cannot be over emphasised. These have impacted the economic, social and political structures of the African economy.
