THE CRISIS OF CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT: A CASE OF NIGERIA
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Date
2020
Authors
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Department of History, Kaduna State University, Kaduna
Abstract
Undeniably, the task of nation building and development generally in the Third World Countries has been so challenging in spite of the evident human and material resources in time past till present. The asymmetric impacts brought by imperialism, colonialism, Western civilization made possible by weapons such as foreign religions, Western education, economic policies, Multi-National Corporations, globalization and neo-colonialism have far reaching effects on Africans till today. With more references drawn from the Yoruba ethnic group in Nigeria, this paper emphasizes the aspects of African legacies threatened by extinction or ‘civilization gone with the wind’. It identifies the nagging challenges and cautions that mental slavery, acute culture importation and blind acceptance of Western education and ‘civilization’ hook, line and sinker, without bringing it in line with the indigenous way of life cause the undoing of Africa’s cultural inadequacies and moral shipwreck. The paper recommends and concludes that the chaff needs to be sieved from the corn as Africans need to, on the one hand, seek first mental decolonization and cultural pride to enable them preserve their pristine nature ad infinitum and on the other hand, see what can be retained, rejected or modified to blend with parts of Arabic and Western cultures to which they have been exposed. The methodology for this research is based on the revision of copious literature and reliance on archaeological sources, archival materials and oral interviews, hoping that the study will contribute to the growing literature of the African Cultural Studies.
Description
From time immemorial, Africa has been linked with other parts of the world, thus her history has been bound up with the histories of foreign lands and the outside world. In a global age, no country and its people, if ever so before can be an island. Each culture has its historical background and each nation today borrows from another, embraces and adapts some aspects of the past. The asymmetric impacts brought by imperialism, colonialism, Western civilization made possible by weapons such as foreign religions, Western education, economic policies, Multi-National Corporations, globalization and neo-colonialism have far reaching effects on Africans till today. The author recommends and concludes, on the one hand that Africans must seek first mental decolonization and cultural pride to enable them preserve their pristine nature ad infinitum; and on the other hand, see what can be retained, rejected or modified to blend with parts of Arabic and Western cultures to which they have been exposed.
Keywords
Crisis, Culture, Globalization, Implications, African Development, Nigeria
Citation
MLA, Pp. 397-422