What was neo colonialism

Thus, the motivations behind Chinese investment in Africa have been driven by three motivations. Hence, as concisely summarised by Mark Beeson , p. Indeed, the concepts of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism have been often used to describe Chinese interest in Africa. Clearly, such rhetoric contrasts starkly with the power asymmetry between China and African states, calling for attention on the ability of African governments to maintain their sovereignty upon domestic and foreign policies.

In this light, Mark Langan offers a convincing and enlightening analysis of China in Africa through the neo-colonialist approach of Nkrumah. Hence, according to Langan , pp. Zambia under the presidency of Michael Sata represents a compelling case in point which illustrates the dangers of economic dependency for state sovereignty as decried by Nkrumah.

After winning the presidential elections upon the labelling of Chinese businesses as neo-colonialists and the promise of stricter regulations of trade practices, Michael Sata has been left powerless in face of increasing Chinese firms lobbying and threat of closing down crucial economic operations. This effectively resulted in the Sata government backing down on major tax reforms Langan , pp.

Another neo-colonialist argument draws upon the parallels between Chinese economic activities within African states and past activities of Western colonial powers. Balasubramanyam , p. Hence, Chinese economic pragmatism dogma coupled with low concerns for welfare of African population and human rights abuses, and its closeness to political elites do raise some legitimate questions upon the neo-colonialist nature of Sino-African relations.

On the international stage, China is ingloriously known for its systematic opposition to international criticisms of its human rights records. In return, China has been a consistent enabler of illiberal African regimes. For instance, China has been a major factor in sustaining the Darfur crisis in Sudan through the illicit sale of military weapons and threats to block any UN resolutions directed towards Sudan on the basis of self-interest in the Sudanese oil industries Chen , p.

Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Related Content Related Overviews colonialism center—periphery globalization capital See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ». Show Summary Details Overview neo-colonialism. Reference entries neo-colonialism in A Dictionary of Sociology 3 rev Length: words. All rights reserved. Time Traveler for neocolonialism The first known use of neocolonialism was in See more words from the same year.

Style: MLA. More from Merriam-Webster on neocolonialism Britannica. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Love words? To him, since the colonial situation is itself a violent one, the colonial masses can only achieve liberation through replicated form of violence.

True liberation, according to Fanon, must be accompanied by violence. His submission is that for liberation to be total, accurate and objectively achieved, it has to be accompanied by violence Fanon , In Fanon, decolonization requires violence on the part of the colonized.

Violence plays a critical role in the decolonization struggle. The colonized must see violence in decolonization as that which leads not to retrogression, but liberation.

It is a psycho-social process, a historical process that changes the order of the world. Decolonization involves a struggle for the mental elevation of the colonized African people Fanon , So, from all of this, Fanon contends that Africa is in need of true liberation which can only result from decolonization.

In his submission, resisting a colonial power using only politics cannot be effective; violence is the best way to attain decolonization. He advocates the need for Africans to go through a process of mental decolonization. Wiredu sees decolonization as a necessary tool for developing an authentic African philosophy that is devoid of any neo-positivist influences.

Such writings, which would enhance the renaissance of African cultures, must also carry with it the spirit and content of anti-imperialist struggles. After the independence of most African nations, Africans soon began to notice that their countries were being subjected to a new form of colonialism, waged by their former colonialists and some other developed nations.

It is pertinent to mention that even though neocolonialism is a subtle propagation of social-economic and sometimes political activities of former colonial overlords in their ex-colonies, documented evidence has shown that a country that was never colonized can also become a neo-colonialist state.

Countries such as Liberia and Ethiopia that never experienced colonialism in the classical sense have become neocolonial states by dint of their reliance on international finance capital, courtesy of its fragile economic structure Attah, It is based on this that neocolonialism can be said to be a new form of colonial exploitation and control of the new independent states of Africa, and other African states with fragile economies. Nkrumah views neocolonialism as a new form of subjugation of the economic, social, cultural, and political life of the African.

His postulation is that European imperialism of Africa has passed through several stages, from slavery to colonization and subsequently to neocolonialism being the last stage of the imperialist subjugation and exploitation process. The book emphasizes the need to recognize that colonialism had yet to be abolished in Africa.

Rather, it had evolved into what he calls neocolonialism. Nkrumah reveals the methods that the West used in its shift in tactics from colonialism to neocolonialism. This explains the condition under which a nation is continually enslaved by the fetters of neocolonialism while being independent in theory, and yet being trapped outwardly by international sovereignty, so that it is actually directed politically and economically from the outside. Nkrumah contends that neocolonialism is usually exercised through economic or monetary means.

As part of the methods of control in a neocolonial state, the imperialist power and control over the state is gained through contributions to the cost of running the state, promotion of civil servants into positions that allow them to dictate and wield power, and through monetary control of foreign exchange by the imposition of a banking system that favors the imperial system.

On the link between Neocolonialism and Imperialism, Nkrumah writes that neocolonialism is the worst and most heightened form of imperialism. For those who practice it, it ensures power without responsibility and unchecked exploitation for those who suffer it.

He explains that neocolonialist exploitation is implemented in the political, religious, ideological, economic, and cultural spheres of society.

He further provides details of the infiltration and manipulation of organized labour by agencies of the West in African countries. Religion too, according to Nkrumah, is distorted and used to support the cause of neocolonialism.

He prescribes unity and awareness amongst all Africans. In his assertion, African countries have never been truly independent after colonialism had left because the idea of partnering with the ex-colonialists has continued to guide state economic policies. Foreign firms have continued to dominate the business sectors of the economy such that relatively few, but large and integrated foreign firms otherwise called multi-national corporations, have made themselves indispensable to the growth or otherwise of the economy.

Thus, the continued dependence of industrial investments in Africa on the capitalist intensive technology is strictly aimed at further developing the metropolitan economies. Attah explicates how Western neocolonialists have collaborated with local bourgeoisie in Africa to perpetuate the exploitation of the people and state economies in Africa. According to him, most of the local bourgeoisie collaborators are not committed to national interest and development, and their aim is to ensure the continued reproduction of foreign domination of the African economic space.

The local bourgeoisie are bereft of ideas capable of engendering growth and development. The objective of foreign capital, therefore, is to continue to co-opt the weak and nascent local bourgeoisie into its operations.

Adducing from the above exposition, Attah also asserts that neocolonialism is a new form of imperial rule characterized by the domination of foreign capital. His claim is that instead of real independence, what Africa has is pseudo-independence with the trappings of the illusion of freedom.

To him, neocolonialism in Africa is made possible due to the roles and actions of local bourgeoisie in collusion with foreign capital. He is concerned that the different African economies have become willing tools in the hands of the West because of their fragility. In many cases, the African states have inadvertently authorized the dependency of African economies on foreign capital, which is a necessary legitimacy for neocolonialism.

Neocolonialism, Attah submits, leads to underdevelopment where the local bourgeoisie and the foreign capitals are interested in the economy for personal accumulation rather than national development of the neocolonialist state. He acknowledges that the colonial regime in Africa left Africa in destitution, not only materially but also in terms of education and technical training. Molnar also affirms that nobody will deny that the colonialist period sanctioned abuses and exploitation on Africa Molnar , However, in spite of the end of colonialism in Africa, Molnar is concerned that African economies have not been properly functional, independent of foreign aids and investments.

Further, Molnar asserts that the call for decolonization in Africa took place in a hurried, haphazard way. Africans were unready and immature for economic and political independence as of the time it achieved it.

As a result of this situation, the West is under obligation in post-colonial Africa to keep up its aid, not as a tribute paid for past colonial situation but as one half of a two-way process of cooperation Molnar , For its development, Africa needs the West. Since the newly independent African countries will continue to be economically dependent on the West, neocolonialism is not a negative term. According to Obadina, these apologists contend that despite the exploitation of resources perpetrated by the colonialists, their overall influence on the African society in terms of reducing the economic gap between Africa and the West is positive.

The argument here is that colonialism improved the living condition of Africans, providing necessary tools for civilization such as formal education, modern medicine, and enlightenment, including shaping the political organization. However, Obadina notes that in spite of these apologetic claims, Africa is still today considered a continent in economic and political crisis.

These apologists even go to the extent of saying that Africa is in such a state because they gained independence a lot sooner than was necessary for them.

Citing D. K Fieldhouse as one of the apologists, Obadina mentions that Fieldhouse is of the view that it would be difficult to imagine what would have become of African countries had the colonial rule not come. Fieldhouse had contended that pre-colonial Africa by itself lacked the capacity, social and economic organization to transform itself into modern states that would result in the establishment of advance economies.

According to Fieldhouse, African states today would be a direct replica of what they were in the primitive days if they had not encountered the European culture and civilization. Obadina asserts that colonialism bore nothing but negative effects on Africa. Furthermore, colonialism undermined pre-colonial political systems which used to be effective for Africans and imposed foreign political concepts which include multi-party democracy. This, according to Rodney and many other critics, has left Africa in serious social and political crises.

Obadina takes Nigeria as an example, which, because of its great population and natural resources, had qualities that seem to be leading eventually to her destruction. The party politics, according to Obadina, introduced by the colonialists was the major cause of ethnic conflicts in Africa. Obadina acknowledges the difficulty in providing an objective analysis of the impact of colonialism in Africa. Despite this, he avers that colonialism in Africa may have some positives.

However, what cannot be denied is the fact that it was something imposed, which had no regard for the existing structures already in place. Furthermore, colonial rule was not an idea geared towards the development of the colonized states in any way, but something established solely for the benefit of the colonial states. Furthermore, Obadina forthrightly asserts that African nations are to be blamed for the continued reliance on their former colonial lords for economic and political direction.

This neocolonial situation poses serious danger to the evolution of indigenous-based economic growth, and at the same time, has adverse effects on political stability. It has, according to him, hampered the growth of movements geared towards change. He believes that African nations, after independence, should have shut the door against imports and exports from the West and sought to develop themselves using their own resources, not dependent on foreign corporations.

With this idea as the fundamental gospel, Africans were made to believe that their living conditions could be positively altered. It created in Africans the desire for Western civilization; but the West failed to hand over to Africans the tools for realizing such civilization.

Africa in the early 21st century is a neocolonial continent, according to Obadina. Africa continues to face the problem of dealing with the overbearing presence of Western civilization. In the quest for modernization, the focus is mostly on the Western world and there is little or no focus on the urgent need for internal changes in this same quest. Despite colonial rule in Africa ending only late near the end of the twentieth century, Obadina submits that African nations at the beginning of the 21st century have the responsibility to develop themselves by making changes in their internal structures using indigenous knowledge, while at the same time learning all they can from the influence of the Western world and putting these to use for their own benefit.

The outcomes of such interrogations continue to form content that need to be taught and studied within the project of African philosophy. The heavy dependence on foreign aid and the apparent activities of the multinational corporations in Africa reveal that Africa at the beginning of the 21st century is still in a neocolonial stage of development.

The activities of the corporations in Africa, particularly those from Europe and America reveal nothing short of economic exploitation and cultural domination. Early 21st century Africa is witnessing neocolonialism from different fronts, from the influences of trans-national corporations from Europe and America to the form of a new imperial China, which many African governments now seem obligated to.

The establishment of the multinational corporations, and more recently Chinese interests in Africa through Chinese companies, appear mainly to exist for the benefits of the home economies of the neocolonialists than to infuse local African economies with cash to stimulate growth and increase local capacity.

In the Africa of the early 21st century, some scholars, such as Ali Mazrui, have opined that the new form of neocolonialism is globalization. Looking at globalization in this way, Oseni Afisi, also condemns it to the corridor of neocolonialism and cultural subjugation.

Globalization becomes the imposition of a particular culture and value system upon other nations with the direct intent of exploitation. What this indicates is that globalization is indeed the engine room for the propagation of neocolonialism and new imperialism on the African soil.

While colonialism has ended, the reality on the ground in Africa in the immediate years after it is that political independence in many African states has not culminated in the much desired economic and cultural freedom Afisi , 5. Upon this heritage hinges the political, economic, social, educational subjugation of the continent of Africa. The forcible integration of Africa into globalization through slavery and colonialism has led to the problem of personal identity and cultural dilemma for the African.

Africa has had to be dependent upon Europe and America, and, more recently, upon China for its development and, one might add, the development of her identity and culture.