HUMANIZING GLOBALIZATION

HUMANIZING GLOBALIZATION: AFRICAN DEBT CRISIS AS A STUDY CASE
By Mathieu Ndomba Ngoma

While globalization carries the promises of the market economy (growth, jobs, opportunities for the poor, and the good life for all), it also has a wide range of discontents. Roughly speaking it carries promises for the Center (Developed countries) and discontents for the Periphery (developing countries). African debt crisis, for instance, represents one of the bi-products of globalization in peripheral countries. In fact, the debt crisis started with the expansion and the intensification of global financial flows which are part of financial and economic globalization.

Yet it is my belief that globalization can be given a human face. A certain approach of African debt crisis, for example, shows how the humanization of globalization can be achieved.

The debt crisis is one of the worst discontents of globalization in Africa. Because of its colossal debt the whole African continent, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, is experiencing a new form of slavery whereby people are compelled to work even harder in order to service the debt from the masters of the financial world. That debt servicing forces governments to cut off budgets for health care, education, infrastructures and others. It is understandable that people I meet here in California in the United States of America have a totally different understanding of globalization from those in Africa. Indeed, a person living in an African village where the hospitals and schools have been closed because of debt servicing would not have the same definition of globalization with a person living in New York, Paris, and London. If global interconnectedness (globalization) cannot be avoided, at least, people from Africa would want a kind of globalization with a human face. Globalization takes a human face when it fosters global interconnectedness leading to global well-being, global common good, and global human flourishing. This kind of globalization can be achieved.

If the debt crisis were to be used as a study case in a way of achieving a humanized globalization, three aspects would emerge. First, such a globalization with a human face would require a vision of the world where people consider one another as fellow human beings and where people associate their own well-being with the well-being of other people around the world. Second, it would call for a new vision of justice as virtue and as principle combined in the same movement. Justice as virtue would help to value solidarity and common well-being around the world. And justice as principle would remind Adam Smith’s concept of Impartial Spectator which can be embodied in institutions witnessing and monitoring fairness in international trade and global well-being. Third, after achieving the first two aspects, the cancellation of the debt would become a moral imperative. However the resources from the debt cancellation would be managed not only by governments, but also by Non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, and Churches so that they (resources) benefit to the poor directly in line of what these groups are already doing in relation to income generating projects in so many developing countries.

Civil society organizations, Non-governmental Organizations, and Churches have a tremendous responsibility in the process of humanizing globalization. They can help to achieve a new worldview that includes global justice and global common good.