Conclusion

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa, despite over two decades of neoliberal economic and social reforms, has not seen a market-based recovery. As the latest collapsed round of WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, illustrates, global economic reform has been a process rife with double standards. Rich countries have failed to deliver on their promises of opening up markets to developing countries and reducing agricultural protectionism, while largely ignoring the issue of the downward spiral of global commodity prices (accounting for three quarters of Africa’s exports). They have focused on the enforcement of rich-country interests in intellectual property, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector, while 14 million people a year die of infectious diseases in developing countries. It is an understatement indeed that ‘globalization has not yet worked for Africans’.

Unlike women’s work, the market economy is disconnected from daily physical realities; its operational imperatives bear no relation to people’s needs; its exponential ‘growth’ trajectory even kills off its own future options.

Ariel Salleh, Ecofeminisim as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern