Africa and the 4th Industrial Revolution in Sociological Context

Africa and the 4th Industrial Revolution in Sociological Context
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Africa and the 4th Industrial Revolution in Sociological Context
Introduction
Postcolonial African is characterized by various negative perceptions, particularly in the Global North (GN). African countries are related to different sorts of negative perceptions, including poverty, unruly people, genocide, diseases, hunger, and weak political systems. It is essential to evaluate the theme of industrial revolution in Africa to contribute to limited knowledge concerning the sociological drivers of Africa's status in the global economy. This is because many policies that shape international policies are centered on assumptions that emanate from the Western models (GN) thinking approaches. For instance, the term "development" has the power to influence international and national policies and divert or attract huge some of finances. This could be viewed through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework. These entail targets that each nation across the globe consented to strive to attain and finance. The SDGs are centered on the development consensus, which perceives various countries within the Global South (GS) to achieve insignificant economic progress compared to the GN countries. This phenomenon prompts the research question: Does the social assessment view global development in terms of practices and actions seeking to basically restructure social interactions to "create" new community forms in the GS? This report argues that social evaluations should perceive the global development idea, particularly centered on industrialization, as a sequence of practices and actions that aim at fundamentally reconfiguring social relations to create new community forms among the GS countries.
Relevant Theories
The speech analysis centers on the speech delivered by Akinwumi Adesina, the 8th elected president of African Development Bank. The speech was delivered at the Ministerial Roundtable at the Korean-Africa Forum on Economic Cooperation (KOAFEC). The theme of the conference was Africa and the 4th industrial Revolution: Opportunities for leapfrogging?. The speech can be explained in terms of industrial development perspective in postcolonial Africa. This relates to social sciences in that it provides criticism of the social theory. In such a critique, the social theory holds water within this paper's context since it is perceived as being weakened as it positively functions for imperialism as well as supports its requirements. As such, sociologists could be castigated for their pro-racist and pro-imperialist positions (Venn 2006:66). This viewpoint, therefore, perceives postcolonial industrial development as a criticism of Orientalist sociologists and humanists for their contribution towards Africa's status. However, certain social theory versions, such as W.E.B Du Bois' use of social thinking to counter scientific racism, served anti-imperial ends. However, arguments that social theory continues to support neocolonialism or that sociology as a whole disciplinary business is pro-imperialist are irrational. Extents of complicity and autonomy need to be acknowledged as well as internal variations in sociology and social theory recognized (Venn 2006:67).
The global perceptions concerning historicism theory enabled the GN (particularly European nations and industrially developed Asian countries) to dominate the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historicism made capitalism and modernity appear not merely global but instead as an entity that attained global thresholds overtime – emanating from a specific place (Europe) and spreading outside the GN. This created the "first Europe then elsewhere" phenomenon of international historical times, which continued to persist in postcolonial era in Africa. Historicism theories enable Marx to reiterate that the "nation which is more industrialized only indicates, to the less developed (industrialized), the image of its future." In this vein, historicism models posit that the historical era is a critical measure of institutional or rather cultural distance that persists between the non-West and the West. In the precolonial era, historicism legitimized the concept of civilization. As such, it supported internalist arguments that viewed Europe as the initial occurrence of modernity, enlightenment, and capitalism (Charabarty 2000:7).
The unequal development theory can be used to describe the development disparities between the GN and GS in terms of (a) the functional ideas comparative to modes of social formations, productions, relationships between political and ideological superstructures and the economic fundamentals; (b) the features and the basic capitalist product mode laws, particularly those involving the role of credit and money within the dynamic equilibrium, business cycle dialectics, and insignificant economic fluctuations; (c) the global connection between the internal financial systems and national capitalism formations; (d) the notion of capitalist mode domination over modes of production, and work to formal capital subordination; (e) the unequal exchange and international values theories; and ultimately, (f) the unequal social development problems relating to capitalism and its socialist successors (Week 3:104). In this view, the unequal development theory is best suited in evaluating the speech since it provides the framework that explains the economic disparities between the GN nations and the GS countries. It helps explain how why the postcolonial era African countries lag behind in terms of industrial development, SDGs and other development assessment frameworks compared to their developed counterparts.
Object: Speech Description and its Importance
The speech outlines the opportunities for development and supporting Africa’s quests to become a developed continent. The reasons why African countries have continued to remain under-developed since they attained independence from their colonial masters is because all opportunities have never been tapped. From the presentation, we can see that African is lagging behind because of inaction. There is a high rate of unemployment within the continent, and much can be gained when we understand the glorious path towards Korea’s economic prosperity. While Africa has many resources, it is lagging behind because there is no value addition in its economic hierarchy. Through the speech, we get highlight of the economic status of the continent and how the industrialization of Africa would promote in service and agricultural sectors. The speaker notes that underdevelopment is explain by several factors, including how African nations were and continue to be included into the global economic systems, the lack of value addition in the economic hierarchy, infrastructural challenges such as poor electricity generation, and policies and practices (Waggeh 2013:n.p). The speaker argues the case and describes the role of the bank in different development initiatives that have resulted into positive outcomes.
The speech is important as it explains how African the opportunities for investment, and how available of resources and financial support from the GN countries can lead to success. The bank is already doing great work in supporting different industries. The various supports from different countries. The banks invest...