Identifying the various strategies of post-war/post-independence development requires scrutinizing the Bandung conference, the African leaders’ speeches, and also how the World Bank was influential. The Bandung conference, with its motto ‘Freedom, Peace and Equal Rights,’ embodied the unity of the newly asserted countries, championing sovereignty, active cooperation, and dismissal from the constraints of the Cold War. African leaders, such as Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, pioneered Pan-Africanism and self-rule, which led to indigenous responses to the colonial legacies instead of external suggestions. Unlike the IMF, Western powers have established instruments that stress developing countries’ economic modernization through infrastructure projects and market-oriented reforms. However, it was often criticized for contributing to and perpetuating dependency and inequality. These perspectives reflect on the various issues on the ground and bring about the choice of ideologies in the development effort for the global south. Determining differences in social conditions is what we should resort to to compose medical strategies capable of facing the modern problems of postcolonial countries.
The Bandung conference in Indonesia in 1955 mostly emphasized how a platform for a common stance among the countries of the global south could be developed. The Bandung Declaration proclaimed principles, which were sovereignty, non-interference, and peaceable coexistence, as a core objective to be protected and supported by member states. They set forth the broad principles for developing strategies that deviated from the world divided between two blocs of the capitalist and socialist economy headed by the USA and Soviet Union, respectively (Appadorai 221). In contrast to this, the Bandung conference has a political purpose; it has focused on economic cooperation, cultural exchange, and political solidarity of newly independent nations, which, in fact, is the base of a fair global structure. Leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru of India had a major role in bringing up convincing ideas about the non-aligned movement, which was based on self-determination and autonomy. Just as Nehru called for independence from the state of dominance from the outside world, those nations, plagued by the same colonial legacy, shared the feeling of emancipation with the man. The Bandung conference is an attempt to find an alternative to the colonial past, which the formerly colonized people refer to as a result of a common experience and future goals of the colonized (Appadorai 232). Through stress on unity and collaboration, the conference pointed out the direction for a new promise of the post-imperial era, which attempted to get out of the servitude of colonial domination in the Cold War geopolitics era.
With the Bandung Conference having a wider international aspect and in line with that, the leaders from Africa, including Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, were instead focused on the special setbacks and aspirations of the African continent. They strove to unite and produce a single mind by ferreting out the vestiges of colonialism and instilling a sense of togetherness, cooperation, and common goal among the African peoples. In place of this, one should mention that Ujamaa of Nyerere in Tanzania and the Nkrumah’s vision of African socialism in Ghana represent their level of engagement and desire for state development by the bottom-up (Appadorai 210). They stressed the criticality of decolonization, nation-building, and development into a global trade player, fundamentally the frontier through which Africa will actualize its full potential. The realization of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 was, without any doubt, the most prominent highlight in the fight against African sovereignty and unity. It was the primary purpose of African leaders towards regional integration, collective security, and completely eradicating the colonial legacies that include apartheid and neocolonial exploitation (Scott 10). This was done through OAU, where member states worked together to implement various programs that contributed to improved economic development, social progress, and good governance in the continent. Through Nyerere’s and Nkrumah’s efforts of prioritizing cooperation among African nations, they paved the way for a common effort to address the challenges of colonialism and outline a way to a prosperous and fair future for Africa.
The chapter on the World Bank gives some ideas about the perspectives and strategies of the global North regarding post-war reconstruction development. Enterprises, including the World Bank tra, used their main tool alongside the IMF and GATT/WTO to achieve the Bretton Woods system of the chest-centered model of economic progress and globalization. The precise priorities of this World Bank’s strategy of the day are providing funding to improve infrastructure, adopt market-oriented reforms, and enhance growth in the developing world (Rempel 144). Nevertheless, Michael Goldman referred to that case in his criticism of such attempts. He has pointed out that such cases acquire Western hegemony and neo-liberal policy. Not only that, though, but Goldman and his contemporaries also brought the environment to the forefront of their criticisms, and they observed that the way these development projects went frequently led to the degradation and misuse of natural resources, which, anyway, increased the problems of the national countries in the Postcolonial period (Scott 13). It was criticized that the World Bank’s activities limited newly set independent countries’ sovereignty and development ambitions by imposing money-centered economic standards (Rempel 147). While having these initiatives, the local people needed to be more encouraged to depend on themselves and develop their economy wisely. Rather, they were slaves to donors, and exploitation became the norm.
Furthermore, the impact of big infrastructural development on the social environment and ecological systems promoted by the World Bank was another worrisome issue as they affected the people from marginalized groups and the environment on a large scale rather than one-on-one (Rempel 150). Hence, the moves and stratagems of the World Bank aimed at fostering the development and improvement of the global south. However, their actions have come under increased scrutiny for colluding with historical inequalities and exploitation patterns as well as environmental degradation following previous colonial days.
Regarding these, different approaches towards state sovereignty and economic development, as well as cultural identity management between post-war/post-independence and more profound development models, are evident. South-South cooperation and non-alignment received high priority in Bandung. While in Africa, Africans focused on Pan-African unity and freedom from colonial oppression. On the other hand, the World Bank was considered a Western-centered approach to development, emphasizing market-oriented structural adjustments and increasing global integration. In addition to these variances, all these perspectives correspond to the brokenness and indeterminacy of the postcolonial shift and the design of decent and tangible paths to sustenance and cumulative development despite the alternation of geopolitical relations.
Work Cited
Scott, James C. Against the grain: A deep history of the earliest states. Yale University Press, 2017. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=UjYuDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Yale+Agrarian+Studies+Series+JAMES+C+.+SCOTT,+SERIES+EDITOR&ots=q2yrz7y599&sig=am1hxXJ5IMGZ4eZjUDAphxbeh-k
Appadorai, Angadipuram. “The Bandung Conference.” India Quarterly 11.3 (1955): 207-235. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/097492845501100301
Rempel, Ruth. “Periodizing African Development History.” African Economic History 36.1 (2008): 125-158. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/127/article/467616/summary
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