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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 11, No. 2
Publication Date: February 25, 2024
DOI:10.14738/assrj.112.16330.
Masumbe, P. S. (2024). A Predatory West, Africa’s Postcolonial States, International Trade Relations and Underdevelopment in
Africa: A Survey of Centre/Core-Periphery Issues. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 268-315.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
A Predatory West, Africa’s Postcolonial States, International
Trade Relations and Underdevelopment in Africa: A Survey of
Centre/Core-Periphery Issues
Peter Sakwe Masumbe
Departments of Public Law and Public Administration and
Political Science and Comparative Politics, University of Buea, Cameroon
ABSTRACT
This paper examines a predatory West and Africa’s postcolonial states
international trade relations and underdevelopment in Africa to divulge how
centre-periphery issues evoke underdevelopment in postcolonial African states. It
argues that, historically, be it a core or peripheral, in whatever mode of production,
the state is the dominant laboratory for all human activities, as it plays ever- dominant roles in domestic and international politico-economic and socio-cultural
affairs, being the primary vector for development or underdevelopment is society.
However, international trade relations have conditioned these roles and capacities
of the state, in terms of strengths or weaknesses in service delivery to its citizens.
Having been incorporated and monetised into the West’s capitalism, the
postcolonial Africa’s state, has despite these roles, subjectively occupied a
debilitating peripheral capitalist position in global wealth production. Today, like
yesterday, the postcolonial African state, exhibits excruciating and traumatising
underdevelopment, incarnated by uncivilised political, social, economic
infrastructures, which incubate citizens’ apathy to governance, while enhancing
insecurity, poverty, conflicts and fragmentation of nationalities. Using Raul
Prebisch’s (1949) dependency theory, I argue that, the weaknesses and fragilisation
of the postcolonial African state accrue from the despondent peripheral capitalist
position it occupies in the international capitalist division of labour. Via
Wallenstein’s (1930-2019) Modern World System theory, (MWS), I seek
reawakening the gratuitous Africans’ slumbering consciousness towards
overcoming underdevelopment; impelled by a predatory West’s instigated
peripheral capitalism.
Keywords: Postcolonial, international trade relations, underdevelopment, centre/core- periphery issues.
INTRODUCTION
Conceptualising and Contextualising the Research Problem
In nearly two decades, I have researched, and taught - POS 311: The State and the International
System – Centre/Core-Periphery Issues in the Department of Political Science and Comparative
Politics, at the University of Buea, Cameroon. Therefrom, I have reaped exciting and sordid
experiences about the intrigues impelled by multifaceted actors in international relations and
most importantly, international trade relations, particularly within the so-called centre/core- periphery issues, which constitute the bulk of the phenomenal underdevelopment that haunts,
ravages and despairs the psychic of the people of postcolonial African states today.
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Masumbe, P. S. (2024). A Predatory West, Africa’s Postcolonial States, International Trade Relations and Underdevelopment in Africa: A Survey of
Centre/Core-Periphery Issues. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 268-315.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.112.16330
Thereof, rather than get despaired, it became unescapable for me to explore, divulge and write
my experiences for wider national and international multifaceted political, economic, social and
psychological human landscapes around the world. Indeed, as Elwyn Brooks White (1899-
1985) an American essayist notes, “Despair is no good – for a writer, for anyone. Only hope can
carry us aloft, can keep us afloat. Only hope, and a certain faith that the incredible structure that
has been fashioned by this strangest and ingenious of all mammals (man) cannot end in ruin
and disaster. This faith is a writer’s faith, for writing itself is an act of faith, nothing else.”
Herein, my faith in writing about the undermined but hardcore issues of underdevelopment in
postcolonial African states surges in my mind like fire in a burning bush, with the hope that, my
writing could quench this fire and would be useful in attracting the much needed and cherished
human and material development in this region. It is within this faith and hope that, I am
confident in several persuading intellectual passages to seek achieving three things. First, it is
to theoretically and empirically reveal that, the prevailing character of international trade
relations speared-headed by the West (Europe, US, Japan, including China and other advanced
countries) involving the postcolonial African states is essentially predatory, malicious,
subjugating, exploitative and degrading. Thus, this irking character of predaciousness
obviously evokes very dire consequences of total economic annihilation of humanity in this part
of the world. Second, it is to reawaken the docility imbued into undue unconsciousness of
postcolonial Africans towards extricating themselves from another session of brutal slavery
and beggar humanity in this modern world. Third, it is to avert the fast surge into total economic
annihilation; and to end the ongoing characteristic aversion and exploitation by an irritant
predatory character of the West, incarnated by its incessant and excessive resource search
which relegates and negates the spirit of self-determination, emancipation and human
development of people in postcolonial African states.
Herein, I argue that, any further plunging of millions of people in postcolonial African states,
whose livelihood surges in piercing impoverishment into what I call, ‘advanced
underdevelopment’, would henceforth be met with strong individual and collective resistance
by the people of postcolonial African states against the West. Further, I assert that, should this
character of livelihood besieged upon this region persists, it would undoubtedly instigate very
disastrous and negative radicalisation of postcolonial Africans against the West given the
typically existing acerbic international trade relations, and by extension, political relations.
Thus, the West must remember its slave trade and colonialism misdeeds against Africans; to
avert the ongoing neo-colonial avarices against this very African today. The West must re- define its relations with postcolonial Africans in order to ensure a peaceful and stable West.
This might appear a strong threat, which of-course it is, because, according to the Holy
Scriptures, “It is an iron that sharpens an iron.” As Mentan (2004), Combs (2010), agree, it is
essentially the razor-sharp negative public and foreign policies from the West that prodded and
continue to prod international terrorism. While not being an advocate of terror against any part
of the human nature, the West must not pretend being a development partner with the so-called
developing countries, whereas, this partnership is the pretext for gaining access to resources
from these countries at these countries’ dire detriment. Note, a common British adage which
holds, “A hungry man is an angry man.”
The West must eschew imperialism and instill win-win trade relations with postcolonial
Africans. It is baseless, implementing foreign policy thrusts in the West for chasing immigrants
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 11, Issue 2, February-2024
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from its shores, because, the West created conditions, which favour people fleeing from poor
African to rich Western countries. If, in the United States and Europe today, immigrants from
Latin America, Africa and Asia, throng at the borders of the West, it is because, essentially, the
United States and Europe were built through cheap labour and other forms of pilfering of
wealth from the lands and forefathers of the congregating immigrants from Latin America,
Africa and Asia (Akimbo 2023, Batting 2023, Zima 2023). Thus, no height of Walls built against
immigrants will prosper, after-all Donald Trump, the ignoble apostle of walls building is an
immigrant from Scotland, not a Native America (Hebei 2022, Jacks 2022). Thus, rather than
build walls, it is logical to abandon Western imperialist designs meted unto developing
countries, and cause the wholesome development of what the West calls, “peripheral capitalist
states in Africa, Latin America and Asia” (Wallerstein 1974). As Dumont (1988), Batougi (2023)
observe: One can witness the massive land mass occupied by the French Embassy in Yaoundé,
Cameroon - over twenty hectre of land in the heart of the City of Yaoundé, whereas, the
indigenes hole into tiny pieces of land for their homes and family’s livelihood. France, in the
characteristic predatory West, has confiscated this massive land at the detriment and
impoverishment of Cameroonians. Today, from this massive acreage, Yaoundé appear to serve
as the beehive of all French exploitative instincts to keep a grip upon its docile ex-colonies with
devastating colonial and neo-colonial military, political, economic and social negating pacts and
deceptive agreements; through which the French economic, political, social and psychological
establishments, subjugate, exploit, dominant and perpetuate their predaciousness character
against Cameroonian, nay the postcolonial African states, especially those of French language
expression, with the exception of the rising and assertive Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Guinea.
As Batougi (2023:11) adds:“Is this not provocative in every ramification of human essentialism
and existentialism? Apparently, the French believe that, if Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea
slip out of their neocolonialism, there is Cameroon, Senegal, Gabon, the Republic of Congo,
Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Tchad, Togo,
Benin Republic and Ivory Coast from where enormous natural resource must still be exploited
to feed French national interests. What a bizarre thinking? I believe the French are rambling in
the misleading belief that their grip on these countries is as long as France wants or simply
eternal.”
As Deutsch (1988:109) opines, “The Nobel Prize winning physicist and philosopher, Percy W.
Bridgman once said: The Future of mankind is a project, not a programme. Every scientific
prediction is based on the extrapolation of some earlier events or observations. Man derive his
guesses and actions about the future by projecting ahead of some time series of events and
experiences from the past.” The obvious implication of the foregoing is that, France must early
enough start re-defining its relations with its postcolonial African states, since nothing in
humanity lasts forever, because, change is the most certain that death. As Pulaski (2022)
observed, “If the Roman, Othman, British and other empires could witness obscurity, what
would stop the demise of a predatory French’s grip on postcolonial African states? Time and
mental growth are better and evitable mediators in every aspect of human life.”
The Underpinning Intellectual Context for this Study
Essentially, the issues under survey here are those, which define the character of political,
social, economic and psychological relations and differences between the developed and
developing countries, characterised by unrivalled deceptions, arising from the West’s