The East Africa Community Integration. Globalization and regionalism steering change in the greater Eastern Africa Region

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Kapitel 1.2.1 The adverse effects of colonialism:

Since the advent of colonialism in the 19th century, there has been documentation on how colonialism impoverished Africa (Rodney, 1982) However, with the emergence of globalization the poverty levels in Africa despite being conspicuous has encountered a steady decline. The geographical disparities in the African continent have demonstrated a four-fold pattern despite the impact of globalization. The four geographical patterns are: resource rich coastal countries, resource rich landlocked nations, resource scarce coastal countries and resource scarce landlocked nations (Collier, 2007). Globalization has impacted on the four classified African geographical regions differently. The poverty index and data gathered for the continent especially from the World Bank has been quite varied. For instance the latest data from the World Bank depict that the share of the African populace who are poor, fell from 57% in 1990 to 43% in 2012. If limited estimates are applied then poverty index is assessed to have declined even more.
Still if the most optimistic estimates are given still many more people are poor because of population growth; more than 330 million in 2012, up from 280 million in 1990. If the current circumstances still remain the same in Africa, the poverty rate is expected to decline to 23%.
The prognostication is that by 2030 global poverty will be encountered largely in Africa rising from 55% in 2015 to 90% in 2030.Poverty reduction has been slowest in fragile countries. Most of these fragile countries are in sub-Saharan Africa and some in Asia. What is positive is that the urban-rural gap has narrowed and the chronic poverty levels are waning off slowly systematically. This in a subtle way could be attributed to globalization.