Economic inequality (or "wealth and income differences") comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries.
Economic inequality has existed in a wide range of societies and historical periods; its nature, cause and importance are open to broad debate. A country's economic structure or system (for example, capitalism or socialism), ongoing or past wars, and differences in individuals' abilities to create wealth are all involved in the creation of economic inequality. The relation between Africa and the most developed countries which causes economic inequality has existed for many years as here below discussed;
First of all the impoverished African nations also known as the ‘Third World nations’ as to distinguish them from the "First World" of industrialized Europe and North America. Third World poverty, called "underdevelopment," is treated by most Western observers as an original historic condition. We are asked to believe that it always existed, that poor countries are poor because their lands have always been infertile or their people unproductive.
In fact, the lands of Africa have long produced great treasures of foods, minerals and other natural resources. That is why the Europeans went through all the trouble to steal and plunder them. One does not go to poor places for self-enrichment. Africa is rich. Only its people are poor—and it is because of the pillage they have endured. This kind of relationship has caused persistent economic inequality among the two.
Secondly, the process of expropriating the natural resources of Africa began centuries ago and continues to this day. First, the colonizers extracted gold, silver, furs, silks, and spices, then flax, hemp, timber, molasses, sugar, rum, rubber, tobacco, calico, cocoa, coffee, cotton, copper, coal, palm oil, tin, iron, ivory, ebony, and later on, oil, zinc, manganese, mercury, platinum, cobalt, bauxite, aluminum, and uranium. Not to be overlooked is that most hellish of all expropriations that is the abduction of millions of human beings into slave labour. With such plundering of natural resources the economic inequality must surface.
Also the deliberate myth by westerners that people in Africa are slothful and do not work as hard as those of the temperate zone. In fact, the inhabitants of warm climates have performed remarkably productive feats, building magnificent civilizations well before Europe emerged from the Dark Ages. And today they often work long, hard hours for meager sums. Yet the early stereotype of the "lazy native" is still looming. In every capitalist society, the poor both domestic and overseas regularly are blamed for their own condition. The result of such thinking discourages those who would otherwise work hard for development but resort to begging the west for hand outs hence economic inequality between the two takes place.
Also some people from developed nations claim that people of Africa are culturally retarded in their attitudes, customs, and technical abilities. It is a convenient notion embraced by those who want to depict Western investments as a rescue operation designed to help backward peoples help themselves. This myth of "cultural backwardness" goes back to ancient times, when conquerors used it to justify enslaving indigenous peoples. It was used by European colonizers over the last five centuries for the same purpose. Cultural supremacy has been claimed by the Europeans for many years.
History has it that from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries Europe was "ahead" in a variety of things, such as the number of hangings, murders, and other violent crimes; instances of venereal disease, smallpox, typhoid, tuberculosis, plagues, and other bodily afflictions; social inequality and poverty (both urban and rural); mistreatment of women and children; and frequency of famines, slavery, prostitution, piracy, religious massacres, and inquisitional torture. Such scenarios are responsible for creating economic inequality.
More seriously, we might note that Europe enjoyed a telling advantage in navigation and armaments. Muskets and cannon, Gatling guns and gunboats, and today missiles, helicopter gunships, and fighter bombers have been the deciding factors when West meets East and North meets South. Superior firepower, not superior culture, has brought the Europeans and Euro-North Americans to positions of supremacy that today are still maintained by force, though not by force alone. Such superior-inferior relationship cannot promote economic equality but inequality.
Other western proponents argue that poverty in Africa is due to overpopulation, too many people having too many children to feed. Actually, over the last several centuries, many African lands have been less densely populated than certain parts of Europe.
The enormous wealth extracted by the western colonizers should remind us that there originally were few really poor nations. Many African countries were and sometimes still are rich in resources. Some lands have been so thoroughly plundered as to be desolate in all respects. However, most of the African countries are not "underdeveloped" but overexploited. Western colonization and investments have created a lower rather than a higher living standard. This master-servant relationship only results in economic inequality.
The dominant theory of the last half century, enunciated repeatedly by writers like Barbara Ward and W. W. Rostow and afforded wide currency in the United States and other parts of the Western world, maintains that it is up to the rich nations of the North to help uplift the "backward" nations of the South, bringing them technology and teaching them proper work habits. This is an updated version of "the White man's burden," a favorite imperialist fantasy.
According to the development scenario, with the introduction of Western investments, the backward economic sectors of the poor nations will release their workers, who then will find more productive employment in the modern sector at higher wages. As capital accumulates, business will reinvest its profits, thus creating still more products, jobs, buying power, and markets. Eventually a more prosperous economy evolves.
This "development theory" or "modernization theory," as it is sometimes called, bears little relation to reality. What has emerged in the Third World nations like Africa is an intensely exploitive form of dependent capitalism. Economic conditions have worsened drastically with the growth of transnational corporate investment. The problem is not poor lands or unproductive populations but foreign exploitation and economic inequality.
The legacy of imperial domination is not only misery and strife, but an economic structure dominated by a network of international corporations which themselves are beholden to parent companies based in North America, Europe and Japan. If there is any harmonization or integration, it occurs among the global investor classes, not among the indigenous economies of these countries. Third World economies remain fragmented and un-integrated both between each other and within themselves, both in the flow of capital and goods and in technology and organization. In sum, what we have is a world economy that has little to do with the economic needs of the world's people.
Conclusively, the relationship between African countries and the most developed countries has gone under various names: "informal empire," "colonialism without colonies," "neo-colonialism," and "neo-imperialism." This shows us that this relationship is not about to end but will continue existing to the advantage of the so called super powers.
REFERENCES
Guido T, 1994, “Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?” American Economic Review 84(3), 600-621.
Wiemer S, Brian N, Timothy (2009): The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality. Oxford University Press.
Peter Lambert (2002). Distribution and Redistribution of Income. Manchester University Press
http://www.ifpri.org/PUBS/otherpubs/globalpoor.asp. E-wealth of Nations, University of Helsinki (22/03/2011)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality(25/03/2011)
