Think Global: Sub Saharan Africa

By: Sam Whitty                              With increased implementation of technology in both the government and the private sector, Malawi is working hard to catch up to the rest of the world. Currently, it does not have the infrastructure for a robust technological market. Malawi is only ranked 168 out of 175 countries in the 2016 edition of the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Global ICT Development Index ( 2 ). In the future however, Malawi is planning to develop its market for technology to revolutionize the country. They cannot do it alone, however. In 2017, the World Bank released $72.4 million to help Malawi connect to the global digital market, and investments into technology are becoming more widespread as time goes on. While a technological future for Malawi may sound like welcome progress for the nation, it comes with troubling consequences. Because Malawi is late to use ...

 By: Sam Whitty [ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her book " We Should All Be Feminists "]               Although the United Nations, whose goal is to prevent human rights violations across the globe and to keep the peace between countries, was founded about 75 years ago, sex trafficking has never been discussed as a serious issue until recently. Instead, people preferred to write about issues that were perceived as more serious such as nuclear proliferation. The idea that human trafficking is not a serious discussion is blasphemy, and Kristoff is correct in labeling the practice as slavery. There is barely any difference between conditions that victims of sex trafficking are forced to endure and the conditions that slaves were forced to endure in the early years of America. Women are taken from their homes just like Africans were taken from their homeland, bought and sold on a market just like slaves were in the south, and forced to perfo...

By: Sam Whitty [Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks at Harvard Graduation in 2018 ( 1 )]             Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the Nigerian author of  Americanah  and other prize winning publications. As a child, she was introduced to reading at a young age, but the books that she read were mostly foreign. She found it difficult to read any African literature because it was scarce. As a result, her easily misled, young mind was thought that literature as a rule must be foreign. Because she had no representation of herself in children's literature, she assumed that a Nigerian girl could not exist in a book. In this way, she was like the billions of people that are given a single story to base their assumptions and opinions on. This single story can alienate and undermine an entire population, creating stereotypes that govern what can and cannot exist in the world.             The dangers of a single...

 By: Sam Whitty               Humanitarian aid is an important subject when it comes to globalization. This is because humanitarian aid is given out to all who need it rather than only to members on one side. Only relatively recently in human history have there been international organizations dedicated to helping those in poverty and wounded soldiers. Their emergence is one of the biggest steps that humanity has taken towards a globally moral society.  [Henry Dunant]             In The Crisis Caravan , Linda Polman discusses two major names in the history of humanitarian aid: Henry Dunant and Florence Nightingale. Henry Dunant is the founder of the Red Cross, an international organization dedicated to helping people during national disasters and other emergencies. Dunant founded this organization because of what he saw in the Battle of Solferino in 1859. During this battle, forty-thousand soldiers were kil...

By: Sam Whitty [Malawian farmers work the fields]               Being one of the poorest countries in the world, Malawi is especially familiar with poverty. Malawi had a per capita Gross National Income of only 320 USD, which is one of the lowest in the world. On top of this, Malawi sits in the heart of poverty, sub-Saharan Africa, and its per capita income growth rate is barely half of the average non-resource-rich African economy ( 1 ).               But Malawi's trouble with poverty and its economy is not an outlier. It is part of a global trend. In Recent years, countries around the globe have seen a drop in poverty, India being the best example of this. In 2019, India reduced its poverty rate to below three percent. This is a bold move for a country that has the second largest population of any country and is set to overtake China in the next decade. On the other hand, Africa has seen largely stagn...

 By: Sam Whitty             The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 was a result of the increased liberalization of the economy and the risks that came with it. In countries across the globe, the economy was gradually deregulated. This was due to the idea that any government interference in the economy hampered its innate equilibrium. Instead, the disappearance of economic regulations did not balance the global economy but introduce it to even greater risk. The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 was caused by a global acceptance of higher risk investments that introduced a false confidence in the global economy.                  A large part of the deregulation of the global economy was led by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the 1970’s, these organizations offered poorer nations financial aid if they agreed to follow guidelines that would liberate their economies...

By: Sam Whitty               Nationalism is a movement of pride for one's nation and the support of policies in the interest of that nation. Nationalism is the opposite of globalization because globalization works to achieve cooperation between all people in every nation. Zakaria writes in The Post-American World that "countries are [increasingly] less willing to come together to solve common problems" (pg. 34). This is precisely because nationalism fuels competition between countries instead of cooperation. Because countries are not as willing to work together to solve global and national problems, inequality is a serious problem in many countries around the globe.               Nationalism in Malawi stems from their recent independence from British colonial rule in 1964. After British explorers and Scottish missionaries gradually took control of Malawi in the 19th century, they named the region the Shire H...