FROM MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: IMPLICATIONS OF THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AND ASSISTANCE ON THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Abstract

The coercive integration of the economies of the global south into international capitalist system has disruptively impacted them, culminating in their loss of capacities for stable and sustainable growth and development. Capitalist economies of the Metropole are predatory in their functioning to sustain self-prosperity and advancement. This imposes the strangulating burden of impoverishment and underdevelopment on helpless preys, the Less Developed Countries (LDCs), which wallow in ever-escalating complicated and multidimentional development crises. Paradoxically, the culprits now pose as benevolent fixers of development issues in the global south as they consistently deliberate and fashion out frameworks for addressing development debacle plaguing the disempowered LDCs. Using data drawn from a desk study of secondary materials, this study evaluates prominent development assistance approaches viz: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study finds, first, that while the MDGs hit no reasonable success due to unmet commitments by key global players owing to their usual hide-and-seek game, the SDGs is yet another rhetoric being pursued through the politicsas-usual approach. Second, it is obvious that these development strategies are too vast, idealistic and riddled with ambiguities which also account for their failure. Third, the development frameworks are scarcely adaptable and evidently unsuitable to local conditions and dynamics. Political and economic development models articulated in the Metropole and imposed on the deprived nations have often neglected local conditions and realities. Situating these alien development approaches where they could yield positive results for the supposed beneficiaries is hardly the primary objective for their formulation in the first place, hence their application is greeted with external manipulation and sabotage. The study concludes that only effective transfer of technology and attainment of scientific agriculture could enhance capacity-building for sustainable growth and development of Third World economies. Africa’s socioeconomic advancement could also be guaranteed through diversification and industrialization of its manufactures.