Globalization, Trade and Regional Integration

Cluster leader: Fantu Cheru

The objective of this research cluster is to integrate perspectives from different disciplines in the social sciences and to take a broad view of globalization processes and how they affect African societies in the political, economic and social realm. Globalization study has emerged as a means to explain the myriad features of worldwide restructuring in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. This process, brought about by technological revolutions, is an important dimension of international economic relations in terms of its implications for trade, productive investment, and finance.

A striking feature of globalization is the very fact of social change expressed in multiplicity of transitions occurring simultaneously at several and in some cases, mutually contradictory levels. The effect of these transitions is manifest in a wide array of contexts—from the social and cultural, to the economic, environmental and political. In short, globalization has opened up the Pandora’s Box of new issues—issues that cannot be explored with a single disciplinary approach.