African Powerhouses: A Decolonial Critique of Nigeria and South Africa’s Perceived Economic and Political Strengths in the Modern World-System

Abstract

Debates have raged amongst scholars regarding the respective economic and political strength of Africa’s largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa. The former recently surpassed South Africa as the continent’s largest economy. Some lauded this as move away from South Africa’s long-held hegemony on the continent whilst others pointed to the banality of such debates given Africa’s positionality within the global financial structure and the modern world-system. This chapter uses decoloniality as its analytical framework and identifies coloniality as the primary cause of global injustice towards economies of the Global South. Using the economic contour of Anibal Quijano’s colonial matrices of power, which consists of control of economy, control of authority, control of gender and sexuality, and, control of subjectivity and knowledge; this chapter offers a critique of the various positions regarding the value and validity of the professed economic prowess of both Nigeria and South Africa within the modern world-system. The chapter concludes by providing a pan-African decolonial pathway to true and meaningful economic and political prosperity for the African continent.