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Nairobi, Kenya – Today I was working in a coffee shop, taking advantage of the free wireless Internet.
Sitting around me were Indians, Britons, Americans and Kenyans. I was using Skype to chat with someone in Beijing, while working on a project for an organization based in Belgium and reading emails from people in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Canada, the UK and the USA.
I began to reflect on how much my life has been shaped by globalization, the growing interconnectedness of the world’s economic, political, cultural and social systems. In fact, as the child of an Independence native and an Englishman, I would not exist were it not for cheap air travel and an international mail system.
I have been lucky to benefit tremendously from globalization. I have had the privilege to see many places around the globe, meet friends from different backgrounds and learn about cultures and contexts other than my own.
And one can benefit from the international economy without ever leaving home. Go out into a rural Kenyan village and you will see poor farmers, who earn no more than a few dollars a day, texting away on a mobile phone. For those of you in Independence, check the tags of your clothing and the packages of your food and you will see how much we benefit from a global market.
Yet globalization is not always an unqualified good. In New York and London the growing integration of the financial systems meant economic problems in one part of the world had repercussions thousands of miles away.
Less than 300 miles from where I am sitting, Somalia is being torn apart by a war that is fueled in part by the global arms trade. In Independence, families suffer when heroin, cocaine and other drugs are trafficked with speed and ease, thanks to international logistics and communications.
Indeed, not everyone benefits equally from globalization. While I and many other white-collar professionals have done pretty well out of it, not everyone is so lucky. Throughout the US industrial belt, blue-collar workers struggle to shift to new professions after the local plant, factory or shipyard shuts up shop.
Here in Kenya, too many people struggle to eke out an existence from an unpromising economy that rewards political connections and leaves the majority of people with a choice between subsistence farming in the village or street hawking in the city.
I chatted with a taxi driver this week, who lamented the lack of opportunities for him to use his intelligence and eagerness to learn. He had done well in school, but weighed down with the pressures of family and survival, he reluctantly drives a taxi.
Nairobi, Kenya – Today I was working in a coffee shop, taking advantage of the free wireless Internet.
Sitting around me were Indians, Britons, Americans and Kenyans. I was using Skype to chat with someone in Beijing, while working on a project for an organization based in Belgium and reading emails from people in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Canada, the UK and the USA.
I began to reflect on how much my life has been shaped by globalization, the growing interconnectedness of the world’s economic, political, cultural and social systems. In fact, as the child of an Independence native and an Englishman, I would not exist were it not for cheap air travel and an international mail system.
I have been lucky to benefit tremendously from globalization. I have had the privilege to see many places around the globe, meet friends from different backgrounds and learn about cultures and contexts other than my own.
And one can benefit from the international economy without ever leaving home. Go out into a rural Kenyan village and you will see poor farmers, who earn no more than a few dollars a day, texting away on a mobile phone. For those of you in Independence, check the tags of your clothing and the packages of your food and you will see how much we benefit from a global market.
Yet globalization is not always an unqualified good. In New York and London the growing integration of the financial systems meant economic problems in one part of the world had repercussions thousands of miles away.
Less than 300 miles from where I am sitting, Somalia is being torn apart by a war that is fueled in part by the global arms trade. In Independence, families suffer when heroin, cocaine and other drugs are trafficked with speed and ease, thanks to international logistics and communications.
Indeed, not everyone benefits equally from globalization. While I and many other white-collar professionals have done pretty well out of it, not everyone is so lucky. Throughout the US industrial belt, blue-collar workers struggle to shift to new professions after the local plant, factory or shipyard shuts up shop.
Here in Kenya, too many people struggle to eke out an existence from an unpromising economy that rewards political connections and leaves the majority of people with a choice between subsistence farming in the village or street hawking in the city.
I chatted with a taxi driver this week, who lamented the lack of opportunities for him to use his intelligence and eagerness to learn. He had done well in school, but weighed down with the pressures of family and survival, he reluctantly drives a taxi.
“You people are lucky,” he said. “You get to use your talents to make a living. We have to do what we can.”
So I am not the kind of person who would don a bandanna and throw rocks at a global trade negotiation – there are too many possibilities for good that can come from international interconnectedness. However, we cannot fall for the sycophantic “globalaloney” one often hears business executives. There are many people who receive no benefit, even find their lives worse, as a result of how we set up the world’s political and economic system.
In addition to economic globalization, we need to consider how to globalize safety nets, respect for human rights and effective means to control illicit flows of drugs, guns and money. Globalization has potential, but we must continue to tinker with it, to make it more just, fair and peaceful.
