globalisation
Globalisation is the way money, goods, people and ideas move across countries until the whole world starts behaving like one big, tangled market.
In plain English
"Why is my Shein order coming from China but the money left my Nigerian account in dollars?" Bisi asked her brother, staring at her phone. He laughed and said, "That, my dear, is globalisation. Welcome to the party."
Globalisation is simply the world getting more connected. Countries trade with each other, companies set up factories wherever labour is cheap, and money moves across borders at the speed of a phone tap. The Nigerian jollof rice you cook might use tomato paste from a factory that imported its packaging machine from Italy, tomatoes grown with fertiliser blended in Morocco, and a pot made in China. Nobody planned that meal to be so international. It just happened, calmly, over decades of countries opening their doors to each other.
It shows up everywhere in Nigerian life. When oil prices fall in Texas, fuel queues can appear in Lagos. When the dollar strengthens, a father in London sending ₦300,000 home to his mother in Enugu finds the pounds go further, so his mother suddenly has more naira than last month for the same effort on his part. When a factory in Vietnam offers cheaper labour, a Nigerian textile company might struggle to compete, because the shirt from Vietnam lands in Balogun Market cheaper than the one sewn in Aba.
Globalisation is not only about goods. It is students studying in the United Kingdom and sending skills back home, it is Nollywood films streaming in Toronto, it is a Lagos startup raising funding from investors in San Francisco. The world has become one long chain of dependency, for better and for worse.
The tricky part is that globalisation creates winners and losers at the same time. The Nigerian consumer buying a cheaper imported phone wins. The local phone assembler trying to compete with that cheap import may lose. That tension is the whole story of globalisation in one sentence.
A Nigerian fashion designer buys fabric imported from India, sells finished dresses to customers in the United Kingdom through Instagram, and gets paid in pounds that convert to roughly ₦1,200,000 a month. Three countries, one small business, one clear consider of globalisation at work.
Questions people ask
Is globalisation good or bad for Nigeria?
It is both, depending on where you stand. It gives Nigerian businesses access to bigger markets and cheaper technology, but it also exposes local industries to fierce competition from countries with lower production costs. Most economists see it as a trade off rather than a straightforward gift or curse.
How does globalisation affect the naira?
Since Nigeria trades heavily with the rest of the world, especially in oil, the naira's value gets pulled around by global demand and dollar movements. A connected world means Nigeria's currency reacts to events far outside its own borders, from interest rate decisions in America to oil demand in Asia.
Does globalisation mean Nigerian businesses cannot compete?
Not at all. Many Nigerian businesses, especially in fashion, food, and entertainment, have used globalisation to reach customers abroad who could never have found them before. The internet turned global trade into something a small business in Yaba can join, more than large multinational companies.
Last reviewed