Author: Jordan Becker

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Africa isn’t prosperity but rather failure. An article called A Hopeful Continent, from the news source, The Economist explains that in most cases this is far from the truth. In fact some places in Europe could be considered worse off than those in Africa.  This quote from the article sums up the impact of African media coverage of Moldova,  “They inspire pity and disbelief, just as tales of disease and disorder in Africa have long done in the rich world” (The Economist Pg 1). This is the kind of reaction that you would think people from the western world would give when hearing about Africa. But when one hears about the continent it seems that all there is to talk about is the bad. Most media especially the news thrives off of sad and depressing stories more often than good ones. Can you blame a person for thinking that Africa is a backwater continent is that’s all the media represents it as? I believe that as time goes on this representation will change, as the article stated things are getting better, not everywhere is perfect but it is also far from terrible. As Africa’s economy grows as a whole more money will flow into the continent and will continuously progress until this backwards representation of the continent changes.

Bright and Geyer say that it’s misleading to say the world is undergoing the process of globalization, while they continue to list multiple affects of globalization. Globalization is not just something that large powers partake in, the growth of business does as well. They prove this in their statement “that relocates the centers of poverty from the countryside to the slums of megacities” (p.295). That is a worldwide affect of globalization, this affect occurs in two ways. In developed countries business pulls out of big cities to find cheaper labor in less developed countries. This leaves the people in those cities without jobs and leaves the area in poverty. On the other side of the situation in less developed countries sweatshops are built in cities where a large amount of workers can be hired while being paid less than a smaller amount of workers in any developed country. The situation leaves both areas impoverished while the business grows exponentially.