Rethinking the North-South Dialogue and Development of the Third World: Issues and Prospects

Abstract

The bifurcation of the world into North and South is an economic divide that
highlights the unevenness in the level of development in the world. While the
global North is mainly developed, the global South plays host to bulk of the
underdeveloped countries. This study therefore interrogates some of those
specific demands and how far they were actualized; it also offers some prognosis alongside. The study is anchored on the Dependency Theory. However, it is the same historical process that developed the North, that equally underdeveloped the South and left the later dependent on the former through the various neocolonial structures they left behind in the Global South, hence at independent most countries of the South met a global economic system which was in both principle and practice skewed to favour the North to the detriment of the South. The North- South dialogue is an effort by the South to push for a restructuring of the global economic system to enshrine evenness in the global distribution of wealth; this is manifested in the New International Economic Order (NIEO) which came with some specific requests to the North.