General

We talk endlessly about the infrastructure of roads, bridges, power stations, data cables, and so on, because they are visible, measurable, and easy to showcase. They create great photo opportunities and generate compelling headlines. Yet, beneath the steel and concrete, beneath the policy frameworks and financing models, there is another form of infrastructure that is harder to see but just as crucial. Trust. Not as a virtue or a desirable cultural trait, but as a fundamental infrastructure. A load-bearing platform. A system that enables commerce, innovation, and governance. When trust collapses, empires decay, businesses go bankrupt, and communities fracture, even if all the highways and fibre cables remain intact. The paradox is that we regard trust as “soft,” but history indicates it is the strongest foundation of all. Trust as Infrastructure, Not Intangibility Consider how we typically define infrastructure: it connects. A road links cities. A port links countries. A data centre links people to the cloud. Trust functions in the same way. It connects individuals and groups who might otherwise have no reason to transact or collaborate. A road without vehicles is useless. A contract without trust is equally useless if performance is the goal. In fact, even the most advanced transport systems cannot save a society where trust has disintegrated. One could even argue that trust is the first infrastructure. Long before humans built canals or railways, they relied on trust to hunt in groups, share food, and organise labour. Civilisation itself rests on this invisible architecture. Long before laws were written or currencies minted, trust allowed people to cooperate beyond bloodlines, to plan beyond the day’s survival, and to build systems that outlived individual lives. Without it, no market forms, no institution endures, and no shared future can be imagined. What we call civilisation is, at its core, trust scaled across time and distance. Trust and Innovation We also often celebrate innovation as a product of talent, capital, and technology. Those are the visible inputs. The things that show up in pitch decks and policy documents. But underneath all three is trust. Talent takes risks only when it believes effort will be rewarded rather than exploited. Capital flows only when it trusts that rules will be stable and commitments honoured. Technology is adopted only when people trust that it will not be used against them or fail them when it matters most. Strip trust away, and innovation becomes timid. People stop experimenting. They stop sharing ideas. They optimise for survival instead of progress. In those conditions, even the most gifted minds and the most sophisticated tools struggle to produce anything meaningful. A farmer in northern Ghana only experiments with a new seed variety if she trusts that buyers will not undercut her at harvest time. Without that trust, she sows, harvests and sells whatever she has quickly, for whatever price she can get, to avoid being cheated. Her willingness to innovate is held back not by a lack of ability but by a lack of trust in the system. Silicon Valley, celebrated as the temple of modern innovation, is not fundamentally about technology. It is about risk capital, which is essentially trust capital. Investors pour billions into young founders who may have only a prototype and a compelling story. That is trust made TANGIBLE. And even adopting technology itself requires trust. Digital wallets. AI-powered platforms. Blockchain tools. These do not scale simply because they are clever or well-engineered. They scale only when people believe the system will work for them, not against them. When trust is high, adoption accelerates. People are willing to try, to learn, to migrate from familiar habits to new tools. They accept short-term friction because they believe the long-term payoff will be honoured. But when trust is low, adoption becomes shallow and fragile. People may register for platforms but stop using them. They may experiment once but retreat at the first failure. They keep backups, workarounds, and informal alternatives because they do not fully believe the system will protect them when something goes wrong. In regions where trust in formal institutions is weak, even sophisticated technology struggles to gain real traction. The issue is rarely access or intelligence. It is fear of exclusion, fear of hidden costs, fear that the rules will change without warning. And once trust erodes, adoption does not merely slow. It reverses. People abandon systems they no longer believe in and return to what feels safer, even if it is less efficient. So if we ask why certain places leap forward while others stall, the missing variable might not be talent or money, but the invisible infrastructure of trust. Trust and Trade Trade, at its essence, is an act of faith. I am handing you goods today on the understanding that you will pay tomorrow. I ship cargo across borders with the assumption that your government will not suddenly change tariffs or seize my product. This fragile faith is what keeps economies running. When it fails, the repercussions are immediate. The 2008 financial crisis, for example, was not simply about subprime mortgages or toxic assets. At its core, it was a systemic failure of trust. Banks did not suddenly run out of money. What they ran out of was confidence in one another. Financial institutions operate on the assumption that counterparties are solvent, disclosures are broadly accurate, and risks are reasonably understood. In 2008, that assumption collapsed. Once banks began to doubt the quality of each other’s balance sheets, interbank lending froze. Institutions chose to hoard cash rather than lend it, not because cash was scarce, but because uncertainty was high. In financial terms, liquidity did not disappear; it became trapped. Money existed, but it stopped circulating. For non‑analysts, the simplest way to understand this is to imagine a marketplace where everyone suddenly suspects that the person on the other side of the transaction might not pay tomorrow. Even with full wallets, trade slows. People wait. They pull back. They protect themselves. That is exactly what happened at a global

For over a hundred years, the study of International Relations (IR) has been shaped by a handful of big ideas about how the world works. These ideas were developed in European and American universities, refined through the experiences of major powers, and exported globally as the standard vocabulary of global politics. They introduced concepts such as sovereignty, anarchy, intervention, development, and even peace. For many people working in business, governance, or international partnerships today, these ideas sit quietly in the background, shaping how organisations interpret global risk, competition, or cooperation. However, for an increasing number of thinkers, particularly in Africa and the wider Global South, there is a sense that this traditional view is incomplete. It describes the global order as if it arose naturally from European diplomacy, free markets, and the aftermath of two world wars. It depicts the West as the centre of the system, with the rest of the world as an extension to be governed, developed, or stabilised. This is where postcolonialism enters the stage. It is not just a critique, but a correction, a way of presenting a more complete story about how the world truly works. For business leaders, policy professionals, and everyone involved in making decisions in a global context, it offers tools to better understand power relations that traditional theories often overlook. We need to examine the central ideas of postcolonial thought, explain why it questions the foundations of mainstream international relations, and demonstrate why these insights are important well beyond the classroom. The Foundations of International Relations Were Built in an Imperial World To understand why postcolonial scholarship pushes back so strongly, we must start with how the discipline of international relations was born. It did not develop in a neutral global setting. Instead, it took shape during the height of empire. When early IR scholars wrote about international order, they often described it using language that suggested a self-contained European system: the rise of the modern state, diplomacy among great powers, and the balance of power that supposedly stabilised the continent. What these narratives quietly omitted was the wider context, the fact that European states also controlled vast overseas empires, extracted wealth, forced labour, and reshaped entire societies. Postcolonial scholars argue that this erasure is more than just a historical footnote. It influences how the discipline understands politics today. If the origins of global order are framed as European, peaceful, and orderly, then the violence and coercion that brought most of the world into that order are treated as peripheral, accidental, or irrelevant. This creates a problem for anyone trying to understand international business, development policy, or security dynamics. The world inherited from empire is deeply unequal, and those inequalities continue to influence markets, partnerships, and global governance. Ignoring that history or treating it as something outside the discipline, limits our understanding. Why Postcolonialism Challenges Conventional IR: The Core Claims Postcolonialism aims to reveal what is absent, concealed, or downplayed in mainstream approaches. Three themes constitute its core. 1. Conventional IR universalises Western experience. Traditional IR considers categories like “state behaviour”, “rational action” or “sovereignty” as universal. Postcolonial scholars argue these categories are not universal at all; they are historically specific to Western Europe and were disseminated through empire. This matters because it shapes which questions IR considers important. If Western experience becomes the standard, the rest of the world is judged based on its proximity to that model. States in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are described as “emerging”, “fragile”, “developing”, or “post-conflict”, while Western states are simply considered “normal”. The bias is subtle, but powerful. 2. Eurocentrism shapes narratives of peace, development and intervention. Postcolonialism argues that much of what is called “peacebuilding”, “democracy promotion” or “development assistance” relies on the assumption that Western models of institutions and governance are inherently superior. Even well-meaning interventions can reinforce hierarchies because they treat non-Western actors as objects of policy rather than as agents. This helps explain why large development programmes often face resistance or why some states push back against donor conditionalities. The issue is not just political; it is philosophical. People resent being seen as recipients of an imported model rather than as partners in shaping their own systems. 3. IR often separates today’s global politics from the violence that shaped it. For postcolonial scholars, the biggest problem with conventional IR is that it treats empire as a closed chapter. It analyses today’s conflicts or inequalities without acknowledging the historical processes that created them. In practical terms, this means: This separation makes it harder to explain why patterns of inequality persist. Postcolonial research, especially work that focuses on how empire structured global markets and political systems, reconnects the present to its historical roots. Why This Matters for Business and Policy At first glance, postcolonial theory may seem too abstract or philosophical for the practical realm of business strategy or development decision-making. But its insights have clear implications for how companies, governments, and multilateral organisations operate. 1. Markets are embedded in power. Investment flows, trade partnerships, and regulatory frameworks are often shaped by historical relationships. A company operating in Africa may find that certain sectors are dominated by external actors not because of efficiency but due to long-standing patterns of extraction. 2. Policy interventions require contextual legitimacy. Development programmes that fail often do so not because they are technically flawed, but because they do not align with local political histories. Postcolonial thinking warns policymakers about the danger of offering one-size-fits-all solutions. 3. Risk assessment changes when history is part of the equation. Political risk analysis usually concentrates on elections, conflict, and regulation. However, postcolonial perspectives emphasise deeper structural forces, such as resentment towards external influence or long-standing inequalities, which can alter outcomes. What Postcolonialism Adds to Our Understanding of Global Power 1. It makes visible what conventional IR overlooks. When mainstream theories describe international order through state-centric models, they often ignore the actors who bear the consequences of global decisions, such as workers in supply chains, communities affected by

For decades, the global economy has promised convergence. The message has been straightforward: open your markets, liberalise your trade, attract investment, and prosperity will follow. Yet many nations across the Global South (primarily Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania) have followed this path and still find themselves burdened by persistent poverty, inequality, and dependence. To understand why, one must turn to dependency theory, a framework that shows how the structure of the global economy influences the condition of the poor in the developing world. The Structure of Dependence Dependency theory argues that the world economy is not a level playing field. It is a hierarchy of relationships between an industrialised “centre” and a resource-exporting “periphery.” Wealth flows from the periphery to the centre through trade, investment, and technology transfer, leaving developing nations structurally disadvantaged. The consequence is that poverty in these regions is not accidental or temporary but embedded in the very logic of global capitalism. This imbalance ensures that while the industrial powers accumulate capital, technology, and political influence, the periphery remains trapped in low-wage manufacturing, commodity exports, and debt. In many developing countries, large portions of the population still lack access to the benefits of growth. Industrialisation occurs, but only superficially and is limited to sectors dependent on imported technology and foreign capital. The outcome is a dual economy: a small, modern elite connected to global markets and a large population living on the margins. This structure reproduces itself generation after generation. It affects how governments plan, how policies are designed, and even how the poor view their own situation. When entire national budgets rely on the export of raw materials or the influx of foreign loans, the poor become collateral in the larger game of international economics. Every fluctuation in commodity prices, every interest rate hike, and every policy reform demanded by creditors ripples through households that live from harvest to harvest or paycheck to paycheck. The Historical Roots of Underdevelopment Dependency theory redefines poverty not as a failure to modernise but as a result of historical and structural connections to global capitalism. The underdeveloped world’s economic systems were designed to serve the needs of industrial powers. Profits, natural resources, and decision-making power flow outward, while debt, dependence, and inequality remain deeply rooted. The relationship between rich and poor nations mirrors that between the urban and rural classes within them, where elites often act as intermediaries, maintaining global patterns of extraction. The accumulation of wealth at the top of developing societies also mirrors global inequality, further marginalising the poor domestically. Therefore, dependency operates on multiple levels (global, national, and local), ensuring that the same mechanisms that generate wealth for a few also produce poverty for the many. Under colonialism, this structure was explicit. Colonies existed to enrich their metropoles, their parent state. After independence, the structure became more subtle but no less powerful. Aid, foreign investment, and trade agreements replaced direct rule, but the outcome remained the same: the ongoing extraction of value from the South to support prosperity in the North. The poor in developing countries became the invisible labour force of a global economy built on cheap inputs and expensive outputs. Integration on Unequal Terms One of dependency theory’s most lasting insights is that joining global markets does not ensure shared prosperity. Developing nations often enter the system on unequal terms, accepting low export prices, foreign ownership of industries, and dependence on imported goods. Even as economies expand, the pattern of inequality persists; the wealth created by labour and resources in the South benefits corporations and consumers in the North. This inequality is not only economic but also political. Decisions regarding interest rates, investment, and trade terms are often made outside the borders of developing countries, within global institutions and corporate boardrooms. Such asymmetry deprives poorer states of sovereignty and restricts their ability to prioritise domestic welfare over international obligations. When debt repayment takes precedence over healthcare or education, the poor pay the price for dependency. Financial, technological, and informational dependence all reinforce the same subjugation. The poorest are doubly marginalised, excluded from local opportunities and exploited by global structures that keep their countries reliant. For example, the technologies that boost modern productivity are owned by firms in developed countries, meaning that developing nations must pay for access even to participate in global markets. This creates a cycle where innovation deepens inequality. Modern Faces of an Old Problem In the twenty-first century, the nature of dependency has evolved. While Western powers once dominated global trade, new participants have emerged. South–South relationships, especially between Africa and Asia, are often praised as alternatives to old colonial hierarchies. However, they frequently perpetuate the same inequalities. Raw materials still flow outward; manufactured goods and loans still flow inward. The language of partnership masks ongoing imbalances. China’s engagement with Africa illustrates this dynamic clearly. Infrastructure projects and loans promise progress but often lead to new financial burdens and strategic dependencies. For many countries, options are limited: they trade one patron for another. The impoverished rarely reap the full advantages of these grand initiatives, as debt repayments, resource extraction, and elite contracts eat into national gains. When governments prioritise infrastructure repayment over social services, it is the rural farmer, the urban informal trader, or the unemployed youth who suffer the most. Moreover, modern dependency encompasses not just physical resources but also data, technology, and information. Digital dependency now characterises the 21st century, where developing countries rely on imported software, foreign cloud storage, and global payment systems that collect data and profits abroad. The poor, whose livelihoods increasingly depend on mobile technology, remain consumers rather than beneficiaries of the digital revolution. The Persistence of Structural Inequality Dependency theory remains powerful because it explains why poverty endures even when national economies grow. The world’s economic order rewards those who control technology, capital, and finance, rather than those who supply labour and materials. This system creates prosperity for some precisely by maintaining others in subordination. Globalisation has not eliminated this imbalance; it has