Pharmaceuticals in the Colonial Enterprise
Channel: Tour de Lorraine
Date: 2021-07-01

Talk by Noble Kofi Nazzah on the role pharmaceuticals play in the colonial enterprise today. The talk was part of the Tour de Lorraine 2021(https://www.tourdelorraine.ch/tdl-21/).

Extractivsm was a fundamental feature of colonial exploitation. Extractive institutions established by colonial powers turned colonies into sites where resources or knowledge was extracted and sent abroad for processing, and not places where productive and value addition activities were organized; thus, depriving colonies of the knowledge that comes from industry, experimentation and learning-by-doing and associated financial profit. Remnants of this system of exploitation still exist in various sectors of the economies of former colonies despite the formal breaking up of the colonial pact. Using the case study of the pharmaceutical industry, this workshop seeks to examine how advanced countries, especially Switzerland, have benefited from pharmaceutical resources and knowledge extracted from countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Noble Kofi Nazzah is the founder of Pierian Centre for Learning and Development Research in Ghana. He studied at the University of Ghana, where he obtained a B.Sc. (Hons) in Chemistry; Webster University, where obtained a M.A. in International Relations; and at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he graduated with a M.Sc. in African Development.