Globalization can provide immense opportunities for less developed countries.
These opportunities centre on access to world markets, finance and technology. By pursuing outward-oriented strategies, countries such as the Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Thailand in Asia and Mauritius in Africa have doubled their national incomes in just over 20 years. Despite the current financial turbulence, this tendency towards globalization seems likely to continue. In contrast, de-linking from the global economy leads to marginalization and condemns countries to slow growth. This is painfully demonstrated by the past experiences of African countries.