Dependency Theory and the Condition of the Poor in the Developing World

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