Introduction
The promise of globalisation has long been that the free flow of capital, goods, and ideas would lift all boats, narrowing the divide between the developed and developing worlds. Yet the lived reality for many nations in the Global South suggests a starkly different outcome, as the structural dynamics of global trade, finance, and technology have systematically favoured already-wealthy nations while trapping poorer ones in cycles of dependency and underdevelopment. This essay argues that globalisation has, on balance, widened the gap between rich and poor nations by entrenching asymmetries in trade, capital flows, and technological capacity that disadvantage the developing world.
The terms of international trade systematically disadvantage developing nations, locking them into low-value commodity exports while rich nations dominate high-value manufactured goods and services.
Explain
Globalisation has deepened the integration of developing countries into a world trading system whose rules were largely written by and for developed nations. Many poorer countries remain dependent on exporting raw commodities such as agricultural products, minerals, and fossil fuels, whose prices are volatile and whose long-term trend has been one of decline relative to manufactured goods. Meanwhile, protectionist agricultural subsidies in the United States and the European Union undercut the very sectors where developing countries have a comparative advantage, trapping them at the bottom of global value chains.
Example
The World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture, negotiated during the Uruguay Round in 1994, permitted developed nations to maintain substantial agricultural subsidies while requiring developing countries to open their markets. The United States spent approximately $46 billion on farm subsidies in 2020, enabling American cotton and grain to be exported at prices below the cost of production, devastating smallholder farmers in West Africa and South Asia who could not compete. Ghana, for instance, saw its domestic poultry industry collapse after trade liberalisation flooded its market with cheap, frozen chicken imports from the EU, destroying an estimated 80,000 jobs in the sector between 2000 and 2010.
Link
This demonstrates that globalisation has widened the gap between rich and poor nations, as the structural inequities embedded in the international trading system ensure that the benefits of global commerce flow disproportionately to those who wrote its rules.
Global financial integration has facilitated capital flight and exploitative lending that drain wealth from developing nations to the developed world.
Explain
Globalisation has enabled the free movement of capital across borders, but this freedom has operated asymmetrically. Wealthy nations attract investment through stable institutions and deep capital markets, while developing countries experience volatile capital flows, speculative attacks on their currencies, and predatory lending by international financial institutions. The resulting cycle of debt, structural adjustment, and capital flight has transferred enormous wealth from the Global South to the Global North, deepening rather than narrowing the development gap.
Example
Africa lost an estimated $88.6 billion in illicit financial flows annually between 2000 and 2015, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, far exceeding the $48 billion the continent received in overseas development assistance during the same period. Multinational corporations used transfer pricing, trade misinvoicing, and tax haven structures to shift profits out of African countries, depriving governments of the revenues needed for development. Zambia's copper mining sector exemplifies this pattern: despite being one of the world's largest copper producers, the country collected less than 2% of copper revenues in taxes during the early 2000s because multinational mining firms routed profits through subsidiaries in Switzerland and other low-tax jurisdictions.
Link
This confirms that globalisation has widened the gap between rich and poor nations, as the architecture of global finance facilitates the extraction of wealth from developing economies and its concentration in the already-wealthy developed world.
The global intellectual property regime concentrates technological innovation and its benefits in rich nations, creating a knowledge divide that entrenches economic inequality between nations.
Explain
Globalisation has been accompanied by an increasingly stringent international intellectual property framework, most notably the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which protects patents, copyrights, and trademarks across borders. While this framework incentivises innovation, it overwhelmingly benefits the corporations and nations that hold the vast majority of global patents, restricting developing countries' access to essential technologies, medicines, and knowledge. The resulting technology gap prevents poorer nations from moving up global value chains and developing indigenous innovation capacity.
Example
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the global intellectual property regime came under intense scrutiny as wealthy nations secured the vast majority of vaccine supplies while developing countries were left behind. By March 2021, high-income countries had administered 83% of all COVID-19 vaccine doses, while low-income countries had administered less than 1%, according to the WHO. India and South Africa's proposal for a temporary TRIPS waiver to enable local vaccine production was resisted by the United States and European Union for over a year, illustrating how the IP regime prioritised pharmaceutical profits over equitable global health outcomes. Singapore, despite its wealth, highlighted the vulnerability of small nations by diversifying its vaccine procurement strategy across Pfizer, Moderna, and Sinovac to avoid dependence on any single source.
Link
This illustrates that globalisation has widened the gap between rich and poor nations, as the global intellectual property architecture restricts developing countries' access to the technologies essential for economic advancement and even basic survival during global crises.
Counter-Argument
Defenders of globalisation argue that it has enabled the most dramatic reduction in global poverty in history, with the World Bank reporting that extreme poverty fell from 36 per cent in 1990 to under 9 per cent by 2019, driven by developing countries that integrated most deeply into global markets. Singapore's own transformation from a GDP per capita of $500 at independence to over $82,000 by 2023 was built entirely on global economic integration.
Rebuttal
However, these success stories are concentrated among a handful of East and Southeast Asian nations with unusually effective governance, while the majority of developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been left further behind. Africa lost an estimated $88.6 billion annually in illicit financial flows between 2000 and 2015, far exceeding the $48 billion it received in development aid, demonstrating that the architecture of global finance extracts wealth from the poorest nations rather than distributing it. Globalisation's winners do not disprove its structural inequities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, globalisation has widened the gap between rich and poor nations by embedding structural advantages for developed economies in the rules of international trade, finance, and intellectual property. While a handful of developing countries have benefited enormously, the majority remain trapped in patterns of commodity dependence, capital flight, and technological subordination that global integration has reinforced rather than alleviated. Meaningful convergence requires not less globalisation but a fundamentally reformed version that addresses these systemic inequities.
Introduction
The claim that globalisation widens the gap between rich and poor nations rests on a selective reading of the evidence that ignores the transformative gains many developing countries have achieved through integration into the global economy. From the unprecedented poverty reduction in East Asia to the diffusion of medical technologies that have raised life expectancy across Africa, globalisation has delivered tangible benefits to billions in the developing world. This essay contends that globalisation has, on the whole, narrowed the gap between rich and poor nations, even as it has created new challenges that require better governance rather than retreat from global integration.
Globalisation has enabled the most dramatic reduction in global poverty in human history, with developing nations in Asia achieving unprecedented convergence with the developed world.
Explain
The integration of developing countries into global markets has provided access to foreign investment, export markets, and technology transfer that have powered transformative economic growth. The rise of East and Southeast Asia in particular demonstrates that globalisation, when combined with effective domestic policies, offers developing nations a proven pathway out of poverty. The claim that globalisation widens the gap between nations ignores the billions of people who have been lifted out of extreme poverty precisely because their countries embraced global economic integration.
Example
The World Bank reported that the share of the global population living in extreme poverty fell from 36% in 1990 to under 9% by 2019, with the vast majority of this reduction occurring in developing countries that had integrated most deeply into the global economy. China's GDP per capita rose from approximately $200 in 1980 to over $12,500 by 2023, driven by export-oriented manufacturing and foreign direct investment enabled by globalisation. Singapore's own transformation from a developing nation with a GDP per capita of approximately $500 at independence in 1965 to one of the world's wealthiest countries, with a GDP per capita exceeding $82,000 in 2023, was built entirely on its integration into the global economy as a trading, financial, and logistics hub.
Link
This challenges the claim that globalisation widens the gap between nations, as the empirical record demonstrates that the most globally integrated developing countries have achieved the most spectacular economic convergence with the developed world.
Global trade and investment have diversified the economies of many developing nations, reducing their vulnerability to commodity price shocks and creating new pathways to prosperity.
Explain
While critics argue that globalisation traps developing countries in commodity dependence, the reality is more nuanced. Global integration has enabled many developing nations to attract foreign direct investment in manufacturing and services, diversifying their economies and creating millions of higher-skilled jobs. Global value chains, while imperfect, have allowed developing countries to industrialise incrementally by specialising in specific stages of production rather than building entire industries from scratch.
Example
Vietnam's integration into global supply chains transformed it from one of the world's poorest countries in the 1980s into a manufacturing hub with a GDP per capita that quadrupled between 2000 and 2023. Samsung alone invested over $18 billion in Vietnamese factories, making the country the world's second-largest smartphone exporter by 2022. Bangladesh's garment industry, built on access to global markets, employs over four million workers, the majority of them women, and lifted the country to lower-middle-income status. In Southeast Asia, Singapore's role as a regional hub for multinational corporations has created significant positive spillovers for neighbouring economies, with Singapore-based firms investing heavily in manufacturing facilities in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam through initiatives supported by ASEAN economic integration.
Link
This demonstrates that globalisation has not widened the gap between rich and poor nations but has provided developing countries with the market access and investment needed to diversify their economies and build more resilient pathways to prosperity.
The global diffusion of technology, knowledge, and best practices enabled by globalisation has dramatically improved health, education, and quality of life in developing nations.
Explain
Globalisation has facilitated the transfer of medical technologies, educational resources, and governance best practices from developed to developing countries at an unprecedented scale and speed. The spread of mobile telephony, the internet, and digital financial services has enabled developing nations to leapfrog stages of development that took wealthy nations decades to traverse. These technology transfers have narrowed, not widened, the gap in human development indicators between rich and poor nations.
Example
Mobile phone penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from under 5% in 2000 to over 80% by 2023, enabling transformative innovations such as Kenya's M-Pesa mobile money system, which brought financial services to over 50 million previously unbanked East Africans. Global health initiatives facilitated by international cooperation and technology transfer reduced child mortality in developing countries by over 50% between 1990 and 2020, according to UNICEF. Average life expectancy in low-income countries rose from 52 years in 1990 to 65 years by 2022. Singapore's own development was built on technology transfer, with the government actively courting multinational corporations like Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard in the 1970s and 1980s to establish manufacturing operations that transferred technical skills and knowledge to the local workforce.
Link
This refutes the claim that globalisation widens the gap between nations, as the global diffusion of technology and knowledge has produced dramatic improvements in human welfare across the developing world, narrowing the gap in the indicators that matter most to ordinary people.
Counter-Argument
Critics argue that the terms of international trade systematically disadvantage developing nations, citing US farm subsidies of $46 billion in 2020 that devastated West African smallholders, and the TRIPS intellectual property regime that restricted developing countries' access to COVID-19 vaccines, with high-income countries administering 83 per cent of all doses by March 2021 while low-income countries received less than 1 per cent.
Rebuttal
Yet these are problems of governance, not of globalisation itself. Countries that combined global integration with sound domestic policy, such as Vietnam, whose GDP per capita quadrupled between 2000 and 2023 after joining global supply chains, and Bangladesh, whose garment industry lifted the nation to lower-middle-income status, demonstrate that globalisation provides the market access and investment essential for development. The solution is not deglobalisation but reform of the multilateral rules that currently favour the powerful, a distinction the widening-gap narrative consistently fails to make.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the assertion that globalisation widens the gap between rich and poor nations is contradicted by the dramatic convergence in living standards that global integration has enabled over the past four decades. The rise of China, India, and Southeast Asia as economic powerhouses demonstrates that globalisation, when paired with sound domestic policies, provides developing nations with the tools to close the development gap. The challenge is not globalisation itself but the governance frameworks needed to ensure its benefits are more widely shared.