This is a critical comparative analysis of the origin, nature, problems and prospects of steel development and industrialization in Nigeria and South Korea. It is well known that the Asian New Industrializing Countries (NICs), South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have recorded impressive industrial and economic growth at a time when countries like Nigeria are lagging behind. What has not been clearly understood about the relative success of the Asian NICs is the political economy of their economic growth. This book provides an alternative and rigorous theoretical basis for analyzing the relative significant economic performance these countries have achieved in comparison with Africa contrary to the views of mainstream scholars and the World Bank/IMF.

Focusing on the steel sector, this ground-breaking book examines the interplay among the state, local capital, transnational corporations, the World Bank, and IMF. The book examines how all these factors have come to shape the content and direction of steel development and industrialization of both Nigeria and South Korea. Omoweh locates the cause of Nigeria’s failure to get its steel industry really started in the politics of the Nigerian state and its mode of surplus extraction and notes that though the South Korean steel sector is relatively more developed than Nigeria’s, it does not make the former a model for the latter. The economic crisis that the country and its steel industry have faced since late 1997 reveals one of the contradictions of the growth-obsessed development strategy and limitations of the authoritarian Korean state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Omoweh has a doctorate degree from University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He is a Research Fellow in the Division of International Economic Relations of the Research and Studies Department at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos, Nigeria. Among his numerous works are Political Economy of the Operations of Shell Petroleum Development Company in Oloibiri Area of Nigeria; and Industrialization in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects (co-authored with A. Olukoshi, et al.).

CATEGORY
Political Science, Development Studies/AFRICA