Happy New Year 2012

The Africa: First and Third World

The Term First World refers to countries most developed on this earth and the term third world to the contrary, Africa is in such a paradoxical situation world where the two terms stands together. In my view, we can relate the term "first world" also to birth of human kind, human being first came on earth and came on Africa first, which make it first world. Now coming back to its literal meaning, Africa is becoming a blend of both worlds.

The economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L'Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World in referring to countries currently called either "developing" or "under-developed", especially in Latin America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia, that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War (1945–1989).

Third World was a reference to the Tiers État, the (Third Estate), the commoners of France before and during the French Revolution, opposed to the priests and nobles who composed the First Estate and the Second Estate. Like the third estate, wrote Sauvy, the Third World has nothing, and "wants to be something", implying that the Third World is exploited (as was the third estate) and that its destiny is revolutionary. Moreover, it conveyed the second concept of political non-alignment with neither the industrialized Capitalist bloc nor the industrialized Communist bloc.