This chapter critically analyses globalisation and its implications for social development around the world. It highlights how this phenomenon has had far-reaching consequences for global economic systems, especially in Africa and the Global South. It argues that globalisation had produced outstanding socio-economic outcomes for countries in the developed North, which benefitted from its neo-liberal prescriptions that were foisted on the Global South, such as the rolling-back of the state in social and economic matters, liberalisation of trade regimes, privatisation and other measures aimed at supposedly bolstering market forces. Such actions worked in favour of economies in the developed North but had disastrous consequences for social and economic development in the Global South and especially Africa. Flowing from this liberalised agenda were the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) propagated by the ‘Washington Consensus’, which effectively helped to dismantle economies in Africa and in the Global South and ultimately attenuated social development in these regions.