This paper investigates the problems militating against the realization of the NIEO. The paper then examines the globalization of the world economy and the economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe, being the two most important economic processes at work in recent years. The negotiations for the NIEO, therefore, cover two broad spectrums of concern to Africa namely, international monetary matters and trade. The paper argues that the multiple transitions involved in globalization, liberalization and democratization, have been implicated in the increase in violence, economic marginalization and criminal behaviour in Africa. The main results of this investigation underscore the fact that only industrialization in Africa will effect a change and have a more (resource) distributive relationship between the West and the continent. Cooperation with one another in economic affairs is indispensable for the realization of economic self-reliance in Africa. The mutually beneficial political and economic relationships between elites in the West and African countries would maintain the structural pattern of dependency in the global economy.