Colonial Financial Power: The hidden architecture of a failed promise
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/thl2025art2206Keywords:
Finance, localisation, Colonial Financial Power, decolonial theory, critical power analysisAbstract
The transfer of financial power to the Global South has stalled. Despite years of consensus on 'localisation', conventional excuses—risk aversion, capacity gaps—no longer suffice. They are not operational hurdles; they are the symptoms of a deeper, structural disease. This paper unmasks that disease by introducing Colonial Financial Power (CFP), a new analytical framework. Drawing on decolonial theory (Quijano, 2000) and critical power analysis (Barnett & Duvall, 2005), CFP reveals how colonial legacies are actively perpetuated in humanitarian finance. The framework is built on four interconnected mechanisms: (1) direct coercive control; (2) bureaucratic exclusion; (3) an architecture of inequality; and (4) the production of narratives that legitimise domination. By reinterpreting financial barriers through this lens, this paper offers leaders a new language to diagnose the problem, challenge the status quo, and forge a path toward a genuinely decolonial humanitarian system.
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