Onemolease's Theory of Engineered Peripheralisation (TEP): A Framework for Understanding Structural Market Marginalization and Pathways to Regenerative Autonomy

Onemolease's Theory of Engineered Peripheralisation (TEP) reframes the persistent economic marginalization of the Global South—most acutely across Africa—as neither the residue of isolated policy error, infrastructure deficit, governance failure, nor colonial history acting alone. It is the designed and path-dependent output of ultrastructures: the invisible kernel of market architecture comprising perception protocols, memory ledgers, orchestration systems, identity regimes, and governance rulesets. When those layers are written elsewhere, or optimized for scarcity extraction, they lock peripheral economies into raw-supply roles and route value, data, agency, and decision rights toward core nodes. TEP extends World-Systems Theory, core–periphery models, Dependency Theory, Global Value Chain analysis, institutional economics, and complex-systems theory by insisting that contemporary peripheralisation is protocol-engineered. Five interlocking mechanisms operationalize that engineering: Value Extraction Loops; Scarcity Engineering at administrative, operational, and strategic levels; Dependency Reinforcement; Legibility Capture; and Incentive Misalignment. The paper derives the Peripheralization Index (PI), a composite on [0, 1] aggregating five normalized sub-indices: Resource-Value Capture Gap (RVCG), Technological Dependency (TD), Financial Capital Leakage (FCL), Institutional Sovereignty Deficit (ISD), and DemographicProductivity Mismatch (DPM). Default equal weights of 0.2 apply; a geometric variant penalizes dimensional failure. Thresholds distinguish regenerative centrality (PI < 0.3), moderate peripheralisation (0.3–0.6), and engineered lock-in (PI ≥ 0.6). Modeled 2026 baselines place continental Africa near PI ≈ 0.85. Prescriptive architecture is the Doctrine of Regenerative Ultrastructure, operationalized through UMEI®. Steering and stock measurement use the Regenerative Surplus Index (RSI) and Gross Regenerative Surplus (GRS) exactly as specified in the RSI/GRS measurement framework (Onemolease, 2026): RSI as the real-time composite of vitality, resilience, optionality, and temporal liberation; GRS as the period change in RSI plus irreversible gains minus irreversible losses. GRS is a macroeconomic surplus metric—the successor logic to GDP —not a generational score.