Why is Africa (majority of sub-saharan) countries poor?

[Raamsade]

^^The lazy argument along with its half-sister the cultural argument are long discredited. It was Max Weber and the Protestants who used to argue that the relative backwardness of Catholic Europe and the relative success of their Protestant counterparts was due to the superior Protestant work ethic. With the economic rise of Catholic Europe, that argument lost traction. There was also similar arguments averred for the inabilities of East Asian countries in realizing their potential. That argument went out of the window as well with the ascent of East Asian Tigers.

 

So the effects of cultural proclivities on economic performance is never deterministic but contingent. It depends on other factors simultaneously at play. For that reason, one should never discount the role culture plays in economic development.

 

 

Originally posted by [Waranle]:

Ramsade,

mmm, you make some good points worth exploring. I don't agree with the geographical disadvantage reasoning.

Geographical disadvantage might not make imminent sense today with modern transport like airplanes, railroads and highways. But in the old days it made an immense difference. There were only two modes of transportation in the old days : by road or sea.

 

Now, I don't need to expound on why transport by sea was more efficient and productive. Even today, most trade is done by sea on huge container ships. Thus, for trade to occur you needed navigable rivers that connected disparate villages, towns, cities and kingdoms.

 

Trade would have allowed two things crucial for economic development. First, it would have initiated capital accumulation through trade or what Marxists call primitive accumulation. The challenge facing every developing country is securing capital -- to start new factories, build/improve infrastructure, pay civil servants and so on. In the old days before governments began issuing debts (bonds) and had more effective tax collection systems, this was done in two ways: 1)simply stealing from your neighbors and 2) trade. It is trade that African countries have missed out on. Second, even more important than trade was communication. Navigable rivers would have allowed for the diffusion of technology and ideas. The legacy of the lack of internal trade persists to this day. Africa nations have more barriers to trade amongst themselves than they do with the rest of the world.

 

 

Originally posted by [Waranle]:

( I will be happy to e-mail you a conceptual paper that I am working on non-equilibirium paths to development which takes a historical approach)

There's no need, I did my undergraduate in Economics with concentration in development. So I'm fully acquainted with Prebisch-Singer Hypothesis.

 

And since you're into non-equilibrium (assuming by that you mean non-orthodox economics) paths, I recommend you read Prof. Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder (or anything else he writes). He's a South Korean who grew up during his country's remarkable economic miracle and is a critic of unfettered free trade championed by WTO and richer nations.

 

 

Originally posted by [Waranle]:

Why is it that KENYA is lagging when compared to South Korea? Why is Nigeria behind Saudi Arabia?

Good questions but difficult to answer. I would start off first by not comparing African countries with non-African countries but with other economically successful countries in Africa like S. Africa, Botswana and Mauritius. What did they do that made them so successful?

[Coloow]

Dear ramsade,

 

Because of the limited time at my behest, I wouldn't be able to address the points your raised above. I will do that in future.

 

Laziness is difficult to conceptualise and it might have been Weber (I prefer the other Weber; location theory- least cost- guy) who used to argue for protestanism ethics but this line of reasoning is today potent in development circles.

 

The capital accumulation thesis has been within the realm of development economics since the 40s at least (cf, Lewis, Hirschman, Cardoso, Furtado etc). I like Hirschman's unbalanced growth argument. read the strategy and development projects observed (if you did not do that b4).

 

The marxist and structuralism schools were right in the 1950s but this is fifty years later.

 

Exploitaton is no longer true; colonialism is no longer an explaination sxb.

 

But, leaving conceptual issues aside could you please discuss why sub-saharan african countries lag behind.

 

What is your catch on the population issue? Why is that despite the abundance of natural resources we are as poor as South Korea, Colombia were fifty years ago?

 

Why is African not catching up?

[Dhagax-Tuur]

Interesting.

 

I was listening to BBC's Mark Doyle covering this very subject the other night without of course, the very sophisticated economic theory overtones discussed here.

 

He was going through Africa and Africans and was asking this very question. The answers were really interesting.

 

It ranged from:

 

1. Injustice (in the sense that the average African doesn't feel he/she will be treated right in his daily dealings etc as result becomes despondent)

2. Corruption/political ly corrupted leaders

3. Nepotism (Africans would vote for a politician as long as he/she is from their ethnicity)

4. Colonial footprints in relation to Education (not being creative, simply cramming up subjects and delivering result rather than being creative in what you study)

 

It was fascinating. You can listen to it on the bbc world service website.

 

But the undeniable fact is, Africa not poor, but it is poorly managed.

 

AFrica is yet to give birth to a leader that can see outside the box. A selfless individual that doesn't enrich himself/herself with the riches of the people and the country. Someone with a broader aspirations.

 

My apologies if I am blabbing.

[Coloow]

Check these articles.

 

http://www.rau.ro/in tranet/JEP/1999/1303 /13030003.pdf

 

http://weber.ucsd.ed u/~jrauch/leadingiss ues/leading.pdf

 

 

Dhagax Tuur, Yes, Africa is not poor but is poorly managed; why is that the reason sxb?

 

 

You are probably right that all the listed reasons are true for Africa

[Sky Camel National]

Africa is not Poor but it is poorly managed: I agree whole heartily. The thing that people fail to understand is that one man can not build a nation. If the new president of a nation is dedicated, self-righteous, honest, and intelligent, this doesn't matter if the rest of the government is made of incompetent fools. Africa suffers from poor leadership. Africa can not copy it solutions form the rest of the world. It can learn what not to do. But I don't think that Africans can implement a similar program such as was undertaken by Japan during the Meiji Reformation. That is by sending out government officials to learn how they could better run their government. Africans are unlikely to correctly implement any program foreign to them.

 

Economics: Africans are not lazy. They are stuck. The average African does not have the means or the hope to make a vertical shift in his economic class. Africans need structural reinforcement for economic change. The state, the community, and NGO need to support business and entrepreneurs (not big TNC). Restricted Capitalism is the way to ride this crazy horse and have less of the side effects.

 

Transportation: for development purposes people have to be able to get their goods to market. Just as they must have a market to sell their things. It is well know fact that a good transportation system if vital to good commerce. It would be very beneficial if mass transport systems like railroads was made more widely available and cheaper. This is all about fast, efficient, cheap transportation. It is more strenuous for the farmer and the merchant to have to purchase their own vehicles. In the same way it would be beneficial for us to modernize the open-air African market. Something to sell + someplace to sell it + a way to get there = a good start.

[Raamsade]

Originally posted by [Waranle]:

Dear ramsade,

 

But, leaving conceptual issues aside could you please discuss why sub-saharan african countries lag behind.

There is no single factor/cause that's behind Africa's underdevelopment. Remember that Economics/Developmen t is not an exact science. You can't go into the laboratory and perform experiments to test our theories and predictions as a biologist or chemist would. Current policy prescriptions by economists and development experts are only inferences from past experience and available evidence which is limited. I tend to gravitate towards empirical studies. For instance, empirical studies show an inverted U-shaped relationship between GDP/capita and environmental pollution. In other words, poor countries have low pollution as they're not industrialized yet but as industrialization kicks-off pollution increases ultimately ebbing as the country reaches post-industrial stage (like in modern liberal democracies) where citizens demand cleaner environment. Other empirical studies show no conclusive relationship -- negative or positive -- between Aid/GDP or capita and growth. My developing point is you should look into empirical studies to gain insights about Africa's lack of development.

 

As I said earlier this topic is very broad and encompasses many other fields outside of economics. Economic development is truly interdisciplinary field. Consequently, I can't give an account of Africa's underdevelopment in one or even several posts. A number of good reasons accounting for Africa's underdevelopment have been mentioned including a couple of mine in my last post. But if I was put on the spot and asked to give one cause above all else, I would say Africa's lack of development is owed to the absence of true agrarian reform.

 

All once agrarian but now developed countries saw massive increases in agricultural productivity before industrialization commenced. In England, agricultural revolution proceeded industrial revolution. The East Asian (Taiwan, post-reform China, Japan, H. kong and South Korea) were built on the back of far-reaching agrarian reforms. India had its Green Revolution and a once famine prone country is now at least self-sufficient in food production. Even communist countries saw the goldmine peasants were sitting on and collectivized agricultural with the purpose of channeling savings (forced) into physical capital formation.

 

No where is the need for agrarian reform in desperate need than in Africa. In the typical African country, agriculture provides employment for 80-90% of the labor force. Despite having some of the best lands and climate in the world, African agriculture is in a dismal state. Africa is the only continent in the world where agricultural output per capital has been declining for the past few decades leading to increasing food imports. Farming in Africa is subsistence oriented, small plot, employing primitive tools with very little modern inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation) and underdeveloped markets. As a result, Africans are stuck in a cycle of poverty.

 

Agrarian reform will bring several benefits to Africa. First, reforms will increase productivity. With increased output hunger and malnutrition will be reduced significantly leading to further increases in productivity as healthy and well-fed worker is more productive. Second, extreme poverty will be dented because farmers now produce more and therefore make more money. Third, farmers will now have higher propensity to save. If governments use the right policy tools -- such as high interest rates to savers -- it can initiate self-sustaining industrialization. Keep in mind that the remarkable economic miracle of East Asian Tigers was not really remarkable nor miracolous if one closely looks at the data. East Asian Tigers had the same labor and technological growth rates as Africa; where they substantially differed was in physical capital. Physical capital are all the things you need to produce other things -- factories, machine tools, office buildings, ships and trains, tractors etc. If African countries could only increase their agricultural productivity and invest their savings in physical capital formation, they stand good chance of catching up with the rest of the developed world.

 

 

Originally posted by [Waranle]:

What is your catch on the population issue? Why is that despite the abundance of natural resources we are as poor as South Korea, Colombia were fifty years ago?

I don't subscribe to the Malthusian nightmare theory. Africa is virtually empty continent in comparison to Asia. It can accommodate hundreds of millions more provided that agricultural productivity increases.

 

With respect to the resource abundance conundrum, the Resource Curse theory provides convincing explanations for why seeming resource rich countries are so poor. Look into that theory for more insights.

[Muriidi]

if you look at it one way or another,everybody is poor.it's just the different types of poverty...

[poiuyt]

In seeking truth, we must be open to all possibilities, even ones that offend our sensibilities.

 

Occam's Razor holds that the simplest explanation is often the best one.

 

Sub-saharan Africa could be the way it is because black Africans might have evolved differently from Asians and Whites.

 

At one point, humans were one group that looked alike. They lived in Africa, and split into various groups. After thousands of years -- scientists estimate about fifty to sixty thousand years ago -- ONE of these groups left Africa and populated the rest of the earth. Follow the map here:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Migration_map4.png

 

Those letters represent DNA markings.

 

The point is, as humans left Africa, different human groups were exposed to different environments, and were therefore subject to DIFFERENT SELECTION PRESSURES.

 

The people who lived in Europe and Asia, over time, were exposed to environmental conditions that were far more harsh than what Africans were exposed to. Africans might have had it tough, but perhaps the Asians and Europeans had it tougher -- for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

 

Thus over time, the Europeans and Asians biologically adapted to their harsher conditions in the form of observable physical differences AND ALSO in the form of BEHAVIOR AND INTELLIGENCE.

 

WE ARE STILL THE SAME SPECIES.

 

However, blacks, asians, and whites could all represent the sub-species of "homo sapien sapien."

 

The White and Asian members of this group have different biological characteristics from those of the black group, characteristics that are comprised of the physical (i.e, skin color, hair, etc) and the psychological (I.Q, future-time orientation, ability to delay gratification).

 

IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT BLACK PEOPLE CAN'T BE SMART.

 

What it means is, however, is that there are far more likely to be geniuses and merely smart people among your average 100 whites than among your average 100 blacks.

 

We know evolution is true. We know that blacks and whites and Asians have evolved different bodies that lead to different group results in athletics (how much would you bet that the next winner of the Boston Marathon is an East African?). We just need to make the further step of being open to differences also emerging in psychological traits as well, and I think the endless problems of Africa, and the lack of black representation in the fields of mathematics and science, as well as the numerous IQ studies that always place blacks on the bottom, all point to one unsettling but convincing hypothesis: the dysfunctions of blacks world-wide is due in part to genetics.

[poiuyt]

By the way, consider the success of Asia. It's true that Europe beat Asia to most of the monumental scientific and technological advances.

 

However, observe how quickly Asia has adopted the scientific and technological achievements of Europe.

 

Why?

 

Because Asian societies had, for thousands of years, literacy and government. They could quickly adopt the achievements of Europe because Asia had the cultural capital to do so.

 

Africa does not have that cultural capital, and the reason it doesn't could be due to biological differences.

 

I'm open to the "it's just culture!" argument though. But consider: do you really think it's possible for your average everyday African to change his cultural mindset on the spot so as to make his or her society less hellish?

 

Can you imagine your average Somali in Somalia abandoning the tribal mindset?

 

These problems are simply intractable.

[misterajc]

There is a wonderful book by Jared Diamond called "Guns, Germs and Steel" in which he discusses the question of the relative rates of technological development on different continents. To summarize it in a few sentences - agriculture developed earlier in Eurasia because the east-west axis of the land mass allowed crops native to one region to spread to others in similar climate zones. With an agricultural surplus, cities could develop and the specialization necessary to an advanced culture. Geographically Europe with its islands, peninsulas and mountain barriers became many states rather than a single empire like China and technology develops faster when different states are competing and a central authority is not in a position to block progress.

 

I'm not doing the book justice, so go read it.

[SeefTa]

^^^ive seen the documentary...very interesting

[Coloow]

I wish I had the time to fully respond but I don't. Sac baa qoobka igu haayo.

 

Raamsade, I agree with almost every explanation you stated with a few reservations; the Malthusian nightmare theory is not neccessarily wrong when discussed in the right context. The resource curse postpulate and its cousin the dutch disease are not absolut bro. Even in the african context, the resource curse faces the challenge of explaining why Bostwana -just to take an example- fared well. Note that the Sachs and Warner appear to have ignored resource rich nations , e.g. the nordic countries, Australia, Canada in their assumptions.

 

BTW, the resource curse theory and the many other theories in this field get inspirations from Malthias, Rostows and the rest of the bunch.

 

Muridi, good point; Poverty is a relative concept but economic performance is a feature of explaining poverty.

 

Piouyet; Technological profilerations and knowlegde are the cornerstones of growth/development. So is literacy; and maybe that is the reason why Asians have done better. But that does not sufficiently explain the differences.

 

MirsterAjc, I have the same kind of approach as Raamsade when he noted that he does not subscribe to Malthusian nightmare theory to Jarred's assertions. I have read the book and although he explains some historical facts that cannot be discarded he appears to be reinforcing the widely held notion that western nations have superior minds.

[Buuxo]

The reason is ineffective education.and it is why some of you are regurgitating racist theories.

[Coloow]

Dear Raamsade, if you are academically involved in the issue of natural resources in general and the resource curse syndrom, drop me a message.

 

Thanks

[ailamos]

Originally posted by Raamsade:

Geographical disadvantage might not make imminent sense today with modern transport like airplanes, railroads and highways. But in the old days it made an immense difference. There were only two modes of transportation in the old days : by road or sea.

 

Now, I don't need to expound on why transport by sea was more efficient and productive. Even today, most trade is done by sea on huge container ships. Thus, for trade to occur you needed navigable rivers that connected disparate villages, towns, cities and kingdoms.

It seems that you're talking about Jared Diamond's theory of why certain civilizations triumphed over others. However, this theory doesn't tell me anything of how it was the European that have become world conquerers even though they shared the same geographical resources as the people in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant and Anatolia? Furthermore, the populations of Morocco had similar resources (if not richer) to their Spanish neighbors but they didn't become as advanced, why? The same goes for Iran.

 

Furthermore, it's been a 50 years since the liberation of Africa from colonialists and 92% of the inhabitants of countries such as Nigeria, a classic example as it's the 10th largest oil producer with almost 3% of the world's reserves, live on under $2/day. Why is that? It has to be something other than simple geography and trade routes, no? I think it has more to do with mentality than anything. The Europeans shoved into democracies people that don't normally cohabit together and don't even speak the same language and perhaps, the prominent locals learnt from the colonialists that in order to survive you have to be corrupt and steal, which is why first generation African leaders clung to power for so long. I'm not saying these are concrete facts but I'm just speculating.