African nations are struggling mightily right now. Rebels are attacking the government in Chad, Kenya’s president tried to steal the election which resulted in riots, and there still isn’t peace in Sudan.
There are many reasons for these problems, but Paul Collier in The Bottom Billion, describes four traps that countries like these must over come. Here are the four traps as described in the economics podcast Econtalk:
- Civil war, coups, civil violence. It’s a trap because once you stumble into this, it’s hard to get out of. Some easing off since the end of the cold war, but still very common. Kenya. Transition from dictatorship to democracy has tended to escalate the political violence.
- Having a lot of natural resources. Paradox: should be an opportunity. All too often it corrupts the politics creating dysfunctional polity wherein leaders conduct a competition with each other over control.
- Being landlocked. Being landlocked without resources means your opportunities for development are very limited. Botswana is landlocked but has resources, but the landlocked resource-scarce countries are the most impoverished. Within Africa, it’s about a third of the population. Outside Africa, those regions are parts of countries, but within Africa they have become countries.
- Low education levels leads to poor economic policies. Reform is accelerated by a critical mass of plenty of educated people. Educated classes often leave. Globalization helps China or India but works against the bottom billion. Capital flight, sending money out of the country, people vote with both their wallets and their feet.