Economy, Posts

The curse of riches: another African paradox

December 27, 2017
When talking about economy, we must remember that Africa is worth 3% of world’s GDP. An unacceptable situation, if thinking about the continent’s potentialities and its richness in resources and working force.
But unfortunately, Africa is experimenting with a short circuit: development grows, but it does it too slowly against demographic development. The more the continent gets wealthier, the more people are born, and the less per capita GDP grows.
Moreover, lots of African countries risk undergoing the so-called “curse of riches”. When the land is rich in raw materials, countries tend to build their economies on a single good which could help them to grow. But being totally dependent on only one activity can result in a lethal curse for these counties – the curse of the riches.
The situation is even worse because wealth is not distributed, and incomes are stuck in few people’s hands, who don’t reinvest them in development programmes, which could affect the quality of life of local communities. It is a paradox that in countries with intense export of raw materials, corruption and everlasting robbery of resources are making poverty’s level increase. Powerful people make so that few of them seize the power and the leadership, local population is in troubles and a strong corruption is at the basis of political power.
Talking about paradoxes, Africa has always been helped a lot. Maybe because, at the same time, it has always been robbed. But despite the billions of moneys which have been spent in last years, in Africa people are still dying from starvation. And lots of people are asking me if helping this continent is a reasoning option.
We are going to try and find a good answer to this complicated question.

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