Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | W | WIDER Angle

Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it.

Article Excerpt
A large group of smallish countries totalling about a billion people have sheered off from the rest of mankind. As the world becomes more socially integrated this giant pool of poverty will be both unacceptable and explosive. It is the world's biggest economic problem and we need to do something about it. To know what to do we need to start with a diagnosis. While the common fate of the bottom billion has been stagnation and poverty there has been no single cause. In my recently published book The Bottom Billion I propose four distinct traps that between them account for the problem, each requiring a distinct remedy. I also argue that globalization, though it has been benign for the majority of the developing world, is not working for the bottom billion and is not likely to do so. On the contrary, it is liable to make them increasingly marginalized.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

So what are the key policy issues? One is that Africa has failed to develop jobs in export manufactures, the strategy that has been transforming Asia. Bangladesh has generated nearly three million jobs by exporting garments. If Kenya could do the same, it would be transformed. But Asia's success...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!