Introduction
Africa is one of the continents lagging behind in all sorts of developments for a long time. As a result, it has had continuous dependence on other continents for several items. Most of the industrial commodities used in Africa are imported.
That way, it continues to enrich other continents by adding into their foreign exchange. Over the last thirty years, the Sub Saharan Africa has recorded a very poor development, making its people to continue languishing in poverty. Compared to other continents, its economic performance is comparatively poor.
The development record
The poor development record can clearly be seen in its per capita Gross Domestic Product of the 1980s, which declined by 1.3 percent per annum coming five percentage points below the average of all income developing countries (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 64). The decline has since continued to increase from the 1980s up to now.
Between 1990 and 1994, the economic growth slowed down a great deal, whereby the per capita GDP decline accelerated to 1.8 percent and with time went up to 6.2 per cent (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 64). From the 1980s, it has declined by almost 1 percent annually making the countries poorer than they were in the 1980s. That has made it the lowest income region in the whole world.
Reasons for poor development
Lack of social capital is one of the reasons that have led to the poor economic growth. The community and the government through institutions that facilitate private property can generate social capital (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 65). The government plays the greatest role in determining the rate of development of a particular country.
By imposing taxation on different areas of production or businesses, it only means one thing, and that is, many people who would be willing to invest in certain areas will be cut off.. There are those who may go ahead but they end up realizing very little growth. When transaction costs are high, the level of economic development will slow down.
This part of Africa has greatly been affected by civil wars. With wars, little developments can take place since insecurity will make people fear to make any form of investments in the affected areas. People will fear and run for their lives to different neighboring countries and this is what has happened in this region.
That also affects the neighboring countries, as they have to put up with the increasing number of refugees from the affected areas. Today, most African countries are still facing wars and after the war, it takes a long time to rebuild the economy again (Crafts 1999, p. 20).
Over the last three decades, there have been low levels of investments in the Sub Saharan Africa and the region is not in good capacity to import the capital goods and technology that are needed to accelerate structural change. Therefore, there is need for increase in support that the African countries get from multilateral organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This is because it is not easy to attain good economic growth from other sources like the Foreign Direct Investments.
The slow economic growth could also have been greatly influenced by the region’s adverse climatic conditions, which results to poor health and thus reduces life expectancy (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 8). Most parts of this region are tropical which greatly affects the economy.
This is because most of the people are affected by tropical diseases like malaria. The disease is said to be one of the leading causes of death in the tropical region of the world and the governments of those countries have to spend a lot in trying to curb it (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 7).
The harsh weather conditions result to leached soils, which are of poor quality and unreliable rainfall thus making most of the region semi arid. All that affects agricultural activities and this greatly affects the economic development of the countries that lie in this region since they mainly depend on agriculture. When they are deprived of their major economic activity, poverty ensues and with it, positive economic growth cannot be recorded.
In general, Africa is also said to be the leading continent in the rate of HIV and AIDS infections. It has recorded the highest number of deaths related to the dangerous disease and as a result, the continent has lost a lot of skilled labor (Sender, 1999, p.91). People who could bring about good economic growth perish with the disease and this greatly affects the given countries.
The governments of such countries have had to spend a lot of money in taking care of the infected and the affected, for instance, they have to buy ARVs, which help to prolong the lives of the infected. Additionally, the government has the task of taking care of the orphaned children. That huge amount of finance spent in all that could have otherwise been used on development projects that could bring about positive economic growth.
Most of the African poor people are greatly affected by economic and health related factors, natural disasters, and conflict shocks, which continue to keep them in poverty (World Bank 201, p. 2). The World Bank looks forward to enabling the African countries to provide better health care and make use of irrigation together with other water management ways to help them deal with the effects of climatic change.
Global warming, which is the main cause of climatic change, has led to raised temperatures, prolonged seasons of drought and decline in rainfall. All these make it hard for Sub-Saharan African countries to sustain their agricultural activities resulting to poverty and hence poor economic growth.
This part of the African continent is made up of developing countries which face are technologically challenged (Commission on Growth and Development 2008, p.3). Most of them still lag behind in innovation and the creation of new technology; they just absorb and adapt technologies that already exist elsewhere in the world.
For example, African countries started using computers a few years ago long after that innovation whereas in the western world, use of computers had become the norm of the day. This means that that they have taken long to develop economically as progress in technology is highly important in determining economic growth.
Failures of the Sub Saharan Africa
Corruption is another major problem that has dragged behind Africans. For economic growth to prevail there must be openness in carrying out operations. Most African countries have however failed in fighting corruption (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 69). Africa is said to be the leading continent in the levels of the vice.
Therefore, it is very hard to attain economic growth and development as embezzlement has already become deeply rooted in most African countries due to corruption. This happens when for instance money is set aside for developments such as roads construction but is not utilized for such purposes but for personal gain by corrupt leaders.
This explains the reason as to why there is a very wide gap between the poor and the rich in this region. Some people are too rich because of acquiring property through the wrong means while others are too poor.
As said earlier, agriculture is the main economic activity in most of the African countries as many of the people depend on it for survival. The sector is very crucial, as it is a great source of foreign exchange in the region; 70 percent of the Africans depend on it and half of all employed women are in the sector (Sender, 1999, p. 97).
This shows how important the sector is to the continent but things would be better if the African governments took measures to promote the farmers. Some Africans practice cash crop farming but the efforts of such people are greatly undermined by the fact that, they are made to remit a certain amount of money as agricultural taxation (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 66).
For a country to reap economic gains, it must have good infrastructure. Definitely, anything that has been produced needs to be transported to the market. For this to happen, there has to be a good transport and communication network not only in the urban centers but also deep in the rural areas.
This is where most of the African governments have failed in (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p 66). The rural areas where agricultural products come from are hardly accessible as there are no enough roads and those that are available are in very bad conditions. The situation becomes worse when it rains, as most of the roads are very rough. As a result, great losses are encountered in the transportation process of agricultural perishable goods.
It is estimated that in the Sub Saharan Africa, agriculture accounts for between 30 and 55 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (Sender, 1999, p. 96). Although the rural areas of the African region may be very rich in agricultural soils that may end up not contributing the right percentage to their economic growth as most of the produce, fail to get to the required market at the appropriate time.
Therefore, the people and the governments need to cooperate in order to build social interaction and that will definitely lead to economic gains. This can be achieved through building trust, which lowers the transaction costs (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 19).
There is a growing rate of unemployment in most parts of this region. The governments of the African countries have failed in provision of employment, as most of the people remain jobless. As a result, many people are not able to place food on the table and they continue to live in poverty.
Research shows that by the year 1996, only 1 percent of the African population consisted of civil servants which is lower compared to other developing countries whereby 3 percent and above of the population are civil servants. Those who are lucky to get civil employment may not be so happy as well, for they receive little wages, which is not good enough to lead a comfortable life.
Most of the African nations have more ethnic diversity than other poor countries in the world and this makes it more difficult for them to have or develop an interconnected economy (Collier and Gunning, 1999, p. 67). The governments of the Sub Saharan African countries have not done much in fighting ethnicity.
People continue to term themselves different from one another and this breeds nepotism and discrimination, which causes many conflicts. People of different ethnic groups have different beliefs and ways of life. What one group does and terms as very good may not be allowed by another group. When such differences occur, cooperation is not very easy and thus developments cannot be arrived at with much ease.
The Sub Saharan Africa successes
Sometimes back, there was a very high rate of infant mortality in the region. Most of the deaths occurred in children under five years because of the diseases that affect them while at that age. These diseases include measles, tuberculosis, and whooping cough among others.
With continued improved medical care, the number of deaths in small children has greatly been reduced as they are immunized against most of the diseases in the first year of their lives. The number of children who die at infancy has drastically reduced (Sender, 1999, p. 90).
There have been increased medical facilities that facilitate the provision of better health care and in addition to that, there has been improved nutrition adding to the advantage. As a result, there has been increased life expectancy even in the poor countries (Crafts, 1999, p. 21).
Credit should also be given to these countries for promoting literacy to its people. It is no longer the time when women were to stay at home and raise children. Fifty years ago, women in Africa were very unlikely ever to attend school and over 90 percent of the adult females were illiterate (Sender, 1999, p. 92). Most of the countries in this region have done a lot to ensure that the girl child is protected, and gets the required education.
The World Bank is in the process of making sure that the economy of African countries improves (World Bank 201, p. 1). This will see majority of people access employment and hence improving their living standards. Many of the poor people live and work in the rural areas but perhaps that may change in future as more people are now migrating to the urban centers in search of better lives. This has created a pool of people who are unemployed and many ends up indulging in criminal activities and prostitution for survival.
Conclusion
The Sub Saharan Africa has had poor development for a long time. It is considered the last in all development records compared to other regions in the world. The region’s tropical climate, which causes tropical diseases and harsh weather for agriculture, is one of the reasons associated with its failures.
To add to that, the governments of countries in this region have failed in several ways and this has led to a decline in the economic development of the region. They have failed to provide good infrastructure, fight corruption, and have not been able to scrap taxation that is imposed on different areas of investment. Though these governments have failed in one way or another, they have also had their successes. They have been able to provide better health care and education to their citizens.
Reference List
Collier, P., and Gunning, J. (1999). Explaining African Economic Performance. Journal of Economic Literature, 37, 64-11.
Collier, P., and Gunning, J. (1999). Why has Africa grown slowly? Journal of Economic perspectives, 13, 3-22.
Commission on Growth and Development. (2008). The Growth Report, Washington DC: World Bank. Web.
Crafts, N. (1999). Economic growth in the twentieth century. Oxford review of economic policy, 15, 18-31.
Sender, J. (1999). African’s performance: Limitations of the current consensus. Journal of Economic perspectives, 13, 89-114.
World Bank. (2011). Africa’s Future, World Bank: Washington DC. Web.