Geography helps to explain Africa's woes From:Reuters
Tuesday, 5th August, 2003
By Ed Stoddard
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - It's good for your country to have a coast -- or at least lots of its population in close proximity to the sea -- and not just for trips to the beach.
Recent studies are confirming what many economists have long known: that geography matters. Size does too.
This may be especially relevant to Africa, helping to explain why it is the world's poorest continent and why the wealth gap between it and the rest of the planet is growing.
"More countries are land-locked (in Africa), with small populations, than in any other region," says the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
"This impedes growth by making exports costly and limiting incentives for foreign direct investment," it says.
In its 2003 Human Development Report, the UNDP looks at economic growth rates by population size and geographical factors between 1980 and 1998.
Small countries are classified as those with fewer than 40 million people in 1990 while those with three quarters of the population living more than 60 miles from the coast are classified as inland -- even if they have a coastline.
"Small and inland countries enjoyed much less economic success over the same period (than large or coastal countries)," the report says.
"The findings are particularly relevant for Africa, since 33 of the 55 countries counted as small and inland are on that continent," it says.
GEOGRAPHY IMPORTANT, BUT NOT A STRAIT-JACKET
Economists going back to Adam Smith in the 18th century have argued that geography is a vital ingredient of economic success, and analysts have in recent years been closely examining its impact on development.
"Nearly all landlocked countries in the world are poor, except for a handful in Western Europe that are deeply integrated into the regional European market," says a 1998 paper by John Luke Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs which was presented to the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics.
Botswana, according to Gallup and Sachs, was the richest non-European landlocked country with a population of more than a million in 1998, and is widely seen as an African success story.
But as they point out, it "owes its pride of place to well-managed diamond mines."
…Analysts also point to unfair trade practices that prevent many African goods, particularly food products, from penetrating rich markets. High debt loads are another millstone.
And many African countries have suffered from shoddy governance, rampant corruption and brutal dictatorships.
But geography does seem to be playing significant a role. The trick is to build the ladders that breach this natural obstacle to prosperity -- such as regional cooperation -- and give Africans the opportunity to climb out of their poverty.
