Please answer the following question. Your answer should be thorough and demonstrate your understanding of the material.
It's pretty obvious the continent of Africa has severe economic issues. What is the answer, specifically should developed nations intervene? Should developed nations provide relief for the poorest African nations? If yes, what form should that relief take? If not, why not? Be specific in your answer.
Make sure you support your answer with evidence from the readings.
half page
Nonmonetary Poverty
Many aspects of well-being cannot be priced or monetarily valued placed on them (Sandel 2012; Sen 1985), such as the ability to read and write, longevity and good health, security, political freedoms, social acceptance and status, and the ability to move about and connect. Recognizing these aspects of well-being, the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (Alkire and Santos 2014) focus on those areas plus freedom from violence and freedom to decide where combined into a single index.
Overall, Africa's population saw improvements in the areas of nonmonetary poverty, however, as is the case with so many issues in Africa, there must be an asterick placed on any discussion of the topic. For example regarding education, despite the increase in school enrollment still one out of five adults are unable to read.
In health, while there is progress, it is realitive. Africa still is among the worst continent (some would argue worst) when it comes to healthcare. Nearly 2 in 5 children are malnurished, 1 in 8 women underweight. It is ironic though that among a segement of the population obseity is a growing issue. Tolerance of domestic violence is twice as high other developing regions.
But, as with our overall study of the continent, there is wide variation regarding issues across the continent. Literacy is especially low in West Africa where gender disparities are large. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS and lower life expectancy rates can be found in Southern Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Democratic Repulbic of Congo.
Three areas stand out after review of the nonmonetary poverty in Africa. 1) Fragile countries perform worse than middle-income countries. There is not suprisingly a direct correlation between the general economic health of a country and its nonmonetary health; 2) Individuals in resource rich countries tend to have higher illiteracy rate, shorter life expectancy, have higher rates of malnutrition, and suffer more from domestic violence; 3) the countries with better educated women suffer less poverty (a topic we will pick-up on later in the term).
What is Poverty?
So, that we are all on the same page, let's start by defining poverty. What is poverty? There are a couple of basic concepts that are used to define poverty, relative and absolute poverty. Relative is used to speak of the people living in a community. For example, politicians often argue over the distribution of wealth and children living in poverty in the United States. For the most part, those are children have basic needs met, even with assistance. Absolute poverty is vastly different. For those individuals a whole week's income is less than the federal minimum wage for one hour in the U.S. According to the World Bank, absolute poverty refers to people with income of less than $2.00 per day. Typically this is not enough money to pay for the basic necessities of life - food clean water, shelter - that are needed to survive in reasonable health.
Over the past 30 years, absolute poverty in the world has fallen sharply. But, in Africa the worldwide norm is not the reality. In Sub-Saharan Africa over 40% of the people live in absolute poverty. Poverty is sometimes more about how a society shares money than how much money there is overall. Some African countries are very poor, but others are wealthier (often from oil) with extreme inequalities between their citizens.
Some people take an unsympathetic view of poverty and starvation in Africa. Others suggest that more political initiative is needed. In fact, the situation is very complicated. Each African country has a unique history, and today faces unique challenges. Development efforts require many different parts of society working together towards the same goals. In reality, this is hard to achieve.
Many argue, when there are no strong government an army can easily take over a country (in a "military coup"). Leaders who don't have to worry about re-election can make themselves rich. Without a mature legal system, corruption and bribery make it difficult for businesses to establish and without industry, prosperity is elusive.
It's easy for those living in the United States with it rich tradition of democracy and its respect (though admittedly not always practiced) of human rights law to imagine the same situation should be found in the rest of the world. But, as recently as 1950, only four countries in Africa even had their own independent government; prior to that the rest were colonies of Western powers with some (much) of our national wealth derived from these past colonies.
Stable government, which is critical to eliminating poverty, is slowly developing across much of the continent. It takes many decades for stable government, economic stability and the rule of law to be established. People from Western nations tend to think the process happens overnight and are thus critical with what is viewed as slow progress, forgetting the turmoil their nation went through to develop.
Over the last 60 years, some progress has been made in reducing poverty. Many countries have seen gains in health, education and living standards as their economies grow. But at the same time many of the countries have been struggling with the legacy of colonial rule, and war has been common as systems of government have developed. Despite an overall picture of economic growth for the continent, some Africans are being left behind. Two-thirds of the United Nations ‘least developed countries' (classified as those at risk of remaining poor) are in Africa.
The Ivory Coast stands as an example that highlights two important aspects of poverty: that the best solutions work through income generated locally, but also that world markets and Western countries can have a devastating effect on the developing world. Their growth was achieved largely with a little help from the government. Farmer generated wealth from agricultural exports, mostly coffee. However, civil war erupted following problems with the international market due largely to foreign aid creating an excess of coffee in the market driving the cost dramatically down.