Africa has a lot of natural resources but has always relied on foreign aid. Nonetheless has famine, poor road network, poor Healthcare etc. Please explain.
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1. Being late to the industrialization game African countries never got that surplus money from cheap industrial exports to build up their infrastructure. Not having a built up infrastructure makes it more difficult to catch up, because the countries with infrastructure can produce goods much cheaper than the ones without infrastructure.
2. This lack of economic bargaining power means that African countries continue to have poor economies because if you have a strong economy you can force economies that are worse off into trading deals that favor the stronger partner? “But why make a bad trade deal?”, because when the option is bad trade deal or no trade deal it’s still better with a bad trade deal. Bad trade deals means that most of the surplus from the trade deal goes to the guy who is already rich. No trade deal means that your don’t get anything and people starve.
3. The final reason is that raw material export is often a curse. Raw material exports often have very little value added, so it takes a lot of labour to get a little money. Which leads to poor people who don’t have surplus money to spend on anything but the basic necessities. Which means your service economy and educated economy is tiny. Which means that to stay in power you don’t need the political support of a broad majority, you just need the political support of the people who control the guns (because hard manual labour is something you can force people to do. Intellectual labour, less so). Which leads to corruption. Which means that the money you do get is spend to grease the corruption wheels, which means that it’s not spent efficiently to grow the economy.
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