Tariffs And Poverty In
1. Sub-Saharan Africa
Economic potential in Africa is great not only in its natural but also in its human resources. None the less in 1980 Africa had a 6% share of the world trade and by 2002 this had dropped to just 2% despite the fact that Africa has 12 % of the world's population. If Africa could regain just an additional 1% share of global trade, it would earn $70 billion more in exports each year - several times more than what the region currently receives in foreign aid[1]. Mostly affected is the poorest region in Africa - the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which consists of 48 countries, spreads over 9,4 million square miles and includes more than 700 million people. SSA proves to be the poorest region in the world with it’s economic performance weakest in all aspects. Between 1975 and 2000 GDP growth in developing countries was 1,42 % while in SSA it was only –0,7 %. In 2000 GDP per capita in SSAs was US $513 compared to US$ 1 289 in developing countries and US$ 28 109 in high-income OECD countries. The percentage of people in SSA living on less than US $1 a day increased from 47.4 % in 1990 to 49 % in 1999[2]. In the next investigation, because of different structure and economic performance I do not count South Africa as a member state of SSA.
While searching the data of African countries I found out, that despite the same region and similar climate and resources conditions, African economies substantially differ from each other. Each country has gone through different problems like droughts, civil wars, ethnic fights and other serious problems, which have lead the most of African countries into a decline of real GDP per capita during the 1980-1995 period. Nearly all of the SSA countries perform very unstable macroeconomic results. It is not an exception for the SSA country’s GDP to grow by 5 % one year and fall by –5 % next year. This scenario is virtually impossible in the developed countries and even in...
View Full Essay